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AN AD V A N C E D 

HISTORY OF ENGLAND 




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AN ADVANCED 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 



From the Earliest Times to the Present Day 



BY 

CYRIL RANSOME, M.A. 

PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 

IN THE YORKSHIRE COLLEGE, VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, 

AUTHOR OF 'an ELEMENTARY HISTORY OF ENGLAND,' 

'a SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND,' ETC. 



WITH MAPS AND PLANS 



NEW YORK 
MACMILLAN AND CO. 

1895 






yK.\ 



This History may also be had in Two Periods : — 

PERIOD I.— To ELIZABETH, 1603. 4s. 
PERIOD II.— To VICTORIA, 1895- 4s. 



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PKEFACE 

The object of this book is to carry the study of English History 
a stage further than has been done in my Short History of 
England (Longmans and Co.). It has been specially designed to 
meet the wants of four classes of readers : (1) of those, either at 
school or college, who, having mastered the elements of English 
History in such a book as the author's Elementary History of 
England (Rivington, Percival, and Co.), and what are known as 
the ' outlines ' in such a book as the author's Short History, are 
preparing to study in greater detail such a period as 1485 to 1603, 
or 1714 to 1815 ; (2) of teachers who, while taking a class in the 
' elements ' or ' outlines,' wish to have in their own hands a fuller 
and more developed treatment of events ; (3) of university 
students, who require a fuller treatment of the whole course of 
events than is given in the Short History ; and (4) of those of the 
general public who wish to have in their hands a handy but fairly 
full history to which they may turn for ready information on the 
historical points that crop up day by day in politics or conversation. 

In trying to supply these needs I have throughout tried to keep 
in view certain principles which it may be useful to state. 

In selecting materials my rule has been to give more about 
matters of great importance, but not to introduce new matter 
which is itself of secondary importance. For example, in the 
Civil War period, I have introduced very few new names and 
events beyond what are mentioned in the Short History, but I 
have given a great deal more about the characters and motives of 
Laud, Strafford, and Cromwell, the Petition of Right, the Solemn 
League and Covenant, and the King's trial. 

As it is most important at this stage of historical teaching to show 
as far as may be on what history is based, I have systematically 



vi An Advanced Hidonj of England 

introduced into the text tlie exact words of such great documents as 
the Petition of Right and Habeas Corpus Act ; and throughout the 
narrative quotation marks, except in a few obvious cases, mean that 
the words enclosed come from some good contemporary authority. 

In arranging the material my rule has been as far as possible — 
and it is a most difficult thing to do especially in the later part — 
to treat each matter as a whole, and to avoid the fatal error of having 
notices of a closely-connected series of events scattered about dis- 
connectedly in the course of the general narrative. For examj)le, 
the events which led to the Scottish and Irish Unions are respec- 
tively grouped together. 

As a vivid idea of great national heroes ought to be one of the 
most valued treasures of the nation, I have throughout laid great 
stress on biography and character-sketching. In dealing with 
those great men, such as Strafford, Laud, and Cromwell, whose 
actions still provoke bitter controversy, I have followed as far as 
possible the rule of letting them speak for themselves, and, where 
I have been compelled to express an opinion on their actions, have 
endeavoured to give them credit for the best motives. 

The same rule applies even more forcibly to the statesmen of 
our own age and of that immediately preceding it. The dictum of 
John Bright that there is no jDart of history so difficult for a young- 
man to make himself acquainted with as that just beyond his own 
personal memory is undoubtedly true, and I have endeavoured to 
aid such persons by bringing the narrative down to the resignation 
of Lord Rosebery in 1895. In dealing, however, with such recent 
history the difficulties are enormous, but I hope I may be thought 
to have, at any rate, made an honest attempt to overcome them. 

One error of historians is to give to the minor details of modern 
politics a space wholly disproportioned to their relative importance. 
This I have tried to avoid, and have endeavoured to make the 
space allotted to any subject, wherever it may come in, bear a close 
relationship to its importance. 

There is, however, one subject in which it is almost impossible 



Preface vii 

to do this. Probably the greatest event in modern history is the 
development of the British colonial empire ; but it is most difficult 
to make colonial history occupy a space at all commensurate with 
its importance. With India the case is otherwise, for few events 
give greater opportunities for dramatic narrative than it ; but no 
one can make the history of Australia exciting, and though the 
same remark does not apply to the early history of Canada, its 
development of late years has been along the happy but uneventful 
lines of peaceful progress. 

In dealing with the question of religion, I have avoided, as far 
as possible, doctrinal points, and where they have been unavoidable 
have stated them in the words of the original documents, and have 
throughout used terms which I believe to be acceptable to the 
various religious bodies of whom history treats. 

Similarly, in treating of points where the national feeling or pre- 
judices of the various races who now share the common name of 
British may be touched, I have endeavoured to avoid anything 
which may add bitterness, have laid stress on such exploits as each 
remembers with pride, and have been careful by the use of the 
word British to draw attention to the common share in common 
glories and common dangers in which we have all participated. 

One great difficulty has been to determine the amount of space 
to be allotted to literature. This I would gladly have increased 
had it been possible ; but have been compelled to refrain, my rule 
being that in the earlier part of the history, say to the beginning 
of the Elizabethan period, literature is so closely connected with the 
history of the nation that it is impossible to separate them, but 
that after that date not only do considerations of space become 
more exacting, but also, as a matter of fact, the class of readers I 
have in view are in the habit of studying literature in a different 
text-book. Only where the literature bears a very close relation 
to politics have I ventured to allow myself a few lines on the sub- 
ject. The same rule applies to manners and customs. 

The ma]3s are numerous, and each contains the minimum of 



viii An Advanced History of England 

necessary names, so as to enable its general effect to be seen at a 
glance. In deciding which battles should have plans allotted to 
them, I have acted on the principle that where the arrangements of 
a battle are fairly known, and cannot well be understood without a 
map of the ground, as in the case of Dunbar and Salamanca, there 
ought to be a map ; in the case of a battle like Naseby, which 
though very important is perfectly easy to understand, there should 
not. In each plan I have endeavoured to picture some definite 
event in the course of the battle, and not tried to get in everything 
at once. In the case of Waterloo and Poitiers, in which latter battle 
I have followed the narrative of Galfrid le Baker, I have given two 
plans, showing the position of the forces at different times. 

The names are spelt in the manner sanctioned by the only satis- 
factory rule — long usage — but in some of the earlier names, to 
avoid the possibility of mistake, the less familiar form has been 
added in a bracket. 

As I hope the book may be largely used for reference, great pains 
has been taken with the index, and to aid those who are reading 
special periods numerous references have been inserted in the text, 
and even a certain amount of repetition has been introduced. 

The figures at the top of the pages represent with a few obvious 
exceptions the furthest dates reached by the general narrative at 
the beginning of the left-hand page and the end of the right. The 
Handbook in Outline of the English Political History, by Acland 
and Eansome, now published by Longmans and Co., will be found a 
great assistance in following the chronology.' 

In conclusion, I must thank all who have so kindly helped me 
in the past by pointing out errors in my former books, and in the 
MS. and proofs of this.' Though every possible care has been 
taken to make the statements exact, it is not to be expected but 
that some errors remain, and any one who will kindly draw my 
attention to them will confer a great favour upon the author. 

C. R. 

Leeds, Jnltj 1895. 



CONTENTS 

Book I 
ENGLAND BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. PREHISTORIC AND CELTIC BRITAIN", 3 

Prehistoric Inhabitants — Thelvernians — The Celts — First Civi- 
lised Visitors — Caesar's Expeditions. 

II. BRITAIN UNDER THE ROMANS, . . . '. . .13 

Roman Conquest of Britain — Introduction of Roman Civilisa- 
tion — Causes of the Withdrawal of the Romans. 

III. THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN BRITAIN, .... 19 

Little known of first English Invasion — Gildas' Account most 
trustworthy — Later Conquests of Ceawlin and Ethelfrith — 
Effects of the Conquest on the Britons. 

IV. THE CONVERSION OF THE ENGLISH, 26 

Preaching of Augustine and of the Celtic Missionaries — Synod 
of Whitby — Organisation of the Church of Theodore — In- 
fluence of the Church — Supremacy of the Northumbrians, 
then of the Mercians, then of the West Saxons under Egbert. 

V. INSTITUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH, 40 

Physical Features of the Country — Local Government of the 
Township, the Hundred, and the Shire — Central Government 
in the hands of the King and Witenagemot — English Society 
in the Ninth Century. 

VI. THE INVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN, 51 

The Ethnology of the Northmen — Their Early Invasions — The 
Youth of Alfred the Great — Accession of Alfred — His 
struggles against the Danes — Peace of Wedmore — The Dane- 
law — Political Effects of the Danish Settlement — Reorganisa- 
tion of his Kingdom by Alfred — Later Wars with the Danes — 
Death of Alfred. 



X An Advanced History of England 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VII. RECONQUEST OF THE DANELAW, 61 

Edward the Elder begins au oflfensive War against the Danes, 
and secures his Conquests by Fortifications— Edward is 
acknowledged Overlord by the whole Island— Battle of 
Brunanburh— Conquest of Strathclyde— The Policy of Edgar 
and Dunstan. 

VIII. THE DANISH CONQUEST, . 69 

Renewal of the Danish Invasions — Feeble resistance of the 
English — Canute's Reign — Rise of Godwin — Reigns of Harold 
and Hardicanute. 

IX. THE NORMAN CONQUEST, 7.6 

The Character of Edward the Confessor — Influx of Normans- 
Godwin and his Family unsuccessfully oppose the Normans 
— Visit of William of Normandy to England — Return of 
Godwin and Banishment of the Normans — Character of 
Harold, Godwin's Son — Accession of Harold — Battles of 
Stamford Bridge and Hastings. 



Book II 
THE NORMAN KINGS OF ENGLAND (1066-1154). 

1. WILLIAM I. (1066-I087), 

Completion of the Conquest — Apportionment of the Soil and 
Offices — Discontent of the Normans — Doomsday Book — 
Quarrels in the Royal House. 

II. WILLIAM II. (1087-IIO0), 

Contest with the Barons continued — Tlie enforcement of the 
Feudal Dues— The first Crusade. 

III. HENRY I. (1IOO-II35), 

Conciliatory measures — Suppression of the Barons — The In- 
vestiture question — Reorganisation of the central Govern- 
ment — Social Progress. 

IV. STEPHEN (11 35-11 54), 

Stephen's success— Contest for the Crown— Battles of North- 
allerton and Lincoln— Siege of Oxford— Effects of the War- 
Henry of Anjou. 



Contents xi 

Book III 

THE EAELIER ANGEVIN KINGS, SOMETIMES CALLED 
PLANTAGENETS. 

;hapter page 

I. HENRY II. (ll 54-1189), 135 

Keorganisation of the Kingdom — The great Scutage — The 
Becket Quarrel — Judicial Eeforms — Conquest of Ireland — 
Abortive Revolt of the Barous — Quarrels in the Royal 
Family. 

II. RICHARD I. (1189-II99), 157 

Exploits and Imprisonment of Richard — lu his absence the 
Kingdom is governed by his Ministers — C^onstitutional and 
Social Progress of the time — Richard's Death . 

III. JOHN (i 199- 12 16), 167 

John's ill character leads to the loss of France, a quarrel with 
the Church, and finally his iniquitous life and Government 
cause a union of all classes to extort the Great Charter — A 
French Prince invited to take the Throne. 

IV. HENRY III. (1216-I272), . . . . . . . 182 

The Regency of William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke — His place 
taken by Hubert de Burgh — Henry takes the rule into his 
own hands, governs badly, and allows himself to fall into the 
hands of Favourites — Rise of a Baronial Party under Simon 
de Montfort — The Barons' Wars. 



Book IV 

THE LATER ANGEVIN KINGS, SOMETIMES CALLED 
PLANTAGENETS. 

I. EDWARD I. (1272- 1 307), 205 

Age of Legislative Activity — Final Conquest of Wales — A 
Scottish Dynastic difficulty leads to its Annexation — Com- 
plete and Model Parliament — The Confirmation of the 
Charters — Scottish Revolt. 

II. EDWARD II. (1307-I327), . . . . . . . 228 

Piers Gaveston — The Lords Ordainers — Gaveston's Death — 
Bruce's Scottish successes — Bannockburn — The Despeusers — 
Lancaster's Defeat at Boroughbridge, and Death — General 
combination against the Despensers, headed by the Queen 
and Mortimer, leads to Edward's Dethronement. 



xii An Advanced History of England 

CHAPTER PAGE 

III. EDWARD III. (1327-I377), • 242 

Fall of Mortimer— Scottish Affairs bring on War with France, 
which led to important Constitutional Developments— Battles 
of Sluys and Crecy— Siege of Calais— The Black Death, and 
its effects on the Manorial System— Battle of Poitiers and 
Treaty of Bretigny — Spanish Expedition leads to a disastrous 
renewal of the War — Growth of a strong feeling against the 
Pope and the Clergy — John of Gaunt and Wyclif — The 
Reforms of the Good Parliament. 

IV. RICHARD II. (1377-I399), 278 

The Minority— Peasant Revolt — The Lollards— Opposition 
Nobles displace the King's Ministers — Richard's personal rule 
— His revenge on the Nobles, and final fall. 



Book V 
THE LANCASTEIAN AND YORKIST KINGS. 

I. HENRY IV. (1399-I413), ...... 299 

Rebellions in Richard's Favour — The Lollards — Owen Glen- 
dower — The Risings of the Percies and of Scrope — Foreign 
Affairs — Henry's Constitutional Government. 

II. HENRY V. (1413-I422), 313 

The French Wars — Agincourt — Siege of Rouen — Treaty of 
Troyes. 

III. HENRY VI. (1422 — DETHRONED I461 — DIED I471), . . 324 

French Wars — Siege of Orleans — Loss of France — Growth of 
Hostile Parties headed respectively by the Beauforts and the 
Duke of York — Outbreak of Civil War — Dethronement of 
Henry vi. 

IV. EDWARD IV. (1461-I483), ....... 348 

Battle of Towton and Suppression of the Lancastrians — 
Edward's Marriage — Warwick intrigues for Power — Restora- 
tion of Henry— Battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury— Death of 
Henry— Expedition to France— Power of Edward. 

V. EDWARD V. (1483), 361 

Richard of Gloucester becomes Protector, and eventually Edward 
is dethroned. 

VI. RICHARD III. (1483-1485), 365 

Murder of the Princes — Morton's Conspiracy — Benevolences 
condemned— Conspiracy of Henry Tudor— Bosworth. 



Contents xiii 

Book VI 
THE HOUSE OF TUDOR. 

HAPTER PAGE 

I. HENRY VII. (1485- 1 509), 376 

Policy of Henry vii. — Rebellion of Simnel and Perkin — Ireland 
— Strengthening of the Crown — Foreign Affairs. 

II. HENRY VIII. (1509- 1 547), 392 

Foreign politics — Flodden — Wolsey's career — The Divorce ques- 
tion leads to the fall of Wolsey and the separation from 
Rome — Changes in the Church — Dissolution of the Monas- 
teries — Resistance to these changes — Henry's domestic life — 
Later foreign policy. 

III. EDWARD VI. (1547- 1 5 53), 426 

The Arrangements for the Minority — Somerset — Battle of 
Pinkie, and Rebellions in Devonshire and Norfolk — Ascen- 
dancy of John Dudley — The Reformation— Unpopularity of 
the Government — Plot to alter the Succession. 

IV. MARY (1553-1558), 437 

The Accession — The Spanish Match — Gradual Repeal of the 
Ecclesiastical Legislation passed since 1529 — Persecution of 
the Protestants — War with France and loss of Calais — 
Unpopularity of the Government. 

V. ELIZABETH (1558-I603), 448 

Elizabeth's Religious Settlement — Foreign Affairs— The Refor- 
mation in Scotland — History of Mary Queen of Scots to her 
Flight into England— The Civil Wars in France— The Revolt 
of the Netherlands — Improvement in Elizabeth's position — 
The Rivalry of the English and Spaniards in the South Seas 
— Danger from Mary Queen of Scots — Her Execution — The 
Spanish Armada — English Command of the Seas — Irish 
Affairs— Essex's Career and Execution — The Monopolies. 



Book VII 
THE STUARTS. 

I. JAMES I. (1603-1625), 485 

The Main and Bye Plots — The religious question — Parliament 
— The Gunpowder Plot — The constitutional difficulties of 
James — Death of Raleigh— The Thirty Years' War— Buck- 
ingham — the Spanish Match. 



xiv An Advanced History of England 

CHAPTER ^'^' 

II. CHARLES I. (162 5- 1 649), 5( 

Quarrels with his first Parliament— The Petition of Eight— The 
Rise of Laud and Wentworth— Imprisonment of Eliot— Arbi- 
trary Rule— Wentworth in Ireland— Religious Difficulties 
in Scotland— First Bishops' War— The Short Parliament— 
Second Bishops' War. 

III. CHARLES I. (part II.), 5: 

The Composition of the Long Parliament— The Trial and Death 
of Straft'ord— Reforming Measures— The Religious Question 
and Division of Parties — Impeachment of the five Members- 
Opening of the War — First Civil War — Imprisonment of the 
King — Second Civil War —Trial and Death of Charles. 

IV. THE COMMONWEALTH AXD PROTECTORATE, .... 586 

The Commonwealth — Wars in Scotland, Ireland, and with the 
Dutch — Expulsion of the ' Rump ' — Barebone's Parliament — 
The Instrument of Government — The Petition and Advice- 
Death of Cromwell — Events which led to the Restoration. 

V. CHARLES II. (1660- 1 685), . 613 

The Acts of the Convention Parliaments — Clarendon's Ministry 
—The First Dutch War— Fall of Clarendon— The Cabal— The 
Treaties of Dover— Second Dutch War — Fall of the Cabal — 
Danby's Ministry — Rise of the 'Country' Party — The Exclu- 
sion Bill— Fall of the Whigs. 

VI. JAMES II. (1685-1689), 644 

Character of James — Monmouth's Rebellion — The Dispensing 
Power — Hales' Case — The Ecclesiastical Commission — Attacks 
upon the Universities — The Declaration of Indulgence— Ad- 
verse Feeling in the Country — Birth of James' Son — Trial of 
the Seven Bishops — Expedition of William of Orange — Flight 
of James — The Interregmim — The Declaration of Right. 

VII. WILLIAM AND MARY (1689-I702), 667 

The Revolution in Scotland and Ireland — War with France — 
Rise of Party Government — Financial Measures — Treaty of 
Ryswick — The Partition Treaties — The Grand Alliance. 

VIII. ANNE (1702- 1 7 14), 705, 

Character of Marlborough — The War of the Spanish Succession — 
Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet — The Union 
of England and Scotland — Ministerial Intrigues— Prosecution 
of Sacheverell and Fall of the Whigs — The Treaty of Utrecht 
— The Schism Act — Death of Anne. 



Contents xv 

Book VIII 
THE HOUSE OF HANOVER. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. GEORGE I. (17 14-1727), 734 

The Whig Ministers — Jacobite Kebellion of 1715 — Foreign 
Policy — Stanhope and Sunderland — The South Sea Bubble — 
Walpole in Power — Wood's Halfpence. 

II. GEORGE II. ( 1 727-1 760), 756 

Walpole in Power — The Wesleyans — The Opposition — Spanish 
War and Fall of Walpole — Carteret in Power — Foreign Affairs 
— Henry Pelham — The '45 — Rise of Pitt and Fox — Domestic 
Affairs — The Seven Years' War — Triumphs of Pitt. 

III. GEORGE HI. (part I., I760-I789), 804 

Fall of Pitt — The Wilkes Case — Estrangement of the American 
Colonies — The Middlesex Election — Junius' Letters— Loss of 
the American Colonies — Parliamentary and Economical Re- 
form — The Coalition — India — Ministry of the younger Pitt. 

IV. GEORGE III. (part II., 1 789- 1 820), THE WARS OF THE FRENCH 

REVOLUTION, . . . 854 

Causes and Progress of the French Revolution — Its effect on the 
Relations of Great Britain and France — The War against the 
French Republic — Irish Affairs — The Union, and Fall of Pitt 
— The War against Napoleon — The Peace — Its effects on 
England. 

V. GEORGE IV. (1820- 1 830), 920 

The Queen's Trial — Signs of Progress — Death of Castlereagh — 
Policy of Canning and Huskisson — Affairs of Greece — Roman 
Catholic Emancipation. 

VI. WILLIAM IV. (1830- 1 837), 936 

The Great Reform Bill — Period of Active Legislation — The Irish 
Church — Slavery — -The Poor Laws — The Municipal Reform — 
Peel and Conservative Reaction — Lord Melbourne's Govern- 
ment. 

VII. VICTORIA (part I., 1837-1865), 954 

Canada — The Chai'tists — The Corn Law Agitation — The Afghan, 
Scinde, and Sikh Wars— O'Connell— Repeal of the Corn 
Laws — The Year of Revolutions — The Russian War — Indian 
Mutiny — Parliamentary Reform — Foreign- Affairs — Death of 
Palmer ston. 



XVI 



An Advanced History of England 



CHAPTER 

VIII. VICTORIA (part II., 1 865- ), 

House Suflfrage granted to the Towns— Great Legislative Activity 
under Gladstone — The Russo-Turkish War — Gladstone's 
Ministry of 1880 to 1885— The Irish Question— The Occupa- 
tion of Egypt— Lowering of the County Franchise— Home 
Rule adopted by Mr. Gladstone— Unsuccessful Attempts to 
carry his Views into Effect— Extension of Popular Govern- 
ment to Counties and Parishes— Problems of the Future- 
Conclusion. 



PAGE 

1004 



EKRATA 

Page 304, line 26— /or the little read Edmund. 

305, line 6 from 'bottom— read Edmund, earl of March. 

424, line 2 from bottom— /or though read as. 

801, map — Gwalior is a place, not a district. 

885, map— A^o^e : The size of the ships is exaggerated. 

901, map — add Picton's name commanding the British right. 

906, line 5 from bottom— /or fifteen read ten. 

965, line 16 — insert a comma after Akbar. 

985 — Note : Maj^ represents the close of the siege. 
1004, line 1,/or Chapter vi. read Chapter VIII. 
1026, 5, 3, (^eZe^g the commas. 

1026, ,, 16, /or interests read interest. 

1027, 5, 10, from bottom, after enemies add or. 
1034, ,, 10, from bottom, before members read Nationalist. 

ADDENDUM 

Page 1039, line 31— The result of the General Election of 1895 was to 
give the Unionist Government a large majority in the House of 
Commons, and no less than four members of Lord Rosebery's Cabinet, 
including Sir William Harcourt and Mr. John Morley, were defeated 
at the polls. 



TABLES OF GENEALOGIES 



BOOK I 

NO. 

I. Kings of the House of Egbert, 802-1066, 
II. Danish Kings of England, . 



PAGE 
2 
2 



BOOK n 



III. The Norman Kings of England, 

IV. Kings of Scotland, 1066-1214, 



90 
90 



BOOK III 

V. The Earlier Angevin or Plantagenet Kings, 1154-1272, 

VI. Kings of Scotland, 1153-1286, 

VII. Kingsof France, 987-1285, 



133 
134 
135 



BOOK IV 

VIII. The Later Angevin or Plantagenet Kings, 1272-1399, . . . 202 

IX. Kings of Scotland, 1165-1406, 203 

X. Kings of France, 1270- 1422, and Edward III. 's claim to France, . 203 

The Bohuns, 229 



BOOK V 

XL The Houses of York and Lancaster, 1399-1485, 
XII. Kings of Scotland, 1306- 1488, 
XIII. Kings of France, 1350-1515, 

The Beauforts, .... 
The Woodvilles and Courtenays, 
The Staflfords, .... 
The De la Poles, 

b 



296 
297 
297 
338 
360 
365 
368 



XVlll 



TcMes of Genealogies 



BOOK VI 

NO. 

XIV. The House of Tudor, 1485-1603 
XV. Kings of Scotland, 1460-1603 
XVI. Kings of France, 1485- 1603, 

Charles v. of Spain, 

The Poles, 

The Howards, . 

The Dudleys and Sydneys (later Sidney), 



PAGE 

374 
374 
375 
388 
419 
422 
433 



BOOK VII 

XVII. The Stuarts, 1603-1714 .484 

XVIII. Kings of France, 1589-1715, . 484 

The House of Spain, to illustrate the disputed Spanish Succession, 700 



BOOK VIII 

XIX. Kings of France, 1609-1848, . 
XX. The exiled House of Stuart, . 
XXI. The House of Hanover, 1714 to present day, 



732 
732 
733 



LIST OF MAPS AND BATTLE PLANS 

PAGE 

Eomau Britain, Frontispiece 

England and Wales, showing Forests, Fens, and Moorland, . . . xx 

Battle of Hastings, 85 

England, 1066-1399, 88 

France, 1066-1815, 132 

English and Scottish Border, 1290-1603, 204 

Wales and the Severn Valley, 215 

Crecy, 254 

Poitiers (two), 262 

North of France, and Campaigns of Crecy and Agincourt, .... 298 

Agincourt, 319 

Towtou Field, 349 

The Flodden District, 396 

Ireland under Elizabeth, 476 

England during the Civil War, 538 

Operations connected with Edgehill, 559 

Part of Yorkshire in 1643-1644, 567 

Marston Moor, 568 

Scotland after 1603, 574 

Ireland after 1603, 589 

Dunbar, 592 

Worcester, 594 

The Netherlands, Qm 

Blenheim, 708 

Ramillies, 711 

Dettingen, 770 

British Colonies in North America, 789 

Quebec, 795 

India, 801 

American War of Independence, 826 

Battle of the Nile, 871 

Gibraltar and Trafalgar, 885 

Spain and Portugal, 895 

Salamanca, 901 

The Waterloo Campaign, 907 

Battle of Waterloo (two), 909 

The Crimea, 984 

Siege of Sebastopol, 985 

xix 



L— KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF EGBEET, 802-1066. 

Egbert, 802-839. 

Ethelwulf, 839-858. 



Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred I., Alfred, 

858-860. 860-866. 866-871. 871-901. 



Etlielwald. Edward the Elder, 901-925. 



Athelstan, 925-940. Edmund I. , 940-946. Edred, 946-955. 



Edwy, 955-959. Edgar, 959-975. 



Edward the Martyr, Ethelred the Unready, = (1 ) Elgiva ; (2) Emma 

975-979. 979-1016. I of Normaudy. 



(1) Edmund Ironside, (2) Edward the Confessor, 

1016. 1042-1066. 



Edmund, d. 1050. Edward, d. 1057. 



Edgar Atlieling, d. 1120. Margaret, d. 1093=Malcolm Canmore, d. 1096. 



Matilda, d. 1118=Henry I., d. 1135. 



II.— THE DANISH KINGS OF ENGLAND. 

Harold Blatand or Bluetooth. 
I 

I I 

Sweyn, d. 1014. Great-graiiddaugliter of 

I Harold Blatand = Godwin. 
Canute, 1016-1035. 



Harold I., Hardicanute (Emma's 
1035-1040. son), 1040-1042. 



I I I 

Harold II., Edith, = Edward the Tostig, d. 1066. 

d. 1066. d. 1075. Confessor. 

Reigning sovereigns are in small capitals. 

(1) or (2) signifies by first or second wife or husband. 



CHAPTEE I 

PREHISTORIC AND CELTIC BRITAIN 

Prehistoric luliabitants — The Ivernians — The Celts — First Civilised Visitors — 

Cresar's Expeditions. 

In prehistoric times Great Britain and Ireland formed part of a large 
peninsula which stretched out into the Atlantic from the northern shores of 
France and Belgium. In those days the extremes of tempera- primeval 
ture were much greater than they are at present, and con- ^^^t^i"- 
sequently this peninsula was inhabited during the warm season by the 
hippopotamus, the bison, and the mammoth, and in the cold weather 
by the lemming, the reindeer, and the musk - sheep. Among the 
remains of these creatures, found in the river deposits of the valley of 
the Thames, flint tools made by the hand of man are occasionally 
discovered. The makers of these tools were in the lowest state of 
civilisation, for they were unable to construct handles for Primitive 
their sharpened flints, and had to hold them in their hands. Inhabitants. 
Their lot was in every way a hard one, and their livelihood most 
precarious, and they seem to have disappeared along with the now 
extinct animals among whom they lived. Their place was taken by a 
somewhat superior race, who used flints of a better shape, and fitted them 
into handles which they manufactured out of wood or bone, paleolithic 
They- had also considerable artistic skill, which they showed ^^"* 
in ornamenting these weapons with spirited illustrations of the beasts 
they slew in the chase. Nevertheless, they were in a very low state 
of culture, for they took no care of their dead ; and, though they could 
clothe themselves with the skins of wild beasts sewn together by means 
of sinew threads, they had no domestic animals and knew nothing of the 
arts of spinning and weaving. 

Years passed away, and, after a period of time of which it is impossible 
to form any trustworthy calculation, this race, like its predecessors, 

3 



4 Prehistoric Britain 

disappeared for ever from Britain, and is only represented in our day by 
the Eskimos, who have something of its artistic skill and exhibit the same 
indifference in dealing with the bodies of their dead. To both these 
races archeeologists give the name of Palaeolithic or old stone men ; and 
they describe the former as Eiver-drift men, and the latter as Cave-men. 
Their place was taken by a third race who came from the south-east, and 
Neolithic brought with them most of the domestic animals that are 
^^"' now in use, such as the dog, ox, pig, sheep, and goat ; they 

were also acquainted with the arts of spinning and weaving, but in con- 
sequence of the imperfection of their tools these were only practised by 
them in a very rude form. Before the date of their arrival, owing to 
the sinking of the land, the ocean had overflowed the lower levels, and 
had formed the British Channel, the Irish Sea, and the German Ocean, 
so that they must have had some knowledge of navigation ; while the 
discovery of their flint works at Brandon and elsewhere proves that they 
had considerable skill in excavation and mining. To this comparatively 
civilised people archieologists give the name of Neolithic or newer stone 
men. They buried their dead with great care, making a chamber of flat 
stones in which they placed the body, and erecting over it a pile of earth 
or of stones, which naturally assumed an elliptic shape, not unlike a pear 
cut in half lengthwise and placed with its flat surface downwards. These 
burial-places are known as long barrows. From the remains found in them 
a good idea can be formed of the appearance and physique of the Neolithic 
men. In stature they were short, the height of the men averagmg not 
more than five feet five inches, and in complexion they were swarthy. 
The colour of their hair, which was curly, was black ; and their eyes, it 
is believed, were dark. Their skulls, if looked at from above, were oval ; 
their faces, too, had the same shape, the forehead being low, the chin 
small, and the cheek-bones not protruding. 

For how long a period the Neolithic men of this race remained in 
undisturbed possession of these lands it is impossible to estimate ; but, 
having regard to the great geological changes that took place in their 
time, it must have been very considerable. At length, however, their 
settlements were invaded by a set of new-comers who, by reason of 
strength, numbers, or skill, were able to drive out the older race and to 
take forcible possession of the districts where game was the most plentiful 
The Celtic o^ where agriculture was most productive. The new-comers 
Invasion, ^re known as Celts. They were the advanced guard of a 
group of nations who have played a most important part in the history 
of the world, and are known to ethnologists as the Aryan family. The 
terms Aryan and Celt are quite diff'erent from Palaeolithic and Neolithic. 



The Aryans 5 

The former are race names, while the latter simply denote a state of 
civilisation. For a time both the Celts and the people they displaced 
were in the Neolithic stage, and consequently when it is needful to 
distinguish between them it is usual to employ some other term. For 
this reason we designate the older race by the name of Iberians or 
Ivernians. The Ivernians are the oldest race which has 
taken any part in forming the blood of the present European 
population. As a separate nationality they are only represented at most 
by the Basques of the Pyrenees, and there is some doubt even about this. 
It is, however, certain that at one time they were spread over all Europe 
west of the Khine and the Rhone, and over Switzerland ; and their blood 
has largely mingled with that of their Aryan conquerors. Where the 
Aryans came from is a matter of great dispute. Some cling to the theory 
that the original home of the race was in Central Asia, on 

The iV*»T7or\c 

the upland slopes which lead to the Himalayas ; others 
believe that the true mother-land is to be found near the shores of the 
Baltic, on the flats of Pomerania, or among the marshes of Sweden. 
However this may be, the Aryans have now established themselves in 
all, or almost all, the temperate regions of the globe ; for there belong to 
this race not only the main stock of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans 
of the ancient world, but a considerable portion of the Hindoos, and 
of modern Europeans, the French, Spaniards, Germans, Slavs, and 
Italians, besides the inhabitants of the British Isles and their descendants 
in America, South Africa, and Australia. Climate and the continual 
mingling of their blood with that of other races have long since modi- 
fied the aspect of the Aryans, and made it very hard to say which of 
these nations has preserved most of the original characteristics of the 
stock. 

It is not difficult to distinguish between the two races. The Celts 
were light of limb and tall of stature, having indeed an average height 
of five feet eight inches, or three inches taller than that of the Ivernian 
men. The outline of their skulls, viewed from the same 

• . The Celts 

position, was round. Their foreheads were high, their 

cheek-bones prominent, and their eyes, it is believed, were blue. Like 

the Neolithic men, the Celts were in the habit of burving; their dead 

with reverence ; but, unlike them, they covered the grave with a barrow 

shaped like a cone or a bell. Some of the bronze-using men, however, 

made a practice of burning their dead, and the two methods of burial 

were apparently carried on side by side. This difierence of practice 

may have been caused by a difference in religion, or possibly the reason 

may be connected with the arrival of a new race. The language of the 



6 Celtic Britain 

Aryans, which is represented not only by those of the nations mentioned 
above, but also by Sanskrit and Latin and Greek, is very different in 
structure both from Basque, which is the modern representative of 
Ivernian, and also from Hebrew and Arabic, which belong to the 
Semitic family. For example, the first four numerals in Welsh are un, 
dau, tri, in Greek they are eis, duo, tris, and in Sanskrit eTca, dir, tri, 
while in Basque they are bat, hi, hirii. 

When the pioneers of the Celtic race invaded Britain they had almost 
brought to a close their contest with the Ivernians of the continent, 
Celtic Con- having compelled them to evacuate the north of Italy, 
quest. almost the whole of Gaul, and much of the Spanish 

Peninsula. This contest, which occupied a very considerable period, 
took place at a time when the Celts were passing through a transition 
stage in civilisation ; for whereas at the beginning of their invasions they 
were using practically the same stone weapons as their antagonists, at its 
close they had adopted weapons of bronze of an ancient Mediterranean 
type. The importance of this change is obvious ; for not only did their 
better weapons give the bronze-using men an enormous superiority over 
those who had nothing more efi'ective than stone, but also in the unending 
struggle with nature man acquired a most valuable reinforcement of 
aggressive power. Hitherto, though Neolithic man had possessed some 
acquaintance with the cultivation of wheat, and knew the valuable 
properties of some of the herbs and vegetables which we now use at table, 
agriculture on a large scale had been impracticable. But the introduc- 
tion of metal tools revolutionised the farmer's life. Henceforward the 
axe became more efficient, the spade and the plough became possible ; 
forests could be felled, fens could be drained, wastes could be cultivated, 
and the age when nature, which was formerly the tyrant, became the 
handmaid of man may fau'ly be said to have begun. Whether the in- 
vading Celts met with much resistance at the hands of the older inhabi- 
tants of the island, or whether the stone-using men at once recognised 
the hopelessness of the contest, has not been determined ; but it is certain 
that the remains of both races are to be found in the same barrows, 
at any rate in France, and that skeletons combining the characteristics 
of both bear evidence of intermarriage. 

After the lapse of some time a new swarm of Celts made their appear- 
ance in Britain and drove the older settlers before them, as they, at an 
earlier date, had displaced the Ivernians. The result of this was to 
cause a westerly movement of the whole population, in the course of 
which, if not before, the older race of Celts made their way into Ireland. 
The Ivernians were driven into the west of that country and into the 



330 B.C. Pytheas' Voyage 7 

north of Scotland, and, probably being unable to maintain their independ- 
ence, and impelled by the fear of a new danger, made common cause with 
their old antagonists against a common foe. It is not thought that there 
was any marked difference in the physical characteristics of the Celts, new 
and old ; but they spoke different though kindred languages, and at a later 
date it is possible to tell by a study of their inscriptions and of their place- 
names which parts of the country were inhabited by each. 
It is usual to speak of the older Celts as Goidels, Gaedels, 
or Gaels, and of the newer as Brythons or Britons. The name Brython 
probably means clothed ; the meaning of Goidel is unknown. 
It is from the Brythons that the name of Britain is derived ; 
but the oldest name of the island is Albion, the origin of which, how- 
ever, is a matter of uncertainty. 

Meanwhile, the existence of the islands had become an object of 
interest to the civilised races which dwelt round the Mediterranean. 
The necessity of securing a constant supply of tin forced Massiiian 
the bronze-using nations of antiquity to search in all direc- Discoveries, 
tions for that metal, and produced a keen rivalry for the possession of 
those districts where it could be found in the greatest abundance. 
Amongst these the Spanish Peninsula was famous, and it was early 
monopolised by the merchants of Tyre and, on the decline of that city, 
by its colony Carthage, which made the rigid exclusion of all rivals a 
matter of unvarying policy. Such jealous exclusiveness naturally pro- 
voked reprisals, and in the latter half of the fourth century before Christ, 
when Alexander was in the midst of his Asiatic conquests, the Eomans 
sent an ambassador to the Greek colony of Massilia (Marseilles) to 
inquire whether the merchants there could tell them anything as to the 
possibility of opening up a trade with the tin-producing countries of the 
north-west. The Massilians could tell the Eomans little or nothing ; but, 
their own curiosity having been aroused, they fitted out two expeditions, 
one of which was to explore the coast of Africa southwards ; the other, 
passing by Cadiz, the most westerly of the old Phoenician settlements, 
was to make its way to the northwards in hopes of finding new stores of 
tin, and also of discovering the situation of the coast whence from time 
immemorial large quantities of amber had been carried overland to the 
shores of the Adriatic. Pytheas, who took command of the latter fleet, 
was a man of science who gained a great reputation by accurately cal- 
culating the latitude of Massilia, and also by explaining the causes of 
the tides ; and it is from his own pen that we learn what is known of 
the expedition in which he bore so distinguished a part. Unhappily, 
his original work has been lost ; but so great was his reputation that 



8 Celtic Britain 330 B.C. 

almost all the Greek iind Koman geographies contain quotations from 
it, so that a considerable number of fragments have in this way been 
preserved. 

After calling at Cadiz, Pytheas made his way to the mouth of the 
river Loire, and thence, without attempting to land in what is now called 

Voyage of Cornwall, of whose wealth in tin he appears to have been 

Pytheas. ignorant, continued his voyage to the coast of Kent, and, 
landing there, was probably the first civilised man who set foot on the 
shores of Britain. He seems to have reached the island in early spring, 
and remained there till the summer, when he set sail in search of the 
amber-coast, and is thought by some to have penetrated the Baltic as far 
east as the mouth of the Vistula ; he also followed the coast of Norway 
till he found himself within the Arctic circle, where the sun ceases to set, 
but ' revolves from west to east and shines through the whole summer's 
night.' At this point he changed his course and returned to the coast 
of Britain, which he followed southwards as far as Kent. After a short 
rest he sailed for home, and, landing at the mouth of the Garonne, made 
his way to Marseilles by land. Unfortunately, Pytheas was not versed 
in ethnology, so he does not tell us much that we should like to know 
about the distribution of the races of Britain, and his chief inquiries 
were doubtless about the supply of tin. He tells us, however, of the 
abundance of grain which he observed in the fields ; of the peculiar 
but pleasant drink which the islanders made by mixing wheat and 
honey, in much later ages known to their Welsh descendants under the 
name of metheglin ; of their threshing-floors roofed in to provide against 
changes of weather ; and of a species of beer. 

Though there is no written authority for the fact, it is believed that 

the explorations of Pytheas led to the opening up of a trade between 

Marseilles and the north, the staples of which were British tin and 

Baltic amber ; and this theory is supported by the fact that the earliest 

Greek coins found in the island belong to the age of Alexander. About 

. two hundred years after the time of Pytheas, Britain was 
Posidonius. . • 1 T T^ . 1 . „ T^, 

visited by Posidonius of Ehodes, who in his old age was the 

tutor of Cicero and possibly of Julius Csesar. He made his way as 

far west as Cornwall, and describes how the natives brought the tin in 

wagons as far as the island of Ictis,i where it was carried on board the 

ships of the Gallic merchants, who transported it to Portus Itius.^ 

There it was placed upon the backs of pack-horses for conveyance to 

the Rhone, down which it was carried in boats to Marseilles. This 

1 Ictis is generally thought to he Isle of Thanet, and Portus Itius is taken to 
be Boulogne. 



55 B.C. Ccesar^s Invasions 9 

long journey with its many changes points to a very considerable 
degree of civilisation along the route and of a widespread commercial 
spirit. 

Meanwhile, the steady pressure of the Germans from across the Rhine 
caused the Celts of Gaul to continue their westerly movement, and the 
Belg?e, a tribe who dwelt between the Seine and the Scheldt, 
began to send colonies across the Channel and to dispossess ^ 
the Brythons of southern Britain. The main settlement of the Belgse 
took place during the earlier half of the first century before Christ, but 
it is possible that some of them may have made their way over at an 
even earlier date. 

It is not unlikely that the restlessness of the Belga? was connected 
with the conquests that the Eomans were at this time making in 
the south of Gaul. The first serious attempt of the . , 

. ^ Advance 

Romans to conquer Gaul was made m the year 118 b.c. of the 
By that date the Roman dominion had been established 
throughout Italy, Spain, the Balkan Peninsula, including Greece, the 
coasts of Asia Minor, and over all the islands of the Mediterranean. It 
was only necessary for them to conquer Gaul to make themselves masters 
of the whole of the northern shores of that great inland sea. 

For fifty years, however, they confined their operations to the coast, 
for their first object was the completion of a great military road between 
Italy and Spain along the route formerly followed by Hannibal in his 
famous march ; and they had also much ado to defend their new province 
from the attacks of wandering bodies of Teutons, who from time to time 
attempted to make settlements in the Roman territories. However, in the 
year 58 b.c, Julius Csesar, the greatest of all the Romans, was sent to Gaul, 
and, after severe fighting, he carried the Roman arms triumphant over 
the whole of modern France. He found, however, that there would be 
little chance of permanent tranquillity while on the one hand the eastern 
frontier was in terror of a renewal of the German invasions, and on the 
other the Belg?e of northern Gaul could hope for assistance from their 
kinsmen across the British Channel. Accordingly, in the c^sar's first 
year 55 b.c, he determined to demonstrate to both the invasion. 
Germans and the Britons the invincibility of the Roman arms. He 
struck terror into the hearts of the Germans by suddenly throwing a 
bridge across the swift-rushing Rhine and apj^earing in force amidst 
the forests of Germany ; and then, withdrawing his legions with equal 
rapidity, he appeared upon the shores of the Channel and embarked his 
troops for an invasion of Britain. With ten thousand foot soldiers he 
sailed from the Portus Itius and made his way to where the white clifis of 



10 Celtic Britain 54 B.C. 

Dover could be seen upon the horizon. Having with some difficulty effected 
a landing, the Romans found the Britons not unwilling to treat and even 
to give hostages. However, the sudden destruction of the Roman fleet 
by a storm encouraged the Britons to further resistance, and il was only 
after having been defeated in an attempt to storm the Roman camp that 
they offered terms. Ccesar, who had repaired his ships, and perhaps found 
the enterprise to be more serious than he had anticipated, decided to accept 

these, and forthwith returned to Gaul. The next year, 
second having provided a larger fleet and more suitable vessels, he 
nvasion. j-g^urned, and, landing without opposition, stormed an en- 
trenched camp of the Britons situated about twelve miles from the place 
of his landing. Again time was lost in repairing the damages done by a 
storm, and this gave the Britons opportunity to organise an alliance under 
the leadership of Cassivellaunus, chief of the Catuvelauni, whose stronghold 
was an entrenched camp believed to have been situated not far from St. 
Albans. In the face of the enemy C?esar crossed the Thames, and 
marched against the allies. On the road, however, the Romans, as 
was their custom, contrived to sow dissension among their opponents, 
and one tribe of the Trinobantes, who lived in w^hat is now called Essex, 
deserted Cassivellaunus and ranged itself on the side of Caesar. The 
Romans then stormed the camp, and the British leader, finding that a 
diversion which he had planned, by directing the four chiefs of Kent to 
attack the ships, had been repulsed by the Roman guard, determined to 
send in his submission. His proposals were well received, and Caesar, 
whose object had been accomplished by the submission of the Britons, 
and who was not prepared to undertake the conquest of the country, 
returned home, and left the brave islanders in peace. 

In his celebrated narrative of the Gallic war, from which this account 

, has been taken, Caesar gives a description of Britain. In this 

scription of he speaks of its large population, its numerous houses, built 

almost in the Gaulish fashion, and of the large herds of cattle. 
Tin, he tells us, was common, but iron was scarce, and bronze had to be 
imported, from which it appears that the working of copper was as yet 
unknown. Of the trees common in Gaul the beech and the pine alone 
were v^^anting ; and Caesar noticed that the climate was more temperate 
than that of Gaul, the cold being less severe. The inhabitants of Kent 
he found to be the most civilised, for some of the tribes of the interior 
sowed no corn, but lived on milk and flesh, and clothed themselves in 
skins. All of them, however, painted themselves with woad to present 
a more horrible appearance in battle, all wore their hair long, and shaved 
their faces except the upper lip. In their warfare the most striking 



54 B.C. Distribution of Inhabitants 1 1 

feature was the employment of war-chariots, with which their warriors 
did not charge among the ranks, but galloped along the front of the 
enemy's lines, and, when they perceived a weak place, flung themselves 
into it and fought on foot. Meanwhile, the charioteers awaited at a 
convenient distance the result of the conflict, and, if their comrades were 
defeated, were ready to take them up and either make a retreat or seek 
a fresh point for attack. 

The religion of the Britons, which CcTesar tells us had been adopted by 
the continental Celts, was Druidism. The Druids were an order of 
priests who exercised a paramount influence over their 
followers. 'They taught the doctrine of the immortality 
of the soul, which, they believed, had a tendency to inspire men with 
courage by making them indiff'erent to death. They also devoted much 
thought to astronomy, to the magnitude of the universe and of the earth, 
to the nature of things, to the power and prerogatives of the immortal 
gods ; and their learning they taught to the young men.' Some of their 
rites were utterly barbarous, and they did not scruple to offer human 
sacrifices. The influence that Druidism exercised over its followers was 
immense, for it is thought that it was under the direction of its votaries 
that the tremendous undertaking of collecting and placing in position 
the huge blocks of stone which form the mighty monument of Stone- 
henge and other similar works was carried out. 

Csesar made no scientific distinction between the races of Britain ; but 
modern research has decided that, speaking generally, the distribution of 
Brythons, Goidels, and Ivernians was as follows : — Except Ethnology 
the south-eastern counties, inhabited by the Belgse, the great °^ Britain, 
part of southern Britain was occupied by Celts of the Brythonic type, 
who touched the southern shores of the Bristol Channel, 

Belsrse. 

occupied a wedge of country between North and South 

Wales, afterwards known as Powys, the district between the Dee and 

Morecambe Bay, and extended northward across the friths „ 

•^' Brythons. 

as far as Loch Earn. This left South and North Wales, 
the Lake district, the Western Lowlands, and the low-lying lands north 
of the Forth in the hands of the Goidels, who also occupied 
the islands of Mona and Man, and all that part of the 
British isles which was not in the hands of the Ivernians. It is impos- 
sible to say how far the Ivernians existed as an independent 

, . , Ivernians. 

people. it IS probable, however, that the pressure oi the 
Brythons on the Goidelic Celts had led to a fusion of the latter with 
the Ivernians. A century later Tacitus mentions that in his day the 
Silures of South Wales presented an appearance difierent from that of 



1 2 Celtic Britain 

the other Britons, and speaks of the olive tincture of their skin and 
the natural curl of their hair as distinguishing them from the ruddy- 
haired Celts north of the Wall. From this it is probable that the 
inhabitants of South Wales had received a large infusion of Ivernian 
blood. North of the Firth of Clyde and the Tay, it is probable that the 
Goidels had not established themselves more than along the Eastern 
Lowlands, and that the Highlands, so far as they were inhabited at all, 
were still in the hands of an Ivernian population. 

The conclusions arrived at from time to time with regard to the difficult 
but interesting question of the distribution of the early inhabitants of 
Britain depend upon a variety of evidence. This is supplied by archaeology, 
ethnology, place-names and inscriptions ; and the deductions drawn are 
liable to modification from time to time, as further information makes 
possible a more exact approximation to the truth. 

CHIEF DA TES. 

B.C. 

Visit of Pytheas, .... c. 330 

Csesar's invasions of Britain, . 55 and 54 



CHAPTEE II 

BRITAIN UNDER THE ROMANS 

Roman Conquest of Britain — Introduction of Roman Civilisation — Causes of the 
Withdrawal of the Romans. 

After Ciesar's invasion, Britain was left in peace by the Konians, partly 
because their attention was absorbed by the civil wars which j)receded 
the establishment of the Empire, partly because after the restoration of 
tranquillity it Avas the policy of Augustus and Tiberius not to engage in 
wars of aggression. For nearly a century a Roman force was not seen in 
Britain, and during this interval the Britons made much progress in the 
arts of peace. Trade with Gaul flourished, and the coins of this period 
give evidence of the ingenuity and wealth of the inhabitants. However, 
in the year 43, Tiberius Claudius (41-54 a.d.), the fourth ^, . 
Emperor, determined to annex Britain, and sent Aulus Roman in- 
Plautius to efi'ect its subjugation. Plautius found the chief 
power in the hands of the children of Cunobelinus, who appears to have 
been a grandson of Cassivellaunus and to have succeeded to his position. 
The names of his sons were Togodumnus and Caractacus. auIus 
Aulus Plautius, who had serving under him the famous Pl^^tms. 
Vespasian and his son Titus, defeated the islanders in a battle in which 
Togodumnus was killed ; and thereupon Caractacus betook himself to the 
Silures, who lived among the mountains and moorlands of South Wales, 
and who were probably largely Ivernians. This success led the way to the 
conquest of the south-eastern portion of the island, and Claudius himself 
came over to be present at the reduction of Camulodunum (Colchester), 
where Ostorius Scapula, the next governor, founded a Roman ostorius 
colony. His next step was to march against Caractacus, Scapula, 
who had been taken as king by the warlike Silures. Him he defeated and 
sent prisoner to Rome ; but he was unable to efiect the subjugation of the 
mountaineers, and had to content himself for the present with bridling their 
territory with a line of forts stretching from the Usk to the Dee, the 



14 Roman Britain 43 A.D. 

chief of which were Caerleon and Chester. The next governor, Suetonius 
PauUinus, made an attack upon the island of Mona, now called Anglesea, 
Suetonius then the headquarters of the Druids, whom the Eomans 
Pauilinus. rigiitly regarded as the centre of national resistance. In the 
battle which ensued the Britons fought w^ith unexampled fury, even the 
women mingling in the fray, and the Druids themselves struck terror into 
the soldiers by the violence of their imprecations ; but at length Koman 
discipline carried the day, the Druids were massacred, and the sacred 
altars and groves were burnt to the ground. Meanwhile the unaccustomed 
exactions of the Koman tax-collectors had roused the resentment of the 
high-spkited Celts. Moreover, they were indignant at the monstrous 
treatment received by Boadicea and her daughters, in spite of the fact 
that they had been specially commended to the kind treatment of the 
Eomans by her husband, the late king of the Iceni. Accordingly, the 
Revolt of Britons took advantage of the governor's absence in Mona 
Boadicea. ^^ break out into open revolt. Camulodunum was stormed, 
and it is said that 70,000 Romans fell victims to the vengeance of the 
infuriated Britons. Suetonius, however, was prompt to return ; against 
the trained skill of the legions the valour of the Britons only served to 
swell the number of the slain ; and though numbers of the rebels con- 
tinued under arms, the new province was saved to the Empire. Boadicea, 
scorning to fall into the hands of her oppressors, saved herself by suicide. 
The next important governor of Britain was Agricola, an old officer of 
Suetonius, and the father-in-law of the historian Tacitus, who has handed 

. . , down to us a valuable narrative of his career. On his arrival 
Agncola. 

he found that his immediate predecessor, Frontinus, had 
subjugated the Silures. So he turned his attention to their neighbours 
the Ordovices, a Brythonic race who lived in what is now Central Wales ; 
and after conquering them he passed on to attack Mona. By causing 
his auxiliary soldiers to swim across the straits he appears to have 
surprised the defenders, and the surrender of the island immediately 
followed. ' Agricola,' says Tacitus, ' was an excellent ruler ' ; he was 
well acquainted with past events, and knew ' that conquest, while it loads 
the vanquished with injury and oppression, can never be secure and 
permanent.' He determined, therefore, to remove the seeds of future 
hostility. ' For this purpose he reformed abuses in the army ; made 
promotion strictly a matter of merit ; arranged that the forced contribu- 
tions to the maintenance of the army should be as little irksome as 
possible,' and was so successful that after his time the Britons are 
described as ' willingly sup^Dlying the army with new levies, paying their 
tribute without a murmur, and performing all the services of government 



410 Walls, Towns, and Roads 15 

with alacrity, provided they had no reason to complain of oppression. 

When injured their resentment was quick, sudden, and impatient ; they 

were conquered, not broken ; reduced to obedience, not reduced to slavery.' 

Agricola also encouraged and even aided the Britons to erect temples, 

courts of justice, and commodious dwelling-houses ; he encouraged the 

use of Latin, and in fact did all he could to Komanise the natives. The 

Brigantes, who occupied the territory north of the Humber, having been 

already conquered, Agricola carried the Koman arms across 

the Cheviots, and even across the Tay ; but though he Mons 

beat the Caledonians at the battle of Mons Graupius, 

between the Tay and the Islay, he contented himself with fixing the 

Eoman frontier between the Firths of Forth and Clyde, and Agricoia's 

in 81 defended it by erecting a series of forts. Agricola F°rts. 

was of opinion that a conquest of Ireland would have been both useful 

and easy, but was recalled before he had time to carry his plan into eftect. 

In 121, while on a visit to Britain, the Emperor Hadrian gave orders 
for the building of a stone wall from the mouth of the Eden to 
that of the Tyne. This fortification was strengthened Hadrian's 
by succeeding commanders till ultimately it consisted of '^^^^• 
a stone wail to the north, an earthwork to the south, and a series of 
forts between them. 

South of this line of demarcation the Eomans set themselves the task 
of creating a civilised Britain, as they had already created a civilised Gaul 
and a civilised Spain. In the first place they secured a complete military 
ascendancy by occupying all the old duns or natural fortifications which 
had already been selected by the Britons, and fortifying Roman 
them after their own fashion, selecting the most important Towns, 
of them as sites of future towns, and connecting these by a series of 
first-rate military roads. Of the towns the most noteworthy are London, 
situated at the lowest point on the Thames where the river is sufficiently 
narrow to be bridged, and where there was also a firm bank suitable for un- 
lading merchandise ; York, at the junction of the Foss and the Ouse, the 
centre of the great plain of the north ; Lincoln, on the highest point of the 
low ridge that bounds the Trent valley towards the east ; Chester, which 
commands the lowest crossing-place of the Dee ; Uriconium, on the Severn ; 
Caerleon-upon-Usk ; and Bath, even then celebrated for its hot springs. 

The main trunk roads were four in number. First, the Watling 
Street, which, setting out from Dover, crossed the Military 
Thames at London, and then turning north-west, made waUhig- 
its way to Chester along a line not very different from that Street, 
followed in our own day by the London and North - Western 



16 Roman Britain 43 

Railway, taking in Uriconium on its route ; second, the Fosseway, 
which, starting from Falmouth, crossed the country to 
Lincoln, cutting the Watling Street not far from Eugby at 
a place now called High Cross ; third, the Ermine Street, which, passing 
north from London, made its way to Lincoln, whence one portion of it 
Ermine went northwards to the Humber, across which travellers 
Street. were taken in a ferry-boat, and so on to York ; the other, 

crossing the Trent, made for Doncaster, and then, keeping direct north, 
reached Tadcaster, where a branch road completed the connection with 
York. Beyond Tadcaster the main road was continued to Borough 
Bridge, or rather to the station of Isurium (Aldborough), about a mile 
lower down the Ure, where it met a branch road from York. After 
crossing the L^re it went straight to Catterick Bridge on the Swale, 
where it parted into two branches, one of which crossed the hills to 
Carlisle and the other made its way to Newcastle, and so completed the 
connection between London and the two extremities of the great Wall. 
The fourth of the trunk roads was the Icknield Street, believed to have 
icknield been called after the Iceni, which ran from Norwich south- 
Street, west and ultimately joined the Fosseway near Exeter. 
These roads were the chief lines of communication, but a network of 
local roads connected the main thoroughfares with each other, and with 
towns and ports lying off their track. For example, a con- 
tinuation of the Watling Street ran from Chester to Man- 
chester and thence to Isurium, where it joined the Ermine Street. The 
roads did an immense work for the furtherance of civilisation by opening 
up the country, facilitating town life, and by introducing habits of com- 
mercial enterprise. In short, they made Britain for the first time a part 
of the civilised world. 

Nothing proves this more forcibly than a study of the Roman 
remains which have been brought to light in various parts of the 
country by the labours of archaeologists. They have enabled us to 
picture for ourselves Roman Britain almost as if it had been visited 
by travellers of our own time. We can see before us the lofty walls by 
which the towns were surrounded, and the fortified gates at Avhich watch 
was kept day and night. We know, too, of beautiful villas with tesselated 
pavements, of baths public and private, of temples and law-courts, of 
theatres and amphitheatres, some of which we can see with our own eyes, 
Roman others which we are able to realise by the aid of the more 

Civilisation, perfect remains which have been preserved upon the 
Continent. Besides building towns, bridges, and roads, the Romans did 
much to develop the natural resources of the country. Traces of their 



410 Roman Civilisation 17 

manufactories of glass and pottery are abundant. Iron, tin, and lead 

were worked by them upon an extensive scale, and the corn-producing 

powers of the island were so far developed that Britain became the 

granary for the legions on the Rhine. As regards the influence of the 

Roman occupation upon the population of the island, it is probable that 

its tendency would be towards increasing the mixture of influence on 

races which abeady existed. It was the practice of the Population. 

Romans never to quarter troops in the district or country where they had 

been enrolled ; and they sent the British recruits to Africa or the Rhine 

while foreigners took their places in the stations along the Roman wall. 

These, when paid off, settled on lands assigned to them in Britain, and 

added a new element to the race. Another result of this intermixture 

of the races was the spread of ideas. After exterminating the Druids, 

the Romans, as was their habit, left the Britons perfect freedom in the 

exercise of their religion, and the old gods seem to have been worshipped 

under Roman names ; but after a time the knowledge of , , . 

1 T 1 • -I Introduction 

Christianity was brought over, and, though little is known of Christi- 

of its arrival or of the history of the British Church, it is ^"^ ^^ 
certain that it acquired a strong hold not only over the Romans in the 
island, but also over the Romanised Britons. In consequence of its 
distance from the capital, Britain, happily for its tranquillity, took little 
part in the political life of the Empire ; and the chief events Severus. 
in its history were the visits of the Emperors Hadrian and Constantine. 
Severus and the expedition of Constantine, whose career as the son of 
a Roman father and a British mother may possibly even have excited 
a national sentiment. 

In this way the history of Britain flowed peacefully on for more than 
three hundred years, when rumours of impending troubles began to 
make their appearance. This was due to the fact that, owing to internal 
decay, the Empire was unable to defend itself any longer against the 
hosts of Barbarians who from the earliest days of Roman ascendancy had 
been trying to establish themselves within its limits, and saxon 
had only been kept back from doing so by the whole Pirates, 
strength of the Roman arms. Of this pressure from the Barbarians 
Britain felt her full share. Not only did the incursions of the non- 
Romanised Britons from beyond the Wall and the raids of the Scots 
from Ireland become more persistent, but also the eastern coast was so 
much harassed by Saxon pirates from the Elbe that a line of forts had 
to be constructed to guard the coast, and its defence was intrusted to 
a special officer with the title of Count of the Saxon shore. As the 
danger to the heart of the Empire became more and more pressing, the 

B 



18 Roraan Britain 410 

Eomans naturally withdrew their garrisons from the outlying provinces, 
and the inhabitants of these had either to make terms with the Barbarians 
or organise the best resistance they could. This was precisely what 
happened in Britain ; and in the year 410 the Britons were 
of the ^^^^ informed that they must take the responsibility of defending 
Romans themselves, and need no longer look upon their island as 

from Britain. ' " /- 

part of the Roman Empire. ' Then,' in the words of the 
Venerable Bede, ' the Eomans ceased to rule in Britain, almost 470 
years after Caius Julius Csesar entered the island. They resided within 
the rampart which Severus made across the island, on the south side of 
it, as the cities, temples, bridges, and paved roads there made testify to 
this day.' Bede died in the year 735, but long after his day Gerald the 
Welshman, who lived in the time of Henry 11., tells us of the magnificent 
ruins which still astonished the eyes of travellers on the site of the 
ruined Caerleon. 

CHIEF DA TES. 

A.D. 

Roman conquest begun, .... 43 

Agricola's forts touilt, ..... 81 

Hadrian's Wall begun, 121 

Britons left to defend themselves, . . 410 



CHAPTER III 

THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENT IN BRITAIN 

Little known of first English Invasions— Gildas's Account most trustworthy 
—Later Conquests of Ceawliu and Ethelfrith— Effects of the Conquest on 
the Britons. 

After the departure of the Roman legions in the year 410, a thick darkness 
settles down over the fate of the island, which is not finally dispelled for 
more than a century and a half. Consequently, we are quite 
ignorant of the details of the English conquest, and even of Conquest 
some essential particulars ; and the imagination of historians, ""^"°w"' 
both mediaeval and modern, has been freely taxed to supply the deficiency. 
For some time before the final departure of the legions their presence 
had been intermittent ; and as during all that time Britain had been 
exposed to the constant incursions of the Barbarians both by land and by 
sea, some experience of defence must have been acquired by the native 
levies. Besides the possession of an army, there was no lack of fortifica- 
tions. Against invasion from the north there were the Walls ; and every 
inlet of the sea from the Solent to the Wash was secured by Defences of 
a fortress against the intrusion of the Saxons. These coast ^^^t^in- 
defences saved southern Britain from immediate invasion, and by their 
means the Britons of the Saxon shore were able for a whole generation to 
keep their German assailants at bay. In the north, however, the attacks 
of the Picts and Scots were incessant, but appear to have been raids 
rather than attempted conquests ; and neither the Barbarians from beyond 
the Wall nor the marauders from Ireland ever succeeded in making a 
permanent settlement on the southern side of Hadrian's great barrier. 
For some years, therefore, after the departure of the Komans the Britons 
contrived to present to their enemies a creditable front ; and though some 
of the Latin-speaking inhabitants of the south wrote a pitiful request for 
Roman assistance, styled ' the tears of the Britons,' there does not appear 

19 



20 The English Settlement 4io 

to have been any real danger so long as the barrier of the Saxon shore 
was successfully maintained. However, about thirty years after the 
Invasion of departure of the Romans, the Saxons made their way into 
the Saxons, ^j-^g country, and before many years had passed they were 
masters of all the south-east corner of the island—that is, of those districts 
where the domination of Rome had been most complete ; and these 
Picts and marauders were known as Picts, Scots, or Saxons. Besides 
Scots. these, the Britons were attacked by the Scots of Ireland 

and by the Picts from beyond the Wall. 

The home of the Saxons was the tract of low-lying country that 

borders the banks of the river Elbe, the peninsula of Denmark, and the 

c islands which stud that part of the Baltic Sea. They 

Home of i /. 

the Saxons, belonged to the Low German branch of the Teutonic 
family of the Aryan race. At that date the Saxons had no preten- 
sions to education, so for our knowledge of their manners we have 
ania *^ ^'^^^ upon the accounts of others. Of these the most 
of Tacitus, important is that which Tacitus gives in his Germania, a 
description written by him in the first century after Christ for the 
information of the Roman world. Speaking of all the tribes who dwelt 
A earance between the extremity of the Baltic and the Rliine, he 
of Saxons. remarked that they were an unmixed race,^ having ' the same 
form and feature, stern blue eyes, ruddy hair, their bodies large and 
robust, but powerful only in sudden efforts.' A few tribes had kings, 
others had chiefs, but the authority of their kings or chiefs was extremely 
Their limited ; indeed, as one of these told Cresar, ' the peojDle had 
Institutions, c^g many rights against him as he had against them.' Both 
the kings and the military leaders were chosen in open meeting of the 
freemen of the tribe or clan. In matters of inferior moment the council 
of chiefs decided, but graver questions were submitted to the assembly 
of freemen ; and so independent were the warriors, that they rarely 
arrived punctually on the day appointed for' fear of being thought to 
have shown a servile respect for authority. ' In the assembly the king 
or chief of the community opened the debate : the rest were heard in 
their turn, according to. age, nobility of descent, renown in war, or fame 
for eloquence. No man dictated to the assembly ; he might persuade, but 
he could not command.' For purposes of government the territory of 
each tribe was divided into districts called ^J«</^, and each of these sent 
one hundred men to the host. In war the warriors were ranged in 

1 Some limitation must be put on what Tacitus says of the purity of German 
"blood. Probably he speaks only of the warriors ; the mass of slaves by whom 
they were followed must have been recruited from many races, especially after 
habits of piracy were adopted. 



516 Character of the Saxons 21 

families, and the women were accustomed to accompany the army, so 
that every man felt that the eyes of his whole kindred were upon him. 
Both in war and peace ' those who had signalised themselves by a spirit 
of enterprise had always a number of retainers in their train.' A spirit 
of emulation prevailed among the whole band, all struggling to be first 
in their lord's favour. In battle it was disgraceful for the chief to fall 
behind his followers, or for the followers to fall behind their chief : food 
was the only pay provided by the leader, and this he was expected to give 
in abundance. In Germany the utmost sanctity was given to the institu- 
tion of marriage, polygamy was the exception, and vice of all kinds was 
severely punished. Unlike the Romans, the Germans detested town life, 
and Ammianus Marcellinus says 'that they beheld the Roman cities 
with contempt, and called them sepulchres encompassed with nets.' 
Their habit was to live apart, and even in their villages the houses were 
always detached one from another. Their chief wealth consisted of cattle ; 
and, though corn was grown, they despised agriculture. ' To cultivate the 
earth and wait the regular produce of the seasons was not the maxim of 
a German ; you more easily persuaded him to attack the enemy and 
provoke honourable wounds in the day of battle.' In a word, to earn by 
the sweat of your brow what you might gain by the price of your blood 
was, in the opinion of a German, a sluggish principle unworthy of a 
soldier. It is clear from the account of Tacitus that the German 
warriors were incorrigibly idle : they left the work of the field 
to their slaves, and that of the house to their wives and daughters, 
while they themselves, when not engaged in council or war, occupied 
themselves with hunting, sleeping, drinking, or dice. In short, they 
had both the virtues and the vices of a free and high-spirited but 
uncivilised race. 

Of the Saxons, in particular, Tacitus says nothing, and only mentions 
the Angles to say that they have no special characteristics. It may 
therefore be taken for granted that these tribes are fairly 
delineated by his description of the Germans in general. 
It is remarkable that Tacitus had only heard of one tribe of seafaring 
Germans, the Suiones, and that he should place the Angles far from the 
coast ; but after his day the shifting of the tribes must have brought the 
Angles down to the shore, when the seductions of piracy must have 
incited the landsmen to follow their old trade of robbery upon a new 
element. At any rate, long before the Romans left Britain they were 
well acquainted with the audacity of the Saxon seamen, who, as was said 
of the Suiones, ' inhabited the ocean,' and chose the stormiest weather to 
put to sea as most favourable to their nefarious designs. Some years 
ago one of their war canoes was dug up in a bog in Sleswick, and was 



22 The English Settlement 516 

found to be sixty-one feet long, nine feet broad, propelled by twenty-four 

oars, and capable of carrying one hundred and twenty men. 

The documentary evidence which relates to the early years of the 

English conquest is to be found in four books, namely : Gildas On the 
Evidence Destruction of Britain ; the Ecclesiastical History of Bede ; 
Saxon^^ the History of the Britons, which goes under the name of 
Conquest. Nennius ; and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Gildas was born 
Gildas. jjj ^YiQ year 516 and wrote about 560 ; Bede was born in 672 
ennius. ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^..^^ . ^^^^ History of the Britons was composed 

A 1 o in the latter half of the ninth century : and the Anglo-Saxon 

Anglo-Saxon "^ ' '' 

Chronicle. ChronicU a little later. The only contemporary writer, 
therefore, is Gildas, and even he was not born till the Eomans had left 
Britain more than a century. His book, too, is much more of a sermon 
on the wickedness of the Britons than a narrative, and is very rhetorical 
and involved ; but, on the other hand, Gildas's statements being merely 
bases for his reflections, and being made to persons who knew at any 
rate the traditional truth, are not liable to the charge of invention. 

Taking Gildas, then, as our guide, we find that the most serious foes 
of the Britons were the Picts and the Scots, and that no trouble was at 
Gildas's ^^^^ experienced from the Saxons. This is perfectly natural, 
Account, because so long as the forts of the Saxon shore were repaired 
and garrisoned it would be perfectly useless for the Saxons, wholly 
unaccustomed, as they must have been, to the art of besieging such places, 
to try and pass them. At the end of thirty years, however, there were 
two rival authorities, whose names, Gurthrigernus and Aurelius, suggest a 

s Celtic and Roman division ; and one of these, Gurthrigernus or Vortigern, 
called in the Saxons, and the usual quarrel between mercenaries and 
their employers followed. The Saxons, having thus by the folly of the 
Britons been permitted to pass the fortresses of the Saxon shore, av ere 
able to land at pleasure, and soon made their raids so formidable that the 
whole of the inhabitants of the lowlands were slaughtered, fled over sea, 
surrendered as slaves, or led a miserable life in the hills and woods. 
After a time the Saxons came into conflict with Aurelius and his followers, 
and sufi'ered a crushing defeat, and after a long alternation of success 

- and failure were completely routed at Mount Badon in 516, after which 
their attacks upon the Celts ceased for a time. Nevertheless, so ruinous 
had been the long struggle, that the Celts could no longer occupy their 
former possessions, so that the land lay desolate. This last statement of 
Gildas supplies the key to much that has hitherto appeared obscure ; for 
if the settlements of the English were made not in lands from which the 
Britons had just been driven, but in districts which had for some time 
lain waste, then the disappearance of the British race, with its language. 



560 Fird English Invaders 23 

customs, and religion, and its complete replacement by the English race, 
becomes jDcrfectly intelligible and in strict accord with the only contem- 
porary narrative that has come down to us. 

As regards, therefore, the conquest of the east coast, no details can be 
given, and little can be added to the words of Bede enumerating the tribes 
which, in his day, inhabited what had once been the most Bede's 
flourishing part of the old Roman province. ' Those who Statements, 
came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany — the 
Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the 
people of Kent and of the Isle of Wight, and those of the province of 
the West-Saxons, who are to-day called Jutes, seated opposite the Isle of 
Wight. From the Saxons, that is, from the country now called old 
Saxony, came the East-Saxons, the South-Saxons, and the West-Saxons. 
From the Angles, that is, from the country now called Anglia, between 
the provinces of the Jutes and the Saxons, which is said to remain desert 
from that time to this day, are descended the East- Angles, the Midland- 
Angles, Mercians, and all the race of the Northumbrians, that is, of 
those nations that dwell on the north side of the river Humber and all 
the nations of the English.' 

Of the internal condition of the British community at this period very 
little is known ; but from Welsh chronicles it is inferred that they 
acknowledged the rule of one prince, the most notable of condition of 
whom was Cunedda. He seems to have ruled from the ^^^ British, 
mouth of the Clyde to the Severn. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is less 
cautious than the Northern historian, but its assertions cannot be recon- 
ciled with the facts of which Grildas is a contemporary Nennius 
witness ; while Nennius makes the Britons victorious in %^^ Anglo - 

' Saxon 

every battle of a war in which they were undoubtedly Chronicle 
driven from their country. In all probability, therefore, able with 
the manner of the coming of the West-Saxons was soon ^^^^' 
forgotten by their descendants, and was afterwards supplied by 
conjecture. 

However, about the time when Gildas was writing, there came to the 
throne of the West-Saxons a king whose long reign from 560 to 590 brings 
us almost to the date of the arrival of Christian missionaries, „ . 

' Beginning 

and, with them, of competent and educated historians, of Authentic 

This king was Ceawlin, and from his reign the authentic 

history of the English conquest of Britain may be said to begin. 

Ceawlin's first exploit was a war against Ethelbert of Kent ; and after 

confining him to his own territory, Ceawlin turned his arms ^ 

*= •" Ceawlin. 

against the Britons, and so terminated the long peace which, 

according to Gildas, an eye-witness, followed the battle of Mount Badon. 



24 The English Settlement 560 

First he drove them out of the valley of the upper Thames, and then, in 

' 577, he crossed the Fosseway and stormed the great camp at Dyrham, 

Battle of where for the first time the English invaders looked down on 

Dyrham. ^j^g f^jj. pj^JQ of Sevem and the distant mountains of Wales. 

The cities of Bath, Gloucester, and Cirencester were the spoil of the 

victors, and they were sacked so effectively by the rude Barbarians that 

they lay desolate for centuries ; so undisturbed by the presence of man 

that a wild duck ventured to make her nest and lay her eggs in one of 

the most beautiful of the luxurious Koman baths. Seven years later, 

Ceawlin followed up his victory by a second invasion of the valley of the 

Battle of Severn ; and though he was turned back on the borders of 

Faddiley. modern Cheshire by a defeat at Faddiley, the fine city of 

Uriconium was burnt to the ground, Eoman civilisation was completely 

efiaced, and the Saxons returned to their own land laden wdth spoil. 

From that day the loAver Severa valley began to be occupied by a 

Teutonic population, whose speech attested their West-Saxon origin. 

Meanwhile, the Anglian settlements of Bernicia and Deira, which 

occupied the coast from the Forth to the Tees, and from the Tees to the 

Ethelfrith, Humber, had been united under the great Ethelfrith ; and 

Battle of ^^ ^^"^ ^^ ^^^^ ^ decisive victory over the Scots dwelling in 

Dawstone. Britain, at Dawstone, near Ccirlisle. Four years later he 

Battle of was again in the field, and won a still more decisive battle at 

Chester. Chester. After the fight the Eoman city of Chester was 

sacked, and for three centuries its site lay desolate and forlorn. A great 

change in the condition of Celtic Britain folloAved the battle of Chester. 

^ ^,. ^ The low^-lying lands between the Dee and the Ribble soon 
Establish- . 

mentofthe fell into the hands of the Northumbrians, and likewise the 
outlying settlements of the Celts, wdio seem, till then, to 
have held their own in the highlands of the Peak and in the woods and 
moors of Loidis and Elmete. Henceforward, three Welsh districts only 
are recognised as independent : Cornw\ill, or West Wales ; Wales proper, 
or North Wales ; and Strathclyde. Of these, Cornwall included all those 
parts of the modern Somerset and Devon which had not yet fallen under 
the rule of the West-Saxon kings, but w^as cut off by an ever- increasing 
tract of English territory from its Welsh neighbours. North Wales, 
strong in its mountain fastnesses, was able for years to resist any further 
advance of the Saxons ; and Strathclyde, the name given to the rugged 
tract between Morecambe Bay and the Clyde, off'ered little inducement 
to repay the danger of invasion. 

Edwin, the successor of Ethelfrith, appears to have had command of a 
fleet, with which he conquered the islands of Man and of Mona, hence- 
forth called Anglesea, the island of the Angles. The chief antagonist of 



611 Nev) Distribution of Population 25 

Edwin was a British prince named Cadwallon. Him Bede speaks of as 
rc:c Brittonum or Bretonum dux ; and for a time Edwin seems, on the 
authority of the Welsh chroniclers, to have driven him into 
exile and ruled over his state. According to Bede, Edwin 
was the first of the Enoiish chiefs to rule over both English and Britons and 
adopt something of Eoman state. ' His dignity was so great throughout 
his dominions that his banners were not only borne before him in battle 
but even in time of peace ; when he rode about his cities and towns or 
provinces with his officers, the standard-bearer was wont to go before him. 
Also when he walked along the streets that sort of banner which the Romans 
called Tufa and the English Tuuf was in like manner borne before him.' 
The regular advance of the English, culminating in the crushing 
defeat of the Britons at Dyrham, Dawstone, and Chester, made a great 
alteration in the geographical distribution of the Celts, Fusion of 
During the fifth and sixth centuries, however, two great Celts, 
changes had taken j^lace ; first, the English invasions had ^ ymn. 
the effect of fusing together the Goidelic and Brythonic elements of 
Celtic Britain, and henceforward the distinction was lost in the name 
of Kymri or allies, which was adopted as the common name of the 
race, while the Brythonic dialect seems to have replaced the Goidelic 
in Southern Britain ; second, the Goidels of Ireland, in the fifth century, 
began a series of incursions on the Ivernian territory of the settlement 
Western Highlands, and established themselves in Argyle, ^" Scotland, 
from whence they spread gradually north and east, absorbing or ex- 
terminating the ancient inhabitants, till the new settlements were 
bounded by the ancient Brythonic and Goidelic districts. The new- 
comers were known as Scots, and the name Scotland for years applied 
only to the territory occupied by them. With regard, however, to all 
questions of the distribution of population, either in the English or Celtic 
parts of the island, it is necessary to speak with extreme caution. Even 
in the purest districts, the population can have been by no means 
unmixed ; and modern researches tend to strengthen the belief in the 
survival of the ancient races wherever fen, forest, or hill gave an 
advantage to the defenders, or where the barrenness of the soil placed a 
natural bound to the cupidity of the new-comers. 

CHIEF DA TES. 

A.D. 



First English settlement, 
Battle of Mount Badon, 
Accession of Ceawlin, . 
Battle of Dyrham, 
Battle of Dawstone, 
Battle of Chester, 



C. 440 
516 
560 
577 
603 
607 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CONVERSION OF THE ENGLISH 

Preaching of Augustine and of the Celtic Missionaries— Synod of Whitby— 
Organisation of the Church of Theodoric —Influence of the Church — 
Supremacy of the Northumbrians, then of the Mercians, then of the West 
Saxons under Egbert. 

Meanwhile, in the old and long-settled kingdom of Kent a change had 
been taking place which, in a certain sense, was undoing the work of 
those who had broken down the civilisation of Rome and replaced it by 
Teutonic barbarism ; for between the battles of Dyrham and Chester the 
introduction of Christianity by Eoman missionaries began the process of 
restoring Britain to a place in the civilised world. Christianity had been 
Roman introduced into Britain during the Roman occupation ; but 

Christianity, j^ jg j^q^ known liow far it had been accepted by the mass 
of the people, and it is singular that no Christian emblems have been 
found in excavating among Roman remains. However, on the retire- 
ment of the Romans and the flight of the Britons, Christianity vanished 
from southern Britain, and the crumbling ruins of a few churches alone 
remained to show that it had ever existed. So complete was the severance 
between the Britons and the English that no attempt was made by the 
former to preach the Gospel to the invaders. Their missionary activity 
was confined to spreading the faith among the more back- 
ward sections of their own countrymen. David, said to 
have been a relation of the Welsh chief Cunedda, preached to the 
^,. . Goidels of South Wales ; Ninias, the founder of the monas- 

Ninias. o />< n 

. tery of Whithern, converted the rude tribes of Galloway ; 

and Patrick, a native of Dunbarton (Brythons-town) at 
the mouth of the Clyde, won the Goidels of Ireland to the Christian 
faith. Before the close of the sixth century all the Britons who lived 
either in Ireland or south of the Firth of Clyde were nominally converted 
to Christianity. The Scots of Argyll, however, and the other inhabitants 
of northern Scotland were still heathen. However, in 563, St. Columba, 

•26 



597 Augustine's Mission 27 

an Irishman from Ulster, the greatest of the Celtic missionaries, at- 
tempted their conversion, and, having persuaded their king to give him 
the island of lona, built upon it a monastery which for 
several centuries was a home of missionary effort. In his 
immediate neighbourhood Columba converted the Celts, and then passed 
on to address himself to the Picts of the north, to whom he could speak 
only through an interpreter. But though Columba went so far afield in 
search of converts, it does not appear that he made any advances to the 
English conquerors ; and two other great Irishmen, St. Columban and St. 
Gall, passed England by for the field of Continental labour. 

However, according to the well-known tale, the little slave boys, 
captives in a civil war between the Anglian kingdoms of Bernicia and 
Deira, attracted the pity of Gregory, a Koman priest, the Gregory the 
greatest ecclesiastic of the time ; and in the very year of Great. 
Columba's death, Gregory (now pope) despatched the monk Augustine 
and his followers to win back to Christendom the lost isle Mission of 
of Britain. So ignorant were the Italians, and so credulous Augustine, 
were the missionaries of Gallic stories of English barbarity, that for a 
time Augustine hung back, and only the positive orders of Gregory com- 
pelled him to proceed. The mission was directed to Ethelbert, king of 
Kent. That sovereign was by no means ignorant of Christianity, for he 
had married Bertha, a Christian lady, the daughter of Charibert the 
Frank, king of Paris, and she was allowed by her husband to practise 
her religion. In 597, Augustine and his forty followers, all monks like 
himself, landed in the island of Thanet. For fear of magic Ethelbert 
received them sitting in the open air ; and, having heard Augustine's 
sermon, and seen the image of the Saviour painted upon a board, and 
listened to the harmonious chanting of the monks, he made, as reported 
by Bede, who learned the tradition of it from successors of Augustine, 
the following wise speech : ' Your words and promises are very fair, but 
as they are new to us and of uncertain import, I cannot approve of them 
so far as to forsake what I have so long followed with the whole English 
nation. But because you are come from far unto my kingdom, and, as I 
conceive, are desirous to impart unto us those things which you believe 
to be true, and most beneficial, we will not molest you, but give you 
ftivourable entertainment, and take care to supply you with your 
necessary sustenance ; nor do we forbid you to preach and gain as 
many as you can to your religion.' The monastic sim- „ 

. . Conversion 

plicity of the apostles of the new faith, and their manifest of the Kent- 
intention of practising in their own persons the virtues they 
prescribed to others, won many converts. Before long Ethelbert 



28 Conversion of the English 597 

himself accepted the new religion, and Kent was reckoned to be the 
firstfruits of the conversion of the English. 

On hearing of their success, Gregory wrote to the missionaries a series 
of very politic directions for their future conduct, and also sent a letter 
Gregory's ^^ advice to Ethelbert himself. He counselled the mission- 
Instructions, aries to utilise as far as possible not only the fabrics of the 
Pagan temples but also the habit of attending them at certain times for 
religious purposes. The buildings, he directed, were to be purified and 
a Christian turn given to the old ceremonial ; for, wrote Gregory, ' it is 
impossible to efiace everything at once from their obdurate minds ; 
because he who endeavours to ascend to the highest place rises by degrees 
or steps, and not by leaps.' To the king, however, he enjoins the duty 
of putting down the worship of idols with a stern hand, coupling it, how- 
ever, with that of setting to his subjects the example of a Christian life. 
Having apparently no clear notion of the political divisions of the English, 
Gregory was in expectation that the conversion of the whole race would 
follow immediately on that of theKentishmen, and accordingly he devised a 
constitution for the English Church based on that supposition. There were 
to be two archbishoprics, York and London, of which the primacy was 
to be enjoyed by the senior of the two archbishops for the time being. 
Together they were to direct the afi'airs of the English Church, and each 
was to consecrate twelve suffragan bishops who were to act as his synod. 
This plan, however, was too comprehensive and far-seeing to square with 
the actual possibilities of the case ; and Augustine found it better to make 
Canterbury, Ethelbert's capital, the metropolitan see, and during his own 
lifetime he was only able to place suffragans at Rochester and London. 

Augustine was soon called upon to ftice the difficulty created by the 
existence in the island of a British church. This church had no connec- 
Ceitic ^^0^ "^ith that of Gregory, from which it had been separated 

Christians, fgj. nearly two centuries by a gulf of barbarian heathenism. 
In their isolation the British Christians had retained several practices 
which had been discarded at Rome. They did not keep Easter accord- 
ing to the newest calculation, and they shaved the heads of their clergy 
in an unusual pattern. According to Bede, St. Augustine met the 
leaders of the British clergy at a place which was called Augustine's Oak, 
now Aust, and began by brotherly admonitions to persuade them that, 
preserving Catholic unity with him, they should undertake the common 
labour of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles. However, his advances 
were not favourably received ; and after a second failure the division 
between the two churches became even more marked — so much so that 
when the monks of Bangor were slain by Ethelfrith at the battle of 



625 Faulimcs' Mission 29 

Chester, the Koman missionaries regarded their fate as a judgment of 
(jrod. A similar advance to the Irish church was equally unavailing, so 
the Welsh and Irish continued for many years to work on different lines 
from the Anglican churches. 

In the year 616 Ethelbert died. As Bede quaintly puts it, 'He was 
the third of the English kings that had the rule of all the southern pro- 
vinces that are divided from the northern by the river Death of 
Humber ; but the first of the kings that ascended to the Ethelbert. 
heavenly kingdom.' A pagan reaction followed his death, and spread 
to the neighbouring kingdom of Essex. Augustine was Pa?an 
dead ; the bishops of London and Kochester fled to the Con- Reaction. 
tinent, and Lawrence of Canterbury was on the point of departure when 
he was stayed by the appearance of a vision. His decision was justified 
by the event, and the church, though not so prosperous as it had been in 
the days of Ethelbert, succeeded in holding its ground. 

Meanwhile, political events were bringing about a new opportunity 
for missionary enterprise. From the earliest landing of the English the 
wars for supremacy among themselves had been as frequent as those 
with the Britons, and now one king and now another had gained autho- 
rity over the neighbouring states. The king who for the time being 
exercised supreme authority, styled himself Bretwalda — a i>he Bret- 
word of doubtful meaning, sometimes interpreted as ruler waida. 
of Britain, sometimes as broad-ruler. Among those who exercised such 
a leadership south of the Humber, Bede names Ella, king of the South- 
Saxons, Ceawlin, king of the West-Saxons, Ethelbert of Kent, and Red- 
wald of East-Angiia. A still more extensive sway was exercised by the 
great Edwin of Northumbria, who ' commanded all the nations as well 
of the English as of the Britons, except only the people of Kent. 
However, between Northumbria and Kent an alliance was made. 

A marriage was arranged between Edwin and Ethelburga, daughter 
of Ethelbert, but it was stipulated that she should follow her own faith ; 
and in the year 625 she set out, taking with her as her chaplain a 
follower of Augustine, named Paulinus, who had been con- 
secrated bishop. Edwin, who is represented as being a 
man of most honourable feeling, and of an original and independent 
turn of mind, reserved his opinion on the new faith ; and though he 
listened to the eager arguments of Paulinus, ' being a man of extra- 
ordinary sagacity, he often sat alone by himself a long time, silent as to 
his tongue, but deliberating in heart how he should proceed, and to 
which religion he should adhere.' No efforts were spared to gain so 
valuable a convert. The pope himself addressed long and excellent 



30 Conversion oj the English 625 

letters both to the king and to the queen, and sent to Edwin some 
clothes and a gold ornament, and to Ethelburga a silver looking-glass 
and a gilt ivory comb. An escape from assassination, the birth of a 
daughter, and a decisive victory over the West-Saxons also influenced 
the king ; and at length he took council with his wise men, who seem to 
CQjf^.g have been as shrewd and serious as their master. One of 

Speech. them, Coifi the high priest, declared he could see little 
value in the old faith, or he, the most diligent of its votaries, would be 
in greater prosperity than he was ; and another of finer mould pro- 
nounced a parable which will never be forgotten for its beauty : ' The 
present life of man seems to me, king, in comparison of that time 
which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through 
the room wherein you sit at supjDcr in winter, with your captains and 
ministers of state, and a good fire in the midst, while the storms of 
wind and snow rage abroad : the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, 
and immediately out at another, whilst he is within is safe from the 
wintry storm ; but after a short space of fair w^eather, he immediately 
vanishes out of your sight into the dark winter from which he had 
escaped. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went 
before or what is to follow we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this 
new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve 
to be followed.' Paulinus was then called in to state his views, and 
after hearing them Coifi was the first man to desecrate the 

Conversion ^ ^ ^ ^ • • -ni-T- 

of the North- temples 01 the heathen deities. Edw^in himself accepted 
""^ ^ ■ the new creed, and his subjects by the thousand presented 
themselves for baptism. A friend of Bede had actually spoken to one 
of these converts, who described Paulinus ' as tall of stature, a little 
stooping, his hair black, his visage meagre, his nose slender and aqui- 
line, his aspect both venerable and majestic' One advantage of the 
introduction of Christianity was that from that period we can rely upon 
documentary evidence, which is both truthful and well-informed, and so 
leave behind us the period of conjecture and myth. 

At the time when Edwin received Christianity, his authority was 
acknowledged as paramount by all the kingdoms of the English except 
Revolt of that of Kent, and also by the Britons ; but about seven 
Penda. years afterwards a coalition was made against him by 
Cadwallon. Penda, king of the Mercians, and the British king Cad- 
wallon (Cad walla). They fought against the Northumbrians at Hatfield, 
on the Eoman road between Doncaster and Lincoln. Edwin was de- 
feated and killed ; and Cadwallon, who, according to Bede, was more 
cruel to the English Christians than if he had been a heathen, ravaged 



!i 642 Aidan's Mission 31 

Northumbria with fire and sword. Before the storm Paulinus retired 
by sea to Kent, taking with him Ethelburga and some of the king's 
children, and for a time Christianity perished. Edwin's place was taken 
by a younger brother and by a son of Ethelfrith, who divided the 
kingdom between them ; but within a year both were slain by Cad- 
wallon, one in fight, the other by treachery. Then 
Oswald, another son of the great Ethelfrith, who during 
the reign of Edwin had lived in exile at lona, came to the throne. He 
was a mighty warrior, and with a small force he encountered and over- 
threw the boastful Cad wallon at a place called the Denissburn, Battle of 
the site of which, though it cannot now be identified, is Denissburn. 
said by Bede to be near Hexham, and not far from the Eoman wall. 
After this victory Oswald reigned in peace for nine years. 

This interval was employed by the king to restore Christianity. He 

sent for missionaries from the abbey of lona, where he had 

Celtic Mis- 

himself learned the faith in exile, and the abbot selected sionanes 
St. Aidan for the work. He was a man of singular tact ^°^ °"^' 
and discretion, of great purity of life and nobility of character, who 
gained the confidence of the English by ' teaching no otherwise than as 
he and his followers lived.' Oswald himself was pleased to act as the 
interpreter of the bishop, and, supported by such authority and example, 
the popularity of Christianity was restored. Aidan, being a Scot, fol- 
lowed the practice of that church in making a monastery the centre of 
his operations. This he fixed on the island of Lindisfarne, 
within sight of Bamborough, the royal city, and Lindisfarne 
became to the Northumbrians what lona had been to the Scots. 

Meanwhile, the Roman missionaries had been by no means idle. 
Essex had been won back to the faith ; Felix, a Burgundian, whose name 
is still preserved in Felixstow, had converted the East conversion 
Anglians ; Birinus, an Italian, had won over the West- oftheEast- 

, Anghansand 

Saxons. The Mercians, under King Penda, and the outlying West-Saxons, 
kingdom of the savage South-Saxons, alone remained completely heathen. 
Like Edwin, Oswald is described by Bede as having ' brought under 
his dominion all the nations and provinces of Britain ' ; but his power 
raised up resistance, and in 642 he was killed in battle by Penda at a 
place called Maserfield, which is generally thought to be B^ttie of 
identical with Oswestry in Shropshire, formerly spelt Maserfield. 
Oswald's-tree. Oswald appears to have been a man of fine character, brave, 
generous, and singularly humble-minded. Succeeding ages recognised 
him as a saint, and many churches were dedicated to his honour. On 
the death of Oswald his place was taken by his brother Oswy, the 



32 Conversion of the English 642 

last of the sons of Ethelfrith, who secured his power by the treacher- 
ous murder of Oswin, the son of King Edwin. For thirteen years 

_ Oswy's kingdom was cruelly harried by Penda and the 

Mercians ; but at last in 655 Oswy defeated him in a 

\Afinwed. battle by the river Win wed, said by Bede to have been in 

^^^^' the neighbourhood of Loidis or Leeds, and the old king- 

he was eighty years of age — perished in the fight. Penda was admitted 
by his enemies to have been a man of some nobility of character. 
He made no objection to the preaching of the missionaries in his 
dominions, nor to the acceptance of the new faith by his son ; but if the 
Christian converts were slack in the performance of their religious 
duties, he was unsparing in his contempt. Three years after the death 
of Penda, the Mercians regained their independence, and set 
up as their king Wulfhere, a son of Penda. He was a 
Christian ; and from that date, 658, Sussex alone remained heathen. 

Meanwhile, a serious difiiculty was arising through the divergence in 

practice which existed between the Scottish and Roman churches, to 

^.^ which the northern and southern churches of the English 

Difference ^ 

between respectively belonged. Colman, the successor of Aidan, 
Celtic maintained the superiority of the Scottish practice ; but 

Churches, j^j^gg ^q Deacon, a follower of Paulinus, who had stayed 
in the north when his chief left Northumbria, had always adhered to the 
Roman calendar, and he was now supported by Wilfrid, abbot of Rij)on, 
a young man of great ability, who had been instructed abroad. To con- 
s vnod of sider the question, a synod was held at Whitby (664), of which 
Whitby. the leading members were Colman, Agilbert the Frank, who 
had become bishop of the West-Saxons, Wilfrid, and James. The crisis 
was momentous, for a victory of the Scots would have had the effect not 
only of cutting off the English church from communion with the great 
mass of Western Christendom, but also of depriving the English nation 
of a share in the wealth of Roman culture and civilisation, of which the 
Roman church was the chief depository. Colman spoke first. 'The 
Easter I keep,' said he, ' I received from my elders, who sent me hither 
as a bishop, and all our forefathers kept it after the same manner.' For 
the other side, Wilfrid based his defence on the ground that the Roman 
plan was used in Italy, France, Africa, Asia, Egypt, Greece, and, indeed, 
by all the world ' except the Picts and Britons, who foolishly in these 
two out-of-the-way islands — and only in a part even of them — oppose 
the rest of the universe.' After some further debate, Oswy inquired of 
Colman, ' Whether it were true that the keys of the kingdom of heaven 
were given to Peter by our Lord ? and, Whether he could show any such 



1664 The Synod of JVliithy 33 

power given to Columba I ' Colman answered, ' None.' Then said the 
king, ' If Peter is the doorkeeper, I will never contradict him ; but so 
far as I know and am able, I will obey his decrees in all things, lest 
when I come to the gates of the kingdom of heaven there should be 
none to open them.' The king's decision commanded applause. Colman 
went home, and after a short time Wilfrid became the 

. . . Withdrawal 

bishop of the Northumbrians. From this time forward the of the Celtic 

English church followed the Koman customs, and after ^^^y- 

a time the Irish and Scottish churches began to conform to its 

example. 

Wilfrid was perhaps the most picturesque and interesting figure pro- 
duced by the native English church before the days of Dunstan. Son 
of a Northumbrian thane, his ability early attracted the Bishop 
notice of Eanfled, the wife of Oswy, and he was sent by her 'VViifrid. 
to be educated in Aidan's monastery of Lindisfarne. Then, accompanied 
by his friend Benedict Biscop, he made the journey to Eome, and on his 
return, filled with enthusiasm for Kome and all she had to teach, he was 
intrusted with the task of edvicating the king's son. Afterwards he 
became abbot of Eipon, and took a distinguished part in the Synod of 
Whitby. On his promotion to the see of York, Wilfrid crossed over to 

Gaul to assure himself of a canonical consecration, and on 

Chad, 
his return found that his place had been occupied by Chad, 

a missionary monk of the type of St. Aidan. 

Meanwhile, a vacancy having occurred in the see of Canterbury, Oswy 
sent an Englishman to be consecrated at Rome. There he died in 667, 
and in his place Pope Vitalian consecrated Theodore, a Greek Archbishop 
and native of Tarsus in Cilicia. Theodore's mission was to Theodore, 
carry out a complete reorganisation of the English church, and his first 
act was to place Wilfrid at the head of the see of York, though he con- 
ferred on Chad the scarcely less important bishopric of the Mercians. 
Theodore then held a synod of the whole English church, and explained 
the canons which he thought proper to be observed. Bishops were for 
the future to confine themselves to their own dioceses, and 
clergymen were to preach only in dioceses where they held organisation 
a licence from the bishop. Theodore travelled throughout qO^^ , 
the length and breadth of the land, seeing with his own 
eyes that his orders were observed, deposing some bishops and translating 
others, and everywhere enforcing the order and regularity which were 
characteristic of the Roman world. 

In his own diocese Wilfrid showed an example not only of apo- 
stolic energy, but also of the magnificence which had begun to be a 

c 



34 Conversion of the English 709 

characteristic of the Roman clergy. In a country which had hitherto 
contented itself with buildings of wood he built minsters of the most 
elaborate workmanship then attainable at York, Ripon, 
in North- and Hexham, while his friend Benedict Biscop revealed 
umbna. ^^ j^.^ countrymen the glories of stained glass and choral 
music. However, a quarrel arose in which Wilfrid appears on one side 
and King Egfrith and Theodore on the other. Driven into exile, Wilfrid 
preached to the Frisians, and so became the first of a line of English 
missionaries, the most famous of whom is Boniface, the apostle of 
Germany. The pope then took up his cause, but Egfrith and Theodore 
paid little attention to his authority, and Wilfrid was cast into prison. 
Released at length, he fled to the heathens of Sussex, whose respect he 
won by teaching them the art of fishing, and so efi'ected their long-deferred 
conversion. Presently a reaction occurred in his favour ; the dying 
Theodore named Wilfrid as his successor, but, his enemy Egfrith being 
dead, Wilfrid chose to return to his own see of York. Again he 
quarrelled with the king ; again he appealed to the pope ; and this time, 
being supported by the archbishop of Canterbury, he triumphed, and 
in the year 709 Wilfrid closed his long and wearisome career in peace. 
His life was written by his friend Eddi, and is a valuable addition to 
our knowledge of the time. 

Besides Wilfrid, the chief saints of the native English church are 
Caedmon, Cuthbert, and Bede. Caedmon, the poet, was attached to the 
abbey of Whitby, and composed there a paraphrase of the 
Old Testament. Cuthbert was a monk of Melrose who 
"^ ^'^ ' became abbot of Lindisfarne, and afterwards bishop. He 
was a man of singular piety who delighted in nothing more than in 
preaching the Gospel to villages so remote and inaccessible that others 
had passed them by for more frequented paths. Bede was a monk of 
Jarrow who never held ofiice in the church, but devoted a 
long life to the acquisition and difi'usion of knowledge. He 
left no less than thirty-seven works, and his Ecclesiastical History is the 
only really complete account of the English at the date of their con- 
version. The change which had been introduced into England by 
Archbishop Theodore finally decided the form which should 
Church ^6 taken by the constitution of the Church of England. In 
^°n^/"" *^^ ^^y^ which followed the flight of Paulinus, Gregory's 
system had for all practical purposes been forgotten. In the 
church of St. Aidan a wholly difi'erent system of government prevailed. 
There the life of the church had its centre in the monastery. The 
bishop was the subordinate of the abbot, and looked to his monastery 



709 National Life of the Church 35 

for orders and advice. Moreover, the tendency of the bishop was not to 
attach himself to a fixed sphere of work, but to wander about the country ; 
and so the multiplication of bishops became a fruitful source of disorder. 
The Roman plan was the very opposite of this. Founded probably in 
imitation of the political system of the Roman empire, the Roman church 
sought its ideal in the regular succession of powers — the 
parish, the diocese, the province, and the papacy. Every church 
official of the church worked in a well-defined sphere : no Govern- 

^ ' merit. 

one was to intrude upon the province of another. The in- 
troduction of such a system into England was the very best thing that 
could have happened in the interest of national unity, and it was even 
fortunate that in Theodore's constitution there was only one archbishop 
for the whole land. Theodore's national synods, and the enforcement 
of one ecclesiastical system for the whole island without 

,..,,... Its influence 

regard to mmor political distinctions, were exactly what was on National 
wanted to counteract the element of discord supplied by the 
unceasing struggles between rival kingdoms. The strongest proof of 
the beneficent result of the Roman system is supplied by the history 
of Ireland, where the church, having no centralised constitution of its 
own, fell completely into subservience to the politics of the local chiefs, 
and so missed the opportunity of conferring an inestimable blessing upon 
the country. From a similar disaster in England we were saved by the 
decision of King Oswy and by the organising ability of Archbishop 
Theodore. Here the church contrived to avoid the snare of being drawn 
into the strife which raged between the petty kingdoms, and had as a 
rule kept itself clear of the political squabbles which agitated each of 
the little states into which the land was divided. It maintained the 
principle that the church was the church of the whole English nation 
when the existence of such a nation was barely recognised by the lay 
world ; and the synods and councils, attended by bishops from the length 
and breadth of the island, were for long the only councils in which men 
from difierent kingdoms consulted together for purposes that affected the 
whole English people. In the courts of law there was as yet no distinc- 
tion between the layman and the cleric. The crimes of each 
were dealt with in the same courts and by the same process example of 
of law ; and the presence of the bishops and of the parish Monlc^^""^ 
priests was in itself a check upon the barbarity of those 
early times. Moreover, the whole influence of the church was thrown 
into the scale in favour of purity and innocence of life. The pure lives 
of the monks who came with Augustine and with Aidan were, as we saw, 
the best credentials of Christianity ; and though, when monasteries grew 



36 Conversion of the English 753 

common and theii- opulence increased, many unworthy men and women 

took the vows, still the existence in such barbarous times of monastic 

establishments whose inmates were men of peace, and maintained a 

standard of culture superior to that of their neighbours, distinctly made 

for civilisation. 

But if the monks taught by example, the parish clergy brought a 

sterner code to bear upon the passions of the people. Hitherto the idea 

of sin had been little known. In the eye of the state, murder could be 

expiated by the jDayment of a fine ; and so slight was the value put 

upon human life, that crimes of violence were of everyday occurrence, 

while vice and gluttony passed unrebuked. Against this state of things 

Theodore opposed the penitential system of the Roman church, according 

to which murder was not only a crime against the state, but 
The Peni- . . ^ -, , • -, i i ^ , 

tentiai a sm agamst God to be expiated by the penance oi the 

ys em. murderer. Such crime carried with it the necessity of 
fasting and prayer, often carried on for years ; and until the penance ^ 
enjoined by the church was complete the guilty party was regarded as 
outside the pale of the church and debarred from the benefit of taking 
part in its rights. In this way the church surrounded crime and the 
criminal with a feeling of religious awe ; and though the temptation to 
commute penance for a money payment ultimately proved too strong for 
many of the clergy, and at the best too little stress was laid on the 
inward nature of repentance, still it is incontestable that among a rude 
people like the Saxons the eff'ects of the first introduction of the 
penitential system were excellent. 

The Venerable Bede died in 753, and after his death and the termination 

of his Ecclesiastical History it is very difficult to follow the intricacies of 

Death of English aflFairs. No other historian arose to take his place, 

^^^^- and for a long time the entries in the Chronicle are provok- 

ingly meagre, and have to be eked out by scraps of information collected 

in the twelfth century by Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmes- 

bury from authorities which have not come down to us. 

Contem- Apart from the introduction of Christianity, the most im- 

AuThorities. po^tant events which took place in the seventh and eighth 

centuries were those which were concerned with the 

struggle for supremacy which was going on between the several English 

kingdoms ; but as this did not properly come under ecclesiastical 

history, even Bede supplies very little information, and after his 

death we are even more ignorant of what went on, until the great 

Alfred placed the compilation of the Gironicle upon a systematic 

footing. 



757 The English Kingdoms 37 

It appears, however, that about the time of the coming of Augustine the 

scattered English settlements had been consolidated as follows : — In the 

north, the Anglian kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira had 

been formed into Northumbria ; the north folk and the men "of ' 

south folk made up the kingdom of the East-Angles : Essex, ^"S^l,^*^ 

^ , ^ o ' 5 Kingdoms. 

Kent, and Sussex remained much as they had been at the 

conquest ; Wessex had come to include not only the lands south of the 

Thames, but also the Isle of "Wight and those districts of the Severn 

valley which had been overrun by Ceawlin. The rest of Middle 

England was occupied by a number of small tribes, who ultimately 

coalesced into a kingdom known by the vague title of Mercia, or the 

borderland. 

Between these kingdoms there was for two centuries almost constant 
war ; and if one of them acquired a temporary superiority, it was only at 
the price of having to meet a succession of rebellions from struggle for 
its subject neighbours. For a time the West-Saxons, under Supremacy. 
Ceawlin, seemed likely to take the lead ; but after the battle of Chester the 
Northumbrians came to the front, and in the reigns of Ethelfrith, Edwin, 
Oswald, and Oswy enjoyed a distinct supremacj^, though 
from time to time the continuity of its sway was broken by brian 
successful revolts. Of these the most persistent was that "premacy. 
organised by Penda, who for a short time after the battle of Maserfield 
was decidedly the most powerful king in the island. Under Oswy, how- 
ever, Northumbria recovered her position, and on the whole _ 

'. . ^ . ' Battle of 

kept it till the year 685, when her king Egfrith and almost Nectans- 
his entire army were destroyed by the Picts in the disastrous 
battle of Nectansmere, ' by the shores of the North Sea.' 

After this a long period of disorder followed, in which the strength of 
Northumbria was dissipated, and then Mercia came to the front. Under 
Penda she had already been a formidable rival, and under Mercian 
his son Wulfhere and his grandnephew Ethelbald her Supremacy. 
power greatly increased. Wulfhere's principal achievement 
was the conquest from the West- Saxons of their possessions in the 
Severn valley ; Ethelred, another son of Penda, overran Kent ; Ethelbald 
conquered Somerton from the West- Saxons, and led the _ , ,, , , 

11-. . . , Ethelbald. 

whole force of the Southumbrians against the Welsh. In 

752, however, he was routed by the West-Saxons at the 

battle of Burford ; but his place was taken by Ofiii, who of all the 

Mercian sovereigns was the most renowned. 

Offa was a descendant of Penda, and came to the throne in the year 
757. He defeated the Kentish men at Otford ; the South-Saxons at 



3S Conversion of the English 757 

Bensington ; and, having enticed the king of the East- Angles to his 
court, he had him treacherously beheaded. Thus he gained suiDremacy 
over the south of the island ; but though Northumbria was unable to 
dispute his power, his authority does not appear to have been recognised 
beyond the Humber. Against the Welsh, Oflfa was more successful than 
any English king since the days of Ethelfrith and Edwin, for he 
captured the great border stronghold of Shrewsbury, settled Englishmen 
on the low-lying lands to the west of the Severn and the Dee, and 
secured them from molestation by erecting from the mouth of the Dee 
to that of the Wve the rampart of earth the remains of 

Offa's Dyke 

which are still known as Offa's Dyke. Offa persuaded 
Pope Hadrian to make Lichfield an archbishopric, and to place under it 
the sees of Worcester, Sidnacester, Leicester, Hereford, Elmham, and 
Dunwich ; so that London, Selsey, Eochester, and Winchester were left 
under Canterbury, and Eipon, Hexham, Lindisfarne, and Whithern 
under York. However, after Offa's death, Lichfield lost its archbishop, 
and the suffragan sees reverted to Canterbury. It was in Offa's days 
Charles the ^^^ Charles the Great began the career which ended in the 
Great. restoration of the Koman empire of the West — the most 

important event in Europe since the invasion of the Teutonic hordes ; 
and it is a strong proof of the esteem in which the great Englishman was 
held that Charles condescended to correspond with him on terms of 
equality. Englishmen, indeed, were well known to Charles, for Alcuin, 
one of his most learned men, came from Northumbria, and from Alcuin's 
letters we learn that English merchants were in the habit of resorting to 
his dominions. One untoward event marked Offa's reign, namely, the first 
appearance upon the coast of the Scandinavian pirates, who were to attempt 
in the ninth century to repeat the settlement which the English had carried 
out in the fifth and sixth. Offa died in 796 ; and though his successor 
Kenwulf retained Offa's power, from his death the power of the Mercian 
monarchy, mainly owing to struggles for the crown, rapidly declined. 

Meanwhile, the West-Saxons, who since the death of Ceawlin had held 
a distinctly secondary place, were rapidly coming to the front. This was 
West-Saxon ^^^^ ^0 the ability of their king, Egbert, who, having during 
Supremacy. \)^q Yiie of Offa been compelled to take refuge at the court of 
Reign of Charles the Great, had learned from the Franks a culture of 
Egbert. mind and a refinement of manner to which the English were 
strangers. He acquired, also, the political and military skill for which 
the Franks were celebrated ; and the fame of his accomplishments having 
reached Wessex, his countrymen invited him to return home and assume 
the crown, which he did in the year 802. 



839 Supremacy of the West-Saxons 39 

During his reign of thirty-seven years, Egbert devoted himself to the 
task of bringing the neighbouring kingdoms under his sway, precisely as 
his predecessors Edwin and Offa had done in England, and as Charles 
the Great, king of the Franks, had recently done on the conquest of 
Continent. His first exploit was the complete subjugation Cornwall, 
of Cornwall or West-Wales, and in 825 he broke the power of Mercia by 
defeating an invading host of Mercians under their king Beornwulf in 
the great battle of EUandun. This success he instantly Battle of 
followed up by overrunning the Mercian under-kingdoms, and EUandun. 
compelled the men of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Essex to acknowledge his 
overlordship, while he received the East-Anglians, the hereditary enemies 
of the Mercians, into alliance. Two years later he invaded Mercia and 
subdued it, so bringing under his authority all England south 
of the Humber ; and a threat of invasion was sufficient to acquires a 
force the Northumbrians also to offer obedience and allegiance. &^"^^^i 

^ supremacy 

In 828, Egbert again turned his attention to the Welsh, and in South 

Rritain 

conquered North Wales, so that only the Welsh of Strath- 
clyde and the Picts and Scots remained wholly independent. The last 
years of Egbert were occuj)ied in defending Wessex itself against the 
invasions of the Northmen — a subject which belongs to a subsequent 
chapter. At his death, which happened in 839, his dominions showed 
the same symptoms of disintegration which had been exhibited by those 
of his predecessors and by the Continental dominion of Charles the 
Great ; for while his eldest son, Ethelwulf, received Wessex, apparently 
with the overlordship, Kent, Essex, and Sussex were made into an 
appanage for his younger son, Athelstan. Great indeed as were the 
achievements of Egbert, there is nothing to show that they would have 
been more lasting than those of Edwin and Offa had it not been for 
external causes which ultimately resulted in permanently placing the 
supremacy of all England in the hands of the West-Saxon dynasty. 



CHIEF DA TES. 

Arrival of Augustine, . 

Aidan's mission, .... 

Synod of Whitby, 

Arrival of Theodore of Tarsus, . 

Supremacy of Northumhria, 

Supremacy of Mercia, . 

Egbert becomes King of the English, 



A.D. 

597 
634 
664 
668 
603-658 
757-825 
827 



CHAPTER V 

INSTITUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH 

Physical Features of the Country— Local Government of the Township, the 
Hundred, and the Shire — Central Government in the hands of the King and 
Witenagemot — English Society in the Ninth Century. 

It is now time to deal with the political constitution of the English 
kingdoms and with the social customs of the English. 

From the close of the sixth century to the time of Egbert seven king- 
The Seven donis stand out as always distinct from one another, though 
Kingdoms, sometimes united in more or less political union. These are 
those of the Northumbrians, the Mercians, the East-Anglians, the West- 
Saxons, the East-Saxons, the South-Saxons, and the Kentishmen ; and it is 
important to note that it was usual to speak not of Wessex but of the 
West-Saxons, the men of the race and not the territory in which they 
dwelt constituting the political state. Sometimes other groups are spoken 
of as having a separate existence, such as the men of Surrey or the Lindis- 
waras ; but in general the states named are the most prominent. 

Of these the South and East Saxons were single tribes ; the Kentish- 
men seem to have been formed by the union of two tribes, whose 
respective capitals were Eochester and Canterbury ; the Mercians and 
Northumbrians were agglomerations of smaller settlements, whose names 
and boundaries were preserved down to the time of the settlement of the 
Northmen ; the East-Anglians comprised the North and South folk ; and 
the West-Saxons had absorbed the Meonwaras, Jutish settlers who dwelt 
in and near the Isle of Wight. Each of these kingdoms was complete 
in itself ; and the position of Egbert was that of a king of the West- 
Saxons whose overlordship was, for the time being, acknowledged by the 
other English states. 

The boundaries of these kingdoms were prescribed to them by 
the lie of the country ; for in those days the country was covered 
with rugged mountain, soaking bog, and impenetrable forest to an 

40 



Geographical Divisions 41 

extent which it is now difficult to realise, and the rivers themselves 
must have flowed in volumes of which the dwindled currents oeographi- 
of the present day give a very inadequate conception, of^hg^^"*^^^ 
Little indeed was the acreage of arable land which re- country, 
mained when the waste was subtracted from the area of the country. 

Besides the dreary moorlands which stretched in almost unbroken 
solitude from the Firths of Forth and Clyde to the Peak, and the wild 
uplands of Cleveland, Northumbria consisted of little more than a 
narrow strip of coast-line from the Forth to the Tees and the plain of the 
Yorkshire Ouse. Between it and Mercia lay the Humber -p^g 
and the waste of marshes into w^hich was gathered the Humber. 
whole of the western drainage of the moors of Lancashire, Yorkshire, and 
Derbyshire. Further inland, the forest of Elmete, which occupied the 
country between the Wharfe and the Aire, connected the barrier of the 
marsh with the highlands of the Pennine chain. 

Between Mercia and East Anglia stretched along the course of the 
Ouse as far as Cambridge a dreary waste of fen broken only by verit- 
able islands ; and at Cambridge the forest began, and con- 

. The Fen. 

nected the marshes of the Ouse with those of the estuaries 

of the Stour and Orwell, so completing the isolation of East Anglia. 

From Cambridge another line of woodlands followed the slopes of the 

Chiltern Hills and divided the East and West Saxons from 

The 

the men of Mercia, as they were divided from those of Chiltern 
Surrey and Kent by the channel of the Thames. Closely 
followed by the Icknield Street, this line of wood seems to cross the 
Thames near Wallingford, and under the name of the Bearroc Wood 
divides the men of Surrey from the West- Saxons ; and then, expanding 
into the tangled labyrinth of the Weald, which in Alfred's _, „, ,^ 

'^ / ' The Weald. 

tmie was one hundred and twenty miles long and thirty 
broad, it formed the boundary of the South-Saxons both against the 
Jutes of Kent and the West-Saxons of the valley of the Itchen. Further 
west the advance of the Saxons was long delayed by the forest of 
Selwood, which occupied the water-shed between the Bristol Channel, 
the Thames, and the Hampshire Avon ; while the Mercians were debarred 
from the direct road into the valley of the Severn by the mass of forest 
land, afterwards known as the Forest of Arden, which lay between the 
Severn, the Warwickshire Avon, and the upper waters of the Trent. 

Within the kingdom the territorial divisions recognised by the English 
were the township, the borough, the hundi-ed, and the shire ; Territorial 
and some of the original kingdoms were so small that the Divisions, 
last division was superfluous. The township and hundred seem to owe 



42 Institutions of the English 

their origin to the circumstances of the invasion itself, which took the 
form of the settlement in a conquered and possibly in a deserted country 
of a host of warriors who had arrived with their wives, children, and 
slaves, bringing with them their flocks and herds — in short, as an emi- 
grating community. In the time of Tacitus the Germans appear to have 
divided their fighting force into companies of hundreds, without, however, 
adhering strictly to the exact numerical standard ; and this organisation 
seems also to have been that of the English invaders of Britain. 

The township, therefore, appears to have been either the estate of a 
single warrior with his family and dependents — in fact, a plantation — or 

The t^^ smallest emigrating community of independent settlers. 

Township, j^g constitution accordingly varied: in some places it retained 
traces of its origin as a free and equal community cultivating the 
ground in common ; in others it had become the property of a single lord, 
even if it had not been so constituted from the first, in that case being 
little difi'erent from the manor of a later date. From the point of view 
of the state, the township, as a community, was bound to fulfil certain 
obligations. These were called the trinoda necessitas, and consisted of 
keeping in repair the bridges, fortifications, and roads which fell within 
its limits, and of sending a contingent to the national host in case of an 
outbreak of war. The head of the township was the tun-gerefa or town- 
reeve, sometimes an elective officer, sometimes named by the lord. Eccle- 
siastically, the township was, as a rule, the charge of a single priest, and 
the name was often sunk in that of parish ; but in thinly populated 
districts, especially in the north, the parish often contained several town- 
ships. The affairs of the township were managed by its inhabitants, 
who met for this purpose in the town-moot. There they elected the 
reeve, unless he was named by the lord ; appointed the bydel, or beadle, 
and other village officers ; formally received new householders into the 
community ; saw that the obligations of the village were duly discharged 
in regard to roads and fortifications ; and enforced the by-laws of the 
place. Each old English township, therefore, had a comj)lete system of 
local self-government, which never wholly passed away, for some of the 
functions of the town-moot were discharged by the meeting, others by 
the courts of the lord of the manor, of which a fuller account will 
presently be given. Since 1894, however, the recognition in small 
parishes of the parish meeting, and the creation in larger of the parish 
council, have practically restored the working of one of the oldest 
English institutions. 

If the settlement was defended by a mound and a ditch instead of the 
tun, or quickset hedge, which gave its name to the township, it was called 



Township and Hundred 43 

a burh., a name which takes the forms borough, bury, and burgh in 
different parts of the country. The head of a burh was called a burh- 
gerefa, or borough-reeve. Sometimes the chief officer was ^j^g 
known as the port-reeve. When the settlement had been Borough, 
formed for security in an Old Roman camp, the name castra usually 
clung to it in the form cester, Chester, or caster. No difference in kind 
existed between the smaller boroughs and the townships ; but some of 
the larger boroughs comprised several townships, and the government of 
such boroughs resembled that of a ' hundred.' 

A group of townships formed the hundred. The area of the hundred 
varied greatly — jjartly, no doubt, due to the fact that the number of 
warriors in a nominal hundred was itself variable, but also ^he 
to the nature of the soil, which would make the district Hundred, 
required for a settlement greater in some places than in others. The 
name for this division also varied in different parts of England. In the 
south, 'hundred' was the term usually employed ; in the east midlands and 
in Yorkshire, ' wapentake '; and in the very north, ' ward.' In some places 
even the division was called a 'shire.' Who was the head of the 
hundred is a matter of some uncertainty. It is, however, generally 
thought that the elected head was called the ' hundred-ealdorman,' or 
alderman of the hundred, and that the authority of the king was repre- 
sented by a gerefa, the same officer who after the Norman Conquest 
was generally known as the ' bailiff.' Like the township, the hundred 
had a meetino; for the management of its own affairs. This assembled 
monthly, and was attended by the lords of land within the hundred or 
by their stewards, and by the parish priest, the reeve, and the four best 
men from each toAvnship. The business of this court was to try 
criminals, to settle disputes, and to witness transfers of land. Judicial 
matters were for convenience submitted to the decision of twelve men, 
who came to be known as ' the twelve legal men ' of the hundred. Even 
in very early times some of the great landowners exercised a jurisdiction 
on their own estates which made them independent of the hundred court, 
and these estates constituted, as it were, private ' hundreds.' At a later 
date these came to be known as ' liberties ' or ' franchises.' The whole 
question of the ' hundred ' is very obscure, and probably there was much 
variety in practice. 

Above the hundred stood the shire. The origin of English shires 
as we have them at the present day is exceedingly various, ^^^ shhe 
and few if any of their present boundaries date back to the 
time of Egbert ; but similar divisions certainly existed, and for the sake 
of convenience it will be better to deal with them all at once. At the 



44 Institutions of the English 

present day we have at least seven kinds of shires. Sussex, Essex, Kent, 
and Surrey are ancient kingdoms which preserve more or less their old 
Origin of boundaries. Northumberland is likewise an ancient king- 
Shires. (Jqj^^ ]y^^^ much reduced in size. Cornwall is the kingdom 
of the West Welsh. Cumberland represents the English share of the 
old British kingdom of Strathclyde. Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, 
Devonshire, and Dorsetshire represent the old tribal divisions of 
Wessex. Counties like Worcestershire, Leicestershire, and Bedfordshire, 
and other midland shires, which take their names from their county 
town, date back to the time when, the old tribal divisions having been 
obliterated by the settlement of the Northmen, a new and artificial 
division became necessary. Durham corresponds to the old district ruled 
over by the Bishop of Durham. Cheshire is a county palatine created 
at the Conquest ; and Lancashire, Westmorland, and Eutland have even 
been organised as counties since the compilation of Domesday Book. 
However, in the time of Egbert the tribal settlements still formed the 
basis of the ' shire,' and the organisation of the ' shire ' as it existed in 
his time was simply transferred in later times to the new territorial 
divisions. 

At the head of the shire stood the ealdorman. In the case of well- 
established shires, such as Dorsetshire and Wiltshire, he was appointed by 
Government the king and the witenagemot ; but in that of shires which 
of the Shire. ^yQi^Q j^g^ ceasing to be smaU kingdoms, such as Kent and 
Sussex, the office frequently remained in the hands of the ancient dynasty, 
on the extinction of which an ealdorman was appointed in the ordinary 
way. The chief business of the ealdorman was to lead the forces of the 
shire, and to be present at the meetings of the shire-moot. This body met 
twice a year on the summons of the shire-reeve or sheriff", who represented 
the authority of the king. There were present at it the ealdorman and 
the bishop, who declared respectively the laws of state and church on all 
points that arose ; the sheriff", who saw the decisions of the court carried 
into eff'ect ; and all the suitors at the hundred-court, including the reeve 
and four men from each township. The shire-moot tried all cases that 
had not been disposed of in the hundred-court. In cases between man 
and man there was certainly, a little later than Egbert's time,- an appeal 
to the king and the witenagemot, but in criminal cases the decision of 
the shire-moot was final. The military force of the shire was represented 
by the fyrd, or expedition. This was made up of all the freemen of the 
shire between the ages of sixteen and sixty. The men of each family 
marched together, and formed with others from the same township the 
unit of the fighting force, which was led by the town-reeve ; the reeves 



The King and Witenagemot 45 

and their men from each hundred were led by their hundredman, and 
the force of the whole shire by the ealdorman ; the contingents of the 
liberties and the men from the lands of the church also placed themselves 
under him. 

The kingdom was ruled jointly by the king and the witenagemot, or 
meeting of the wise men, often expressed by the word witan^ The King- 
or the wise. The witenagemot was a close body, consisting '^°^' 
of the king, sometimes accompanied by his wife and grown-up sons, the 
ealdormen and bishops, the chief abbots, the great officers of The Witena- 
the court, and an ever-increasing body of the king's thegns. s^"^ot- 
The witenagemot, besides meeting at more or less regular intervals for the 
purpose of being consulted by the king, had a number of special functions. 
It was its business to elect the king ; but it rarely chose a man except 
out of the royal family. Usually the man chosen was the best qualified 
man who was near in blood to the late king ; and in practice, though by 
no means invariably, the choice fell upon his eldest son. In theory, 
however, the choice was perfectly open, so that the old English kingship 
must be reckoned as an elective monarchy. In a few cases the 
witenagemot of the older kingdoms exercised the right of deposing an 
incompetent sovei;eign in favour of one more efficient ; but there is no 
instance of this being done after the time of Egbert. The king and the 
witan jointly named the ealdormen ; but the tendency was for these posts 
to become hereditary, and in other cases for the real choice to lie with 
the king. Bishops were sometimes elected by their clergy, sometimes 
named by the king and the witan ; but in either of these cases their 
formal reception into the witenagemot may be taken as a confirmation of 
the appointment. From time immemorial all legislation required the 
assent of the witenagemot, as was the practice in all Teutonic nationalities ; 
but among the English new laws were rarely made, and it was thought 
sufficient to restate and confirm the old ones. Another duty of the 
witan was that of reg-istering; and confirming all grants made from the 
public territory or folkland to private persons. The witan, too, con- 
stituted a court of appeal -in cases between man and man which had not 
been satisfactorily settled in the shire-moots, and tried in the first instance 
cases where the criminal or parties concerned happened to be too 
powerful to have justice done in the local court. In ordinary times no 
taxes were required for the king's ordinary revenue ; the contribution of 
ships, the fyrd, and the trinoda necessitas made a money revenue un- 
necessary. The chief functions, therefore, of this assembly were to 
elect the sovereign ; to confirm, at least, the appointments of ealdormen 
and bishops ; to act as the high court of justice of the realm ; to state, 



46 Institutions of the English 

codify, or amend the law ; to vote additional taxation, and to advise 
with the king in all cases of national emergency. 

The edifice of the state is crowned by the king. The title means 
' father of a family,' and it recalls the recollection of a time when the 
state and the family were one. When Tacitus wrote, few 
German tribes were ruled by kings, but kingship was 
universal among the English who had settled in Britain ; and perhaps 
the success of the invasion was the cause which conferred the higher 
distinction on the ealdorman, or princeps, or chief who had led the 
bands of emigrants. The English looked on their kings as descendants 
of a mythical hero Woden, and as such regarded them and their families 
with awe. The king represented the unity, dignity, and historical career 
His Preroga- of the race. He was the leader of the host in war, and in 
tives. peace he was regarded as embodying the ideas of law and 

order, so that the officers of state who were responsible for their main- 
tenance were spoken of as his officers, and all crimes of violence were 
held to be violations of ' the king's peace. ' The sheriffs in a special 
manner were his stewards ; even the witenagemot, which had elected 
him and might depose him, was called his witenagemot. On the other 
hand, dignified as the king's position was, his prerogatives were carefully 
circumscribed. He was not the supreme landowner, and could make no 
grant from the public land, even to himself, without the consent of the 
witan. Without its advice and consent he could not levy a tax or alter 
the law. At the same time, it must be remembered that by increasing 
the number of the king's thegns he could always command a majority in 
the witenagemot, and that if he were a man of strong will and high 
character he was able to shape the whole policy of the state. 

The revenue of the king was provided for in a variety of ways. As a 
private individual he was at liberty to hold property and bequeath it by 

His will, and as sovereign he had control over the estates of the 

Revenue, crown, which might even include cities and boroughs 
founded upon it ; and he had also a right to certain contributions from 
the holders of folkland. His money revenue was derived from the fines 
levied in the law-courts, the produce of wrecks and of treasure-trove, of 
mines and salt-works, tolls and other dues levied in markets and ports, 
and of the heriots which were paid by his special dependants. The regalia 
of the monarch consisted of throne, crown, sceptre, and standard ; and 
at his enthronement he was both crowned and also anointed with oil as 
a sign that he was an independent and not a subordinate king. At his 
coronation the king was bound by a solemn promise to keep the peace, 
to put down robbery and rapine, and to secure justice for all his people. 



State of Society 47 

As the estates of the crown and the folklands were scattered all over the 

iviiigdom, the king and his train of followers were forced to go from one 

li strict to another in order to eat up the provisions which had 

, ^ 1 . . f , 1 . His Estates. 

been prepared for their maintenance, and hence the sovereign 

svas brought into frequent contact with all parts of his dominions. Access 

to him was therefore easy for all his subjects, and the frequent presence of 

the king's eye was the best security against the oppressions of the local 

nobility. It is remarkable how soon the royal houses succeeded in 

raising themselves to a fairly high pitch of civilisation ; and the tone of 

mind adopted towards Christianity by such kings as Ethelbert of Kent 

\nd Edwin of Northumbria reflects credit on the race to which they 

belonged and the institutions under which they lived. 

English society was divided into two great classes, freemen and slaves, 
the relative numbers of which before the Norman Conquest English 
ire unknown. Freemen, again, were divided into sethelings, Society, 
sorls, ceorls, and thegns ; and slaves into theows, or slaves pure and 
mnple, esnes, who worked for hire, wite-theows, who had The Free- 
lapsed into slavery through inability to pay their debts, "^^"• 
bouse-slaves, and farm-slaves. For the death of a freeman the law exacted 
from his slayer compensation according to his rank, but 
took no cognisance of the death of a slave until Christianity 
enforced the duty of humanity by the penalty of penance. 

Of the freemen, some were landed and some landless : and this was a 
vital distinction ; for whereas the law recognised in the landed man a 
citizen of full responsibility, it compelled the landless man, Landed 
however high his birth, to put himself under the protection Freemen, 
of some landed man whom the state might hold responsible for his acts. 
At the time of the arrival of the English two ranks only appear to have 
been recognised — gentle and simple, or noble and non-noble, which were 
distinguished as setheling or eorl and ceorl. By degrees these names 
came to change their signification, and eorl or earl (a form derived from 
the Norse jarl) was reserved for the title of an ealdorman, and setheling 
for the son or brother of a king.- 

This was the more easy as the old distinctions of rank had been 
superseded by the rise of a new order — that of the thegns, and especially 
of the king's thegns. Tacitus had noticed that among the Germans it 
was a distinction to be attached to the service of a great man, and the 
greater the man the greater the distinction. Indeed, in the higher ranks 
little or no difference was made between the term gesith or companion 
and that of thegn or servant. Accordingly, a new gradation of rank made 
its appearance. The thegn of a king took precedence of the thegn of an 



48 Institutions of the English 

ealdorman, and the thegns of an ealdorman those of a simple eorl. The 
king soon found it to his advantage to increase in every way the 

importance of his thegns. With the consent of the witen- 
^^"^" agemot he bestowed on them shares of the public land, and 
called upon them to take their seats in the witenagemot itself. He also 
added to his military strength by requiring the personal services of them 
and their followers, so providing himself with a force more devoted to 
himself and more amenable to discipline than the ancient fyrd. By-and- 
by it came to be considered that any man of a certain wealth ought to 
rank as a thegn, and then it was enacted that any one ' who throve till 
he possessed five hides of land should be of thegn-right worthy.' 

Landless men of whatever rank were obliged to attach themselves to a 

lord ; and as for the sake of peace many landed men were also in the 

Landless habit of putting themselves under the protection of 

Freemen, their more powerful neighbours, there was the beginning. of 

a system in which all ranks of society would be bound together by a 

chain of mutual dependence and protection. 

The land system of the old English was very complicated. The 
broadest distinction was between alod and folkland, that is, between land 

which had been assigned to some particular proprietor or 

proprietors and land which, being still unallotted, was 
regarded as belonging to the state. On the other hand, the allotted land 
might be held by an individual or by a small community. In the latter 
case the homesteads were private property, while the plough-lands were 
cultivated in common, and the flocks and herds were pastured on the 
common waste, subject, however, to the by-laws of the little conmiunity. 
The next estate might be that of a private individual who cultivated the 
soil with his own hands, or, if large, by the labour of hired servants or 
slaves of various kinds. The proof of ownership of such allotted estates 
lay in the common voice of the community ; but in the case of grants 
made out of the folkland, which could only be made with the consent of 
the king and witan, greater formality was observed, and the title-deed 
was always written out. This document was called a hoc, or book, and 
land so held was distinguished as bocland. As such grants were being 
constantly made, and were also usually large, the proportion of bocland 
to alod was constantly increasing. 

Justice as it Avas administered among the Angles and Saxons was in 

. a transition state, just emerging from a time when justice 

tion of was regarded merely as a sort of regulated revenge, to one in 

which the heinousness of crime is regarded as lying mainly 
in the wrong done to the state. In the case of murder, for example, the 



Administration of Justice 49 

iggrieved parties were the relatives of the murdered man, and their 
I grievance extended to the family of the murderer, just as in a blood-feud. 
Here the state stepped in and insisted that the case should be formally 
investigated. The kinsmen of the accused were responsible for producing 
him in the court ; and if he did not appear, sentence of outlawry was 
pronounced against him, and then the law gave him no further protection. 
If he admitted his guilt, and the case could not be shown to be justifiable 
by custom, the court determined the compensation which was to be paid 
(1) to the family of the murdered man, and (2) to the king for an infrac- 
tion of his peace. If he swore his innocence he was required to support his 
assertion by the oaths of his friends, who were called his compurgators ; 
and if he failed in this he was put to the ordeal. This consisted in 
walking over redhot ploughshares, carrying three paces a bar of redhot 
iron, or plunging his bare arm into boiling water. In either case, if his 
wounds were not healed within three days he was regarded as guilty 
and dealt with accordingly. 

If we try to picture to ourselves English life as it existed in the ninth 
century, we must set before ourselves an agricultural population divided 
into a number of small communities, each complete in itself. ^ . . , , . ^ 

... English Life 

Some were free cultivating communities ; in others, and in the Ninth 
the increasing number, the real head was the lord who 
owned the soil, and to whom the mass of the inhabitants were bound in 
a variety of ways. Of the land, more than half would probably be wood 
or waste ; and of the remainder the greater part would be pasture, 
a little meadow, and the rest under the plough. • Of the inhabitants, the 
most important rented portions from the lord ; but the mass held their 
land from him on condition of doing for him a fixed quantity of work of 
difierent kinds. Others again, inferior to these, had to work practically 
whenever they were ordered, but yet had a tenement of their own, from 
which they could not be disturbed so long as their services were 
performed. These service-doing landholders afterwards came to be 
called villeins. Below these were the class of actual slaves or theows, 
who were the property of their lords, and could be bought and 
sold at will. This class, however, tended to diminish, as the church 
did all it could to encourage manumission. The lord intrusted the 
supervision of the serfs' labour to a steward, who was responsible to 
him ; careful accounts were kept of the duties of each tenant, and the 
lord received the produce of the estate, moving about with his retinue 
from one place to another so as to consume the produce of each. Besides 
members of the free village communities, the lords of land and their 
villein cultivators, there were few inhabitants. The towns were few and 

D 



50 Institutions of the English 

small, mining was rare, and there was only domestic manufacture. Salt, 
however, was made either from brine or the water of the sea ; and by 
the rivers there were fisheries, the weirs for which had to be kept in 
order by the villein tenants. What commerce there was was carried 
on by chapmen ; and as the lords, under such a system, were very 
wealthy, the chapmen were often men who possessed a considerable stock 
of goods and travelled about the country with a large retinue of armed 
followers — a precaution rendered necessary by the number of robbers 
and outlaws who swarmed in the extensive forests. Provision for the 
amusement of the lords and their households was made by the bands of 
gleemen, jugglers, and tumblers who wandered from house to house, 
and who, if their entertainments were not very refined, did something 
to keep alive the ballad literature of the country. 



i 



CHAPTEE VI 



THE INVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN 



Egbert, . . a.d. 802-839 
Ethelwulf, . . 839-858 
Ethelbald, . . 858-860 



ENGLISH KINGS 

Ethelbert, . A.D. 860-866 

Ethelred, . . . 866-871 

Alfred, . . . 871-902 



The Ethnology of the Northmen— Their early Invasions— The Youth of Alfred 
the Great — Accession of Alfred — His Struggles against the Danes — Peace of 
Wedniore— The Danelaw— Political Effects of the Danish Settlement — Ee- 
organisation of his Kingdom by Alfred — Later Wars with the Danes — Death 
of Alfred. 

It is a question whether the union of the English under Egbert would 
have proved more permanent than previous attempts at consolidation, 
had not a completely new turn been given to English affairs by the 
invasions of the Northmen. The name of Northmen was 
given by the English to all the inhabitants of Denmark and of th"e° °^^ 
the Scandinavian peninsula, and it is perfectly exact as far Northmen 

J- ' '- "^ or ' Danes. 

as it goes, for up to this time these people had not been con- 
solidated, as they afterwards became, into Norwegians, Swedes, and 
Danes ; but, as the Britons called all the English Saxons, so the English 
frequently spoke of the Northmen as Danes, and, since this name is short 
and convenient, we may do the same, provided it be remembered that 
many of the invaders came from other parts of the north of Europe 
besides Denmark. The Northmen belonged to the German branch of 
the Aryan family ; but while the English spoke a dialect of the Low 
German tongue which was common to all the tribes who dwelt on the 
low plain from the Scheldt to the Elbe or thereabouts, the dialect of the 
Northmen is distinguished as Scandinavian, and differs from Low German 
in some essential particulars. In the ninth century the Northmen were 
still heathen, and they retained all the fighting qualities of their savage 
origin unimpaired by contact with civilisation. In fact, they were in the 
time of Egbert what the English had been at the time of the first 
settlements, and so fiir as they differed from the English in character 

51 



62 Invasions of the Northmen 787 

seem to have done so in the direction of greater dash and brilliancy. 
They were also far abler seamen than the English, and had greater skill 
both in constructing and defending earthworks. 

The first invasion of the Northmen took place in the reign of Offa, and 
from that time till the reign of William the Conqueror the fighting between 
the ;^nglish and the Northmen was almost incessant. Nor 
Invasion of did England sufi'er alone, for during that period Northmen 
the^North- established themselves in large territories both of Northern 
France and Southern Italy ; twice attacked Constanti- 
nople, founded a dynasty in Kussia, and plundered almost every sea- 
port town from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. 

In their invasions of England it is possible to distinguish three distinct 
epochs : first, that of -plunder ; then that of English settlement ; and, third, 
that oi political conquest. The Danes first appeared on the 
Periods of coast in the year 787, and before the close of the century 
four plundering expeditions had landed on our shores and 
the great abbeys of Lindisfarne and Wearmouth, the homes of Aidan and 
Bede and the centres of Northumbrian culture and piety, had been 
pillaged and destroyed. Then there was a respite till 828, when the 
Danes landed in Wessex, and defeated Egbert in a pitched battle. How- 
ever, in 837 Egbert contrived to get the mastery over a combined force 
„ , - of Cornishmen and Danes in the battle of Hengist's Down. 

Battle of ® 

Hengist's From 837 to 840, every summer saw the heathen men at their 
deadly work. Three pitched battles at least were fought ; 
in each the English were beaten, and London, Eochester, and Canterbury 
were taken by storm. In 851 the Danes, for the first time, wintered in 
the Isle of Thanet ; and the same year no less than three 
winter in hundred and fifty-one of the pirate vessels made their 
Than^et. °^ appearance in the Thames. London and Canterbury were 
again pillaged, and the Mercians were defeated ; but when 
the Danes passed into Surrey they were routed with enormous slaughter 
Battle of at the battle of Ocley. In 855 some Danes passed the 
Ociey. winter in Sheppey ; but in 860 a body of Danes who 

had sacked Winchester were defeated by Osric, ealdorman of Hamp- 
shire, and Ethelwulf, ealdorman of Berkshire. On the whole, therefore, 
the Saxons were making a fair defence, when in 866 a new army, far more 
formidable than its predecessors, made its appearance in East-Anglia. 
After passing the winter there, the 'great heathen army' crossed the 
Humber into Northumbria, and, as it found the NorthumlDrians engaged 
in a civil war, seized York without difficulty. Next year the army, 
leaving Guthrum in charge of York, advanced into Mercia and seized 



871 Invasio7is of the Northmen 53 

Nottingham ; but a great force of Mercians and West- Saxons compelled 
them to withdraw to York. However, in 870 they invaded East- 
Anglia, defeated and slew Edmund its king, and sacked Peterborough 
and Crowland ; and in 871 they attacked Wessex. 

The reigning king of the West-Saxons was Ethelred, the grandson ot 
Egbert. Egbert died in 839, and was succeeded by his son Ethelwulf. 
Ethelwulf appears to have devoted more attention to the in- Reig-^ ^f 
junctions of the church than to the affairs of his kingdom, Ethelwulf. 
judging by the fact that he chose the year when the Northmen wintered 
in Sheppey to pay a visit to the pope. On his return he visited the 
court of the Emperor Charles the Bald, and took as his second wife his 
daughter Judith. Ethelwulf died in 858, and left four sons, Ethelbald, 
Ethelbert, Ethelred, and Alfred, each of whom in turn Reig-n of 
became king. Ethelbald reigned first, making Ethelbert Ethelbald. 
under-king of the south-eastern kingdoms. His reign, however, only 
lasted two years, and then Ethelbert came to the throne. In his reign 
the victory was gained which followed the sack of Win- Rgig-n of 
Chester, and during the remainder of Ethelbert's life the Ethelbert. 
invaders confined their attention to the under-kingdoms of East- 
Anglia and Northumbria. However, in 866 he too died, and was 
succeeded by Ethelred, as it had been arranged, by the Reign of 
will of Ethelwulf and with the consent of the witan, Ethelred. 
that each of his sons should succeed in turn, to the exclusion of his 
grandchildren. 

The object of this arrangement may have been to secure the succes- 
sion of Alfred, who appears from his earliest youth to have given 
promise of his future excellence. Alfred was born at Wan- Early Life 
tage, in Berkshire, in 849 ; and, though it is hard to believe °^ Alfred, 
all the stories of his precocity, he soon attracted attention by his 
abilities. In 853 Ethelwulf sent his little son to Eome, and while there 
he was in some sort consecrated a king by Leo iv,, who had heard 
rumours of Ethelwulf's death. When Ethelwulf visited Eome Alfred 
returned home with him, and till the age of twenty led an active 
life, dividing his time between study, hunting, and the exercises of 
religion. Even as a young man he was noted for the seriousness of his 
character, and a copy of the Psalms prepared for his own use was his 
constant companion. In 868 he married Elswitha, the daughter of the 
ealdorman of the Gainas, a tribe whose name is still preserved in Gains- 
borough. Alfred, therefore, was twenty-two years of age and a married 
man when the great invasion took place. 

In 871 'the great army,' supported by its fleet, made its way up the valley 



54 Invasions of the Northmen 871 

of the Thames, and, following the practice of pitching their camp in the 

angle between two rivers, entrenched itself in the angle of ground between 

the Kennet and the Thames, close to the town of Reading. 

Great 

Invasion They then began their usual practice of plundering the 
ofWessex. ^.Q^^^j-^.y j^j^(^[ collecting the spoil into their camp. One of 
their bands, however, was defeated by Ethelwulf, the veteran ealdorman 
Battle of ^^ Berkshire ; and three days later Ethelred and Alfred, with 
Reading, youthful impetuosity, attempted to storm the camp itself. 
In this, however, they overrated their strength. Behind earthworks the 
Danes were invincible ; the assault was beaten off ; and the brave 
Ethelwulf was killed. Encouraged by this, the Danes sallied forth in 
Battle of force, but were met on the Berkshire downs at Ashdown by 
Ashdown. the wliole force of the West Saxons. There the invaders 
were completely routed, apparently owing to the adoption by Alfred of 
the method of forming his men in a close column of attack instead of 
fighting in loose order. The losses in these three engagements fell 
heavily on the English ; and a fortnight later, in trying to 
Basing. prevent an invasion of Hampshire, they were beaten at 
B tti f Basing ; and two months later, probably at Harden in Wilt- 
Marden. shire, they were again routed after a most stubborn en- 
Reign of counter. Here Ethelred appears to have been mortally 
wounded, and Alfred at once stepped into his place. To 

Battle of n^ake matters worse, the Danes received reinforcements, and 
Wilton. ' ' 

Alfred was beaten at Wilton. ' Nine general battles,' says 
the Chronicle^ ' were fought this year south of the Thames, besides 
which Alfred, the king's brother, and single ealdormen and king's thegns 
oftentimes made incursions on them, which are not counted.' 

However, the general result of the fighting seems to have discouraged 
the Danes, for the next year the camp at Reading was broken up and the 

army, though it did not quit the country, fell back on 

Northmen ^ ' . . . 

retire from London. Next year it passed into Lincolnshire, and in 874 
it drove Burhed, king of Mercia and brother-in-law of 
Alfred, from his kingdom and gave it to Ceolwulf, ' an unwise king's 
thegn,' to hold as tenant-at-will. Then one-half of ' the army,' under 
Halfdene, seized Northumbria and divided it among themselves and \ 
raided on the Picts and Strathclyde Britons ; while the other, under 
Guthrum, occupied Cambridge and prepared for another invasion of 
Wessex. 

This occurred in 877. The heathen men sailed through the Straits of 
Dover, landed at Wareham, and formed their fortified camp by drawing 
a trench between the rivers Frome and Piddle. This time Alfred was 



878 Alfred 55 

too wary to risk a repetition of the Reading disaster, so he contented 

himself with preventing phmder, and did it so effectively that at last 

the Danes came to terms. Some of them, however, broke 

their word and made their way by land to Exeter, where invasion of 

they were next year joined by the main body, which, however, ^thrum^^ 

was weakened by the loss of one hundred and twenty ships 

in a storm. Again Alfred kept to his blockading tactics, and with 

such success that the Danish army gave up the game ; and, terms having 

been made, it retired by land into Mercia and spent the autumn and 

early winter at Gloucester. 

At Christmas, however, the Danes were joined by a countryman, 
Hubba, who had been plundering in South Wales, and he persuaded 
Guthrum to renew the war. Accordingly, in the depth of winter, 
Guthrum broke up his camp and plunged into the heart of Wessex, while 
Hubba and his ships made for Devonshire. So swift were Guthrum's 
marches, that he was master of Chippenham before Alfred could oppose 
him ; and the king, seeing that it was useless to attempt to collect forces 
in the east of his kingdom while the Danes held the key of the position, 
retired into the great forest of Selwood, and waited till the return of 
spring should enable him to take the field with advantage ; and, mean- 
while, Hubba's force was cut to pieces by the men of Devonshire. 
Alfred made his headquarters at the isle of Athelney, a 
stronghold among the marshes of the river Parret ; and retires to 
while he kept up the spirits of his men by successful ^ "^•^' 
skirmishes, he fixed Brixton in Wiltshire as the place, and May 12th 
as the day, for the assembling of his great expedition. 

Sheltered by the Downs, or concealed from observation by the thickets 
of Selwood, Alfred's warriors made their way to the appointed spot, and, 
falling on the Danes at Edington, 878, put them to complete Battle of 
rout. From the field the Danes fled to their camp ; but, Edington. 
being separated from their fleet, they were soon starved into surrender, 
and Guthrum was compelled to enter into a permanent peace, and to be 
baptized as a Christian, which accordingly was done at Wedmore, a 
royal palace in Somerset. 

By the peace concluded at Wedmore the Watling Street was made 
the boundary of the English and Danish districts ; but in 886 Alfred 
took advantage of a partial rising of the Danes of East pg^^g of 
Anglia to secure a better military frontier on the south-east. Wedmore. 
The new boundary ran along the estuary of the Thames to the mouth of 
the Lea, along the Lea to its source, then across country to Bedford, and 
then along the Ouse till it crossed the Watling Street, and so on to the 



56 Invasions of the Northmen 878 

Welsh border. This gave Alfred a very strong frontier as against the 
East- Anglian Danes, and secured him possession of London and with it 
the command of the Thames. Between this boundary and the Tees the 
land was held by Halfdene and Guthrum, and by them was apportioned 
among their followers. The land between the Tees and the Forth, how- 
ever, which formed the old kingdom of Bernicia, still remained English, 
and was in the hands of a descendant of the ancient Northumbrian kings, 
who ruled as an ealdorman at Bamborough. 

What the settlement of the Northmen was like, it is exceedingly 

difficult to realise, because we have no means of knowing the proportion 

which existed between the English and Norse population ; 

of\hT'^*^'^ but, compared with the English conquest of Britain, and the 

Danish Norman conquest of England, it was much more like the 
Settlement. ^ o 7 

latter than the former. Between the conquerors and con- 
quered there was no radical diflFerence of blood or of speech, and the 
difference of religion was soon removed by the conversion of the new- 
comers to Christianity. However, the permanent results of the conquest 
showed themselves in several ways. In the first place, though the mode 
of local government in use among the Danes was much the same as among 
the English, so that the old courts went on as before, the use of Danish 
valuations for wergilds (sums paid in compensation for murder), and 
possibly the more frequent resort to trial by battle, gave to the laws of 
the Danish districts such a distinctive character that the district was 
long known as the Danelaw. 

The speech of the north, not only in place-names but also in the parlance 
of everyday life, is full of words and expressions which bear the stamp of 
their Danish origin ; and wherever we find the termination ' by,' ' thorpe,' 
or ' thwaite,' there we know that there was either a new settlement of 
men who used the Northern speech or that an old settlement became the 
property of a Norse settler ; while the dialect of the north, and especially 
the vocabulary of the farmyard, is as full of Norse terms as it well can be. 
Moreover, it is difficult to ascribe to anything else than the infusion of 
Norse blood the diff'erence of character which certainly exists between the 
bulk of the population of the north and similar classes in the south ; though 
here, and also in the language, the fact that, roughly speaking, the north 
is Anglian and the south is Saxon must not be left out of account. 

On Wessex the political efi'ect of the settlement of the Northmen was 

T, ,-.• , twofold. First, it cut off" from it the under-kingdoms that 

Political ' => 

Effects of the lay beyond the Watling Street ; and, secondly, it gave to 

the West-Saxon sovereigns in full sovereignty that part 

of Mercia and Essex which lay between their new frontier and the 



878 Alfred 57 

Thames. This included the towns of London, St. Albans, Oxford, 
Worcester, and Gloucester ; so that, if the peace of Wedmore reduced the 
area of Alfred's nominal dominions, it added considerably both to the 
area and importance of his own possessions. The new Mercia was 
intrusted by Alfred to the ealdorman Ethelred, who became the 
husband of his daughter Ethelfleda. Socially, the long struggle with 
the barbarians had been absolutely disastrous. In times such as those, 
when almost every year some part or other of the country was subjected 
to the full horrors of heathen war, the material prosperity of a nation, to 
say nothing of the amenities of civilisation, suffered heavily ; and, as it 
happened, the Danish invasions had fallen most severely on those of the 
national elements which were doing most for civilisation, on North- 
umbria, on the monasteries, which had been sacked again and again, 
and upon the towns. Alfred himself is our authority for the melancholy 
condition in which he found his kingdom ; and his actions show the obliga- 
tion he was under of building up society almost from its foundations, 
when the cessation of hostilities gave him the opportunity of playing 
the statesman. To the work of reconstruction Alfred at once devoted 
his energies ; and during the remainder of his reign, whatever were the 
distractions which came upon him, one aspect or other of this great 
undertaking was never absent from his mind. 

With this view he made his own court a model of the life which he 
wished to see adopted by his subjects ; and as it moved about the 
kingdom from one royal estate to the next, men might see 
in it an example of economy both of wealth and time, of organises 
strenuous and well-regulated endeavour, of healthy amuse- ^^ King- 
ment and sober recreation, of womanhood respected and 
the young well cared-for, of learning honoured and frivolity discouraged, 
of wholesome patriotism free from insular prejudice against foreigners, of 
real piety carried into everyday life — in short, of the highest ideal of life. 
Of the Englishmen by whom it was adorned, the greatest were 
Ethelred of Mercia, the bishops Plegmund, Werfrith, and 
Denewulf ; and of foreigners, John the Old Saxon, Grimbald the Frank, 
Otliere the Norseman ; and last, but not least, his biographer, Asser the 
Welshman. With these men his constant talk was of progress, of educa- 
tion, of social and ecclesiastical reconstruction ; for Alfred believed that 
no side of national life was unworthy of the attention of a king. 

His first care was to remodel the defences of the country. So 
early as 875 he had employed a fleet, and his ships had 
proved useful during the last campaign. He now put the 
navy upon a permanent footing, arranged that each part of the kingdom 



58 Invasions of the Northmen 878 

should do its fair share towards providing ships, and had the new vessels 
built on lines suggested by himself. To man the vessels and to instruct 
his countrymen, he took into his service Frisians, Britons, and Danes, 
the most notable of whom was Othere the Norseman, who made a cele- 
brated voyage of discovery round the North Cape and into the White 
Sea. So far the brunt of the fighting had fallen on the fyrd, led by such 
captains as the brave Ethelwulf of Berkshire, and on the king's thegns ; 
but Alfred, having experienced the difficulties which arose from the 
unwillingness of the men to remain long from home, organised the force 
on the basis of one-third of the able-bodied soldiers serving during the 
summer season for one month, and staying at home two — 
^' a plan which not only removed the old trouble, but also 
added to the efficiency of the troops by giving them regular train- 

His Fort- ing. He also reconstructed on improved principles the 

resses. fortresses of the country, which had recently proved to be 

so inefficient ; and, lastly, he rebuilt and refortified London so as to bar 
the passage up the Thames. 

Alfred was a rigid enforcer of justice. With the aid of his wise men, 
he not only drew up a new and improved code of law, but also insisted 

_ upon his ealdormen and reeves making themselves com- 

The Admi- ^ . . ,..,.., . 

nistration petent to administer their judicial functions, and restored 

oi Justice 

the efficiency of the local courts. He'also put into working 
order the principle of mutual responsibility, throwing upon the kindred, 
the lord, or the guild brethren of a malefactor responsibility for his 
crime. For education Alfred did much by the foundation and en- 
couragement of schools ; and, being well aware of the part played by 
books in moulding the character of readers, he took pains to provide his 
subjects with a library, which he had prepared in their own tongue, for 
he was not one of those who despised translations, but thought that 
Revival of great ideas might as well be conveyed in one language as in 
Learning, another. For this purpose, with the aid of Grimbald and 
Asser, he paraphrased or translated Orosius's work on Geography and 
History, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Boethius's Consolations of Philo- 
sophy, Gregory's Pastoral, and some selections from the works of St. 
Augustine of Hippo. 

One other literary legacy of priceless value Alfred bequeathed to his 

countrymen. This was the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the oldest history 

Anglo- ^^ ^^^ °^" tongue possessed by any European nation. Realis- 

Saxon ing the value of history in the formation of national spirit, 

Chronicle. .{r- ^ i ,-, , -, „ , . ^ ' 

Altred gave orders that the events of each year smce the 
settlement of the English should be collected from the best sources and 



592 Alfred 59 

irranged in the form of a chronicle, and that henceforward the narrative 
)f contemporary events should be kept up year by year, so that hence- 
brward the people of England should have access to an authentic 
larrative of the chief transactions in the history of their own race. In 
ifter years this was carried out, though not so fully as Alfred intended ; 
)ut, still, down to the Norman Conquest the Chronicle is the chief 
uithority for the history of affairs. 

The condition of the church filled Alfred wath anxiety. Even before 
he invasions it seems to have deteriorated much from what it had been 
n the days of Theodore and Bede. South of the Humber there were in 
Alfred's young days few clergy who could 'turn a Latin letter into 
English, and north of it not many.' Then, however, the churches had 
)een full of treasure, and the monastic libraries full of books ; but now 
hat the churches and abbeys were all ' waste and burnt up,' things were 
vorse than ever. Accordingly, the king placed over the church 
'hurch the best bishops, English and foreign, whom he Reform, 
iould find, and insisted on their doing their duty ; he built a model 
ibbey for monks at Athelney, and another for nuns at Shaftesbury, 
;etting John the Old Saxon over the one and his own daughter over the 
)ther ; and he also set apart a large share of his income for the restora- 
;ion and equipment of other religious houses and churches. 

With the exception of the rising in 885, which was stimulated by a 
:resh arrival of Danes, peace continued till 892 ; but in that year a 
^reat army of adventurers from all parts of Northern Europe, which had 
for years been the terror of the Empire, led by Hastings, ' who,' in the 
Dpinioh of a French chronicler, was 'the worst man that Later Wars 
3ver was born, and who has done most harm in this age,' ^^*^ Danes, 
came to England. One part of it entered the Thames, and the other 
made a camp at Appledore in Sussex. In face of this danger Alfred 
called out half his forces, instead of the usual third, and, placing himself 
half-way between the two camps, adopted his old tactics of checking 
plunder, and so starving the marauders out. This plan forced the Danes 
to evacuate their first positions and to concentrate near the mouth of 
the Lea, where their camp was stormed by the Londoners. Then 
another force of Danes appeared at Exeter, and, while Alfred was 
engaged with them, the main body, reinforced by adventurers from all 
parts of the Danelaw, contrived to pass London, and, plundering as they 
went, passed up the whole course of the Thames, and, Battle of 
crossing to the Severn, ascended it as far as Buttington in Buttington. 
Montgomeryshire. There they were attacked by an overwhelming force 
of English and Welsh, led by Ethelred, the ealdorman of London, which 



60 Invasio7is of the Northmen 90i 

routed them so eflfectively that they fled with all speed to Essex. How- 
ever, the next year they were again at Chester, and after plundering the 
North Welsh returned to Essex, and in 896 they sailed up the Lea, 
Alfred was in command, and by making two fortresses, which com- 
manded a narrow part of the river, completely blocked the return of the 
ships. Seeing this, the Danes made another effort to get into Wales, 
where they seem to have hoped to settle, and marched as far as Bridge- 
north ; but again Alfred's tactics wore out their patience, and at last, in 
897, after having kept all England in terror for nearly five years, the 
great army broke up, ' some for East-Anglia, some for 

Final Defeat t^ , / . . , , i 

of the North- Northumbria ; and they who were moneyless procured 
'"^"' themselves ships there, and went southward over sea to the 

Seine.' One more attempt to land near the Isle of Wight brought the 
efforts of the army to a close, and after its dispersal Hastings and his 
followers disappear from English history. Four years after this great 
deliverance Alfred died, in 901, and left behind him almost a unique 
reputation as a warrior, a statesman, and a man. 

While Guthrum and his Northmen had been effecting their settlement 
of Northern England, another body of Northmen, under Ralf or RoUo, 

had formed a similar settlement in the north of Gaul, and 
of the North- Compelled the king of the Franks to recognise their right to 
Normandy ^ territory which stretched on both sides of the river Seine. 

The Normans, as these settlers in Gaul came to be called, 
soon gave up their own language for the debased Latin which was just 
passing into French, and otherwise showed themselves wonderful adepts 
at adopting the civilisation of their new country. 



CHIEF DA TES. 

First invasion of the Northmen, . 

Great invasion of Wessex, . 

Battle of Ashdown, 

Battle of Edington, 

Treaty of Chippenham or Wedmore, 

Northmen settle in Normandy, . 



A.D. 

787 
871 
871 
878 
878 
876 



I 



CHAPTER VII 



RECONQUEST OF THE DANELAW 



ENGLISH KINGS 



Edward the Elder, a.d. 902-925 
Athelstan, . . 925-940 
Edmund, . . . 940-946 



Edred, . . a.d. 946-955 
Edwy, . . . 955-959 
Edgar, . . . 959-975 



Edward the Martyr, . . 975-978 

Edward the Elder begins an offensive War against the Danes, and secures his 
Conquests by Fortifications — Edward is acknowledged Overlord by the 
whole Island — Battle of Brunanburh — Conquest of Strathclyde — The 
Policy of Edgar and Dunstan. 

On the death of Alfred, his eldest son Edward, commonly called Edward 
the Elder, became king of the West-Saxons. His accession was opposed 
by his cousin Ethelwald, the son of Alfred's elder brother 
Ethelred ; but this prince found little or no sujDport among Edward the 
the English, and had to take refuge among the Northumbrian ^^' 
Danes. By them he was accepted as king, and, crossing into East-Anglia, 
planned an invasion of Wessex. The Danes crossed the Thames at 
Cricklade and harried Wiltshire, but were forced to retreat by the 
strategy of Edward, who met their invasion of Wessex by an attack upon 
their own settlements across the Watling Street. Returning in hot haste, 
Ethelwald and his friends threw themselves on the Kentish division 
of Edward's army, and in the fight Ethelwald was slain ; so that, though 
the Danes were victorious, the movement in his favour came to an end. 
Peace was then made, and appears to have been fairly kept till 910. 

Edward the Elder was not so distinguished as his father in the arts of 
peace, but he was one of the greatest warriors that ever sat on the English j 
throne. Discarding the title of king of the West-Saxons, he styled him- / 
self king of the English or Anglo-Saxons, and set before 
himself the task of bringing the whole island under his sway. 
In this he was aided by his sister Ethelfleda and her husband Ethelred, 

61 



62 Eeconquest of the Danelaw 90i 

the ealdorman of the Mercians, who had taken a most distinguished part 
in the fighting of the last reign. 

The strength of the Danes south of the Humber lay in two districts : 
the valley of the Trent, where they held the strong towns of Leij:iester, 
The Five Nottingham, and Derby, which with Stamford and Lincoln 
Boroughs. ^ygj.g l^nown as the Five Danish Boroughs ; and the valley 
of the uppier Ouse, where they held Northampton, Huntingdon, Cam- 
bridge, and Bedford. In 907 the first forward stej) was taken by repair- 
inof the Roman fortifications at Chester, which had lain desolate since the 
victory of Ethelfrith. Chester, on the Watling Street, commanded the 
crossing of the Dee and the shortest road from Northumbria to Wales ; 
it was also the best port by which the Northmen of Ireland could com- 
municate with their friends in England, and was therefore a place of 
great strategical importance. In 912 Ethelred died, and Edward took 
into his own hands the lower part of the Thames valley with the towns 
of Oxford and London, while his sister, who was now called the Lady of 
the Mercians, ruled the rest of her husband's territory. The 

Edward's .„'.„. . . 

Fortifica- busmess of lortification now went on apace ; sometmies it 
took the form of casting up a great mound in some defensible 
position, sometimes of repairing Roman work, and in a few cases towns 
were surrounded with new stone walls. In these, new settlers were 
placed with orders to defend the adjoining territory, and in this way the 
work of reconquest, if slow, was sure. Ethelfleda secured her end of 
the Watling Street against the Danes by the fortresses of Stafford, Tam- 
worth, Eddisbury, and Runcorn, and against the Welsh by that of 
Bridgenorth ; in like manner Edward built Hertford, Witham, and 
Buckingham. Warwick was built by Ethelfleda to guard the Fosseway, 
and, the line of communication being secure, an advance 
Danes^south ^as made against the Danish strongholds. Edward took 
of the Bedford and Huntingdon, and compelled the men of 

Northampton and Cambridge to keep the peace ; Ethelfleda 
captured Derby and Leicester. In 918 Ethelfleda died, and then Edward 
took the whole of Mercia into his hands. The fall of Nottingham and 
Stamford followed, and at these places and at Bedford Edward built a 
new English quarter to keep the old inhabitants in check. His next 
step was to push forward from Chester and seize Manchester on the road 
to York, and to fortify Bakewell in the Peak country, which secured the 
passes into Northumbria and connected Manchester with Derby and 
Nottingham. That done, he seems to have been preparing for a fresh 
invasion of the north, when he was met at Dore, on the road from Bake- 
well to Sheffield, by offers of submission. These came not only from 



937 Edward and Athelstan 63 

the Danes of York, but also from the English kingdom of Bernicia, 
Avhich had never been overrun by the Danes, from the 
Welsh of Strathclyde, and even from the king of the ov^fo^rdship 
Scots. All these swore to take him as 'father and lord.' fg^^"^^" 
As in 922 he had been taken as overlord by the three ^^^ whole 
princes of North Wales, Edward had now succeeded in 
establishing some sort of authority over the whole island, except, per- 
haps, over the Northmen, who occupied settlements in the extreme 
north, and who had long been the terror of the Scots 
north of the Huniber ; however, he can hardly be re- Edward^*^ °^ 
garded as having had much authority, though at a later date Oyeriord- 
very great stress was laid on this submission of the Scots. 

Within his own dominions Edward carried out the work of organisation 
which his father had begun. The old tribal divisions of the Midland 
English, which had been obliterated by the Danes, were 
replaced by a new division into shires, of which Edward's tion of new 
forts and the chief Danish towns became as a rule the ^^^^* 
centres, and give such names as Warwickshire, Bedfordshire, Hert- 
fordshire. This rearrangement is a matter of inference ; but of the 
chief events of Edward's reign we have the fullest information from the 
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which in his time is singularly graphic. 

Edward died in 925, and was succeeded by his son Athelstan. This 
king was a man of great courage and ability, and under him the work of 
consolidating the kingdom went on without interruption. Rgign of 
Athelstan's first act was to give his sister in marriao-e to Athelstan. 
Sihtric, the Danish king of Northumbria ; and on his death, two years 
later, Athelstan took his kingdom and drove into exile his two sons. In 
the south Athelstan extended his frontier by destroying the inde- 
pendence of the Welsh inhabitants of Exeter, and making the Tamar the 
boundary between England and Cornwall. He also exacted a money 
tribute from the princes of Wales. Trouble, however, soon arose in the 
north. Constantine, king of Scots, aided the sons of Sihtric, and in 933 
Athelstan invaded that country and apparently reduced Constantine to 
submission ; but in 937 * the hoary warrior, the old deceiver,' was 
again in arms and at the head of a conspiracy in which the Danes, the 
Scots, and the Welsh of Strathclyde banded themselves together with the 
aid of the Northmen of Ireland to throw off the English yoke. Athelstan 
and his brother Edmund, then a lad of fifteen, met them at 
the battle of Brunanburh, and completely routed the con- Brunan- 
federates in a fight so bloody that it was known for years as 
'the great battle,' and was celebrated by the chronicler in one of the 



64 Reconquest of the Danelaw 937 

finest outbursts of Old English song. Of the details of the fight, and 
even of its geographical position, we are, however, ignorant ; some fixing 
the neighbourhood of the Huraber, others that of the Mersey, as its site. 
Great, however, as was his victory, it is doubtful whether Athelstan's 
power over the Danelaw was as great after it as it had been before. 
The importance of Athelstan's position and the high estimation in which 
Greatness of ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ neighbours IS shown by the marriages 
Atheistan. contracted by his sisters. One was the wife of Charles the 
Simple ; another of Otto, son of Henry the Fowler ; and a third of Hugh 
the Great, Count of Paris. Like his grandfather, Atheistan was a law- 
giver, and portions of his code, which have come down to us, shed much 
light on the social conditions of the time. 

Atheistan died in 940, and was succeeded by his brother Edmund, 
aged eighteen. His accession was the signal for a general rising of the 
Reign of Danes, and both those of Northumbria and those of the Five 
Edmund. Boroughs threw ofi" their allegiance and sent for Anlaf of 
Ireland, who had fought at Brunanburh, to be their king. However, 
after some fighting Edmund regained his authority in both districts. 
Conquest of ^^^ chief exploit of Edmund was the conquest of Strath- 
Strathciyde. clyde. This he effected in 945, when the Welsh king Dun- 
mail was routed in a pass between Grasmere and Thirlmere, where the 
memorial pile of stones raised on the field may be seen at the present 
Strath 1 de ^^^' Edmund granted Strathclyde to Malcolm, king of 
granted to Scots, to be held by him ' as his fellow-worker as well by sea 
King of ' as by land.' The district so dealt with comprised all the 
^°*^' land that lay between the river Derwent in Cumberland 

and the Firth of Clyde, and was bounded, inland, by the Pennine range 
of hills and the forest of Ettrick. How far Strathclyde was then really 
British is unknown ; now, at any rate, the place-names, though many of 
them are Celtic, point to a large immigration of English and Northmen, 
and the only relic of the Celtic speech is preserved in the numerals used 
by some of the shepherds for counting sheep. It is thought that the 
anglicising of the district was also facilitated by a large emigration of the 
Celtic inhabitants to Wales. Edmund had only reigned six years when 
he was slain by a robber ; but his title of Magnificent— that is, the doer 
of great deeds — marks the estimation in which he was held by his 
countrymen. 

Edmund was succeeded by his brother Edred. The reign of this king, 

Reign of though short, is in every way remarkable, for it brought to 

Edred. ,^ c\o^q the long struggle with the Danelaw, and once more 

established the authority of the West-Saxon kings upon a firm footing. 



955 Edmund, Edred, and Edwy 65 

The method of his accession serves to mark the progress that had already 
been made towards national unity ; for Edred was chosen by a witena- 
gemot in which sat Englishmen, Welshmen, and Danes, and he was con- 
secrated by the two archbishops of Canterbury and York. The north 
submitted quietly to his rule, and the Scots renewed their oath of 
allegiance. Aided, however, by their kinsmen in Denmark, the 
Northumbrians, with Archbishop Wulfstan at their head, ventured to 
throw off their allegiance ; but Edred's vengeance was so severe that sub- 
mission soon followed, and the archbishop was removed to a less dangerous 
see in the south "of England. Then Edred became full king in North- 
umbria, and the send-independence of the north came to an end. In the 
last year of his short reign Edred took the title not only of king of the 
Anglo-Saxons but of C?esar of Britain — an assumption which marks the 
attainment of the highest dignity possessed by the Old English kings. 
Instead of dividing his new dominions into shires, as had been done 
with the southern parts of the Danelaw, the region north Ne-^ 
of the Humber was divided into two earldoms, one of Earldoms, 
which, now or a little later, was intrusted to the king of Scots ; the 
other, from the Tweed to the Humber, was given to Osulf, an English- 
man. Edred was never a strong man, and after a reign of nine years he 
died in 955. 

During the reign of Edred his chief adviser and friend was Dunstan, 
the most remarkable English subject who lived before the Norman Con- 
quest. This wonderful man was born in Somerset and 
educated at the monastery of Glastonbury, where he had the 
advantage of the teaching of the learned Irishmen who were in the habit 
of visiting that shrine. Being by birth well connected, Dunstan soon 
made his appearance at court ; but the jealousy of his talents which was 
shown by the other courtiers made his life so unpleasant that he was 
forced to withdraw for a time, and became a monk. Edmund, however, 
recalled him to court and made him abbot of Glastonbury, and under 
his successor Dunstan acted as the leading adviser of the king, ac- 
companied him on his campaigns, and became guardian of the royal 
treasure. The rest of his time was given to education, and he and his 
friend Ethelwold, abbot of Abingdon, set on foot a revival of learning 
in the south of England which may be compared with the similar 
movement in Northumbria of which Caedmon and Bede were the chief 
ornaments. 

At Edred's death the crown reverted to Edwy, the elder son of King 
Edmund. The new sovereign was a boy of fifteen, whose character was 
quite unformed, and he appears to have been a mere tool in the hands of 

E 



66 Reconquest of the Danelaw 955 

his immediate relations, who were hostile to the influence of Dunstan and 
his friends. The foolish conduct of Edwy, who escaped from the solemnity 
Reign of ^^ *^^ coronation feast, and was by the orders of the witan 
Edwy. dragged back by Dunstan, completed the breach. Dunstan 
was exiled, while Edwy offended the clergy by marrying a lady within 
the prohibited degrees of relationship. At the same time he weakened his 
power by reviving the office of ealdorman of Mercia, which had been 
abolished by Edward the Elder, so parting with direct authority over all 
England north of the Thames. Meanwhile, Odo the archbishop of Canter- 
bury had denounced the king's marriage as incestuous, and a general 
revolt followed. All the earldoms declared for Edgar, the king's younger 
brother, and Edwy only retained possession of that part of England 
which lay south of the Thames. The revolution showed how weak the 
English kingshij) really was ; but the division was soon healed by the 
death of Edwy, and the severed portions were reunited under Edgar. 
Under Edgar Dunstan again became powerful, and it is difficult to say 
how much of the policy of Edgar's reign is due to the king and how 
much to the minister. 

Edgar was fortunate both at home and abroad. The wars waged 
against the Danes by the Emperor Otto gave emplojanent to the free- 
Reign of footers of the north. At home his wise administration 
Edgar. removed the causes of disaffection and conciliated his 
various subjects, while his vigorous enforcement of justice, and the un- 
tiring energy which he displayed in seeing with his own eyes the carrying 
out of his injunctions secured for his reign a long reputation as a time 
Edgar's ^f peace and prosperity. Edgar's policy seems to have been 
Policy. iq allow each of the great earls to manage the affairs of his 
own earldom, while he himself confined his attention to the security of 
the realm and the administration of his own district of Wessex. In 
pursuance of this plan, every summer saw Edgar inspecting his fleet and 
arranging for a complete circumnavigation of the coast with a view to 
the suppression of piracy ; each winter found him travelling from place 
to place seeing with his own eyes what was going on, and finding 
remedies for all abuses. Well, however, as this arrangement worked in 
the hands of a powerful king like Edgar, it obviously was calculated to 
lead to very difierent results in the hands of a weaker man ; for earls so 
free as these would naturally strive after independence, and such in- 
dependence would naturally lead to anarchy. Indeed, this was exactly 
what happened all over the world wherever this tempting plan was 
adopted ; and, consequently, its adoption in England makes a turning- 
point in the history of the Old English monarchy. 



I 



975 Edgar and Edward 67- 

Another change of Edgar's reign which led to important consequences 

was the revival of monasticism. Before the invasions of the Northmen 

both the north and south of England had been thickly Monasticism 

studded with monasteries, and the monks had played a revived. 

^reat part in the advancement of civilisation. But the barbarities of the 

Danes had proved their ruin, and even in Wessex very few had survived. 

Moreover, the temper of the English had been setting against a monastic 

ife, and when Alfred founded his monastery at Athelney he was obliged 

:o bring his monks from abroad ; though he found English ladies who 

»vere willing to become nuns at Shaftesbury and Hyde. Similar causes 

lad produced a decadence of the same kind in Europe, when, in the tenth 

century, a revival was brought about by the piety of the monks of the 

ibbey of Clugny, in Burgundy ; and their example fired other monasteries. 

The influence of the movement began to make itself felt in ^^, . ,, 

° Ethelwold. 

Endand under Edgar. Ethelwold, abbot of Abingdon, was 

•^ ^ , , . Oswald, 

'ull of it ; Oswald, bishop of Worcester, had himself lived in 

I Clugniac house ; and Dunstan during his exile had been an inmate of a 

itrict abbey in Ghent. Accordingly Ethelwold and Oswald, with the 

issistance of Edgar and the approval of Dunstan, set on foot a monastic 

-evival in England which took the form both of rebuilding ancient, but 

'uined, monasteries such as Ely, Peterborough, and Crowland, and also 

)f restoring the use of the monastic rule in cathedrals where it had 

brmerly been in use. The number of new monasteries founded, how- 

3ver, does not appear to have been large, and the north was hardly 

iflfected by the movement. 

There seems, however, to have been much difference of opinion as to 
.he merit of the new movement, and in some places the changes met 
with a vigorous resistance. On the whole it was thought that the new 
nonasticism was a good thing. It was certainly favourable to learning ; 
md from this time forward the duty of keeping up the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle was regularly undertaken by the monasteries, so Chronicle, 
bhat the entries, which had become meagre in the extreme, again expand 
into valuable contemporary narratives, the most useful of which were 
:hose kept at Abingdon, Worcester, and Peterborough. 

In 975 Edgar died. His son Edward, who was not more than thirteen, 
Ijecame king, but three years later he was murdered by a party which 
liad always been in favour of the accession of his half- Reign of 
' br4)ther Ethelred ; and Dunstan, though he remained arch- Edward, 
bishop of Canterbury, was deprived of all political influence. This 
event brings to a close a well-deflned period of English history, for with 
'the accession of Ethelred the invasions of the Danes were renewed, and 



68 lleconquest of the Danelaw 975 

ultimately developed into an attempt to effect tlie conquest of the 
country. 



CHIEF DATES. 

A.D. 

Reconquest of the Danelaw, 910-924: 

Edward the Elder hecomes overlord of the 

whole island, 924 

Battle of Brunanburh, 937 

Strathclyde conquered, .... 945 

Dunstan becomes Archbishop of Canterbury, 960 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE DANISH CONQUEST 

ENGLISH KINGS 
Etlielred the Un- Canute, . a.d. 1017-1035 



ready, . . A.D. 978-1015 
Edmund Ironsides, 1016-1017 



Harold I., . . 1035-1040 
Hardicanute, . 1040-1042 



Renewal of the Danish Invasions — Feeble Resistance of the English — Canute's 
Reign — Rise of Godwin — Reigns of Harold and Hardicanute. 

The accession of Ethelred was followed by the virtual exclusion of 
3unstan from power, and the direction of affairs fell into the hands of 
lis opponents. When Ethelred grew up he showed himself Reign of 
.0 be the worst sovereign of his race— vicious, idle, cruel, Ethelred li, 
11-advised, and unlucky in everything he undertook. It is, however, 
mfair to throw upon Ethelred responsibility for all the disasters of his 
ceign ; something must be allowed for general causes, and it is doubtful 
ivhether the skill of even Alfred or Edgar could have stemmed the tide 
Df misfortunes which Ethelred had to meet. 

The Northmen, instead of being a mere group of scattered tribes, 
had now settled down into the three powerful kingdoms of Norway, 
Denmark, and Sweden ; and while the Swedes directed their 
attacks upon Eussia and the southern shores of the Baltic invasions of 
Sea, the Norwegians and Danes, sometimes separately and ^|n^°^^^" 
sometimes in unison, brought all their forces to bear upon 
the British Isles. Moreover, the Northmen of the Danelaw sympathised 
with the new comers, and gave them active assistance ; the hardly 
smouldering jealousy of the ealdorman broke out into oj^en flame ; local 
jealousy was rife ; and for some unexplained reason Edgar's fleet seems 
to have disappeared, so that the Northmen came and went at will. 

The invasions began in 980 by the plundering of Cheshire, Thanet, 
and Southampton, where 'most part of the townsmen were slain or 
made captive.' For seventeen years no competent leader seems to have 

C9 



70 The Danish Conquest 980 

arisen, and the country became perfectly demoralised by the atrocities 

of the ubiquitous Northmen. Single shires and ealdormen fought -well ; 

but, in the words of the Chronicle. ' no shire would help 

Weakness ... 

of the other,' and no one seemed able to organise a national resist- 

Enghs , 2in.Q,Q. Dunstan died in 988, and his successor Sigiric enjoys 
the sinister distinction of being the first to propose that the Danes 
should be bought off by a money payment. Then a treacherous attempt 
was made to ' betrap ' the enemy after the conclusion of a truce ; but 
the plan was betrayed by Elfric, the most trusted of the king's ealdor- 
men. In 993 Bamborough was stormed, and the country north and 
south of the Humber was pillaged ; but when an army was collected, it 
was ' the leaders first of all who began the flight.' At last Ethelred 
contrived to divide his assailants by making a separate treaty with Olaf, 
.0 king of the Norwegians, who ever after kept the peace ; and in 1002 he 
secured the neutrality of the Normans by a marriage with Emma, the 
sister of their duke Richard. However, a massacre of all the Danes 
who had recently settled in England, which was carried out on St. 
Brice's day, served only to exasperate Sweyn of Denmark, whose sister 
had been put to death. His attacks went on as before, and constant 
gifts of money and provisions only served to whet the appetite of the 
invaders. Throughout this miserable time the only bright spots are 
supplied by the valour of the Londoners, who held their town during a 
succession of sieges, and throughout the whole reign blocked the road 
up the Thames, and by the conduct of individual ealdormen like Briht- 
noth of Essex and the brave Ulfcytel of East Anglia, who 
gave the Danes ' worse hand-play than they ever had before 
among the English.' The actions of these heroes, however, only serve to 
place in stronger light the ignominy of Ethelred, who never seems to have 
adventured his person in battle, and whom the Chronicle describes in 1005 
as 'beginning to consider ' what could be done after fifteen years of disaster. 
However, in 1007 an able man, Eadric, became ealdorman of Mercia. 
His low birth made him distasteful to the nobles, his avarice is shown 

by his nickname of Streona or the Grasper, and he was 
Eadric. "^ ^ 

undoubtedly treacherous ; but he does seem to have made 
some eff'ort to turn the tide. The want of a fleet was sujDplied by the con- 
tributions of the whole country ; but when it assembled, the quarrels of 
the leaders and an unlucky storm dashed the hopes of the nation, and ' it 
Ravages of seemed as if it had been all hopeless.' The country became 
the Danes, more demoralised than ever ; and the Danes marched 
hither and thither, burning, ravaging, and slaying, just as they pleased. 
At length, in 1013, Sweyn came over in person and attempted a 



.016 Ethelred II. 71 

brmal conquest. Sailing up the Trent to Gainsborough, he received 
^here the submission of the Northumbrians and of the men of the five 
Danish boroughs, and took hostages from every shire. Then sweyn taken 
le advanced, phindering as he went, across the Watling ^^ King, 
street, and received the submission of the Western thegns ; and, finally, 
vhen even the Londoners had given up the task of resistance as hope- 
ess, ' the whole country held him as full king.' Abandoned by his 
subjects, Ethelred took refuge in Normandy ; but within a year Sweyn 
lied, and then the English sent again for Ethelred, assuring him ' that 
10 lord was dearer than their own lord, if he would rule 
:hem better than he had done.' Accordingly he returned ; of Ethel- 
3ut his health was failing, and for the short remainder of ^^ ' 
lis life the real power was divided between his son Edmund, who from 
[lis strength and courage was called Ironside, and Eadric the Grasper. 
The two, however, were jealous of each other, and there was little more 
inity than before. Meanwhile the leadership of the Danes fell to 
Swejm's son Canute, an able and enterprising man. He soon renewed 
the war, was joined by the traitor Eadric, and Northumbria ' submitted 
to him for need.' 

In 1016 Ethelred died, and all England except London chose Canute 
as king. Edmund, however, was supported by the brave Londoners, 
and he soon showed what could be done by a really national Reign of 
leader. Withdrawing himself to the forest of Selwood, he Edmund ii.; 
appealed to the descendants of the men who beforetime had rallied round 
the great Alfred. With a small force he put Canute to flight in a battle 
at Pen Selwood, and, success bringing followers to his ranks, he again 
routed the Danes in a hard-fought battle at Shirestone. Battle of 
The importance of this victory is shown by the fact that Shirestone. 
the traitor Eadric, who had fought for the Danes, thought it advisable to 
change sides, and, wonderful to relate, was received into favour, ' than 
which,' says the Chronicle, ' nothing could be more ill-advised.' Men 
from the most distant shires now came to Edmund's aid, and with a 
really national force he defeated the Danes at Brentford, 

11- cTi 11 PI- Battles of 

raised the siege oi London, and by a tourth victory at Brentford 

Otford drove a large body of them into the Isle of Sheppey. ^" t or . 

Then, crossing the Thames, he attacked Canute's main force at As- 

sandun in Essex. The English were fighting with every Battle of 

hope of success when the traitor Eadric, who was said to Assandun. 

have sold himself to Canute, led his followers from the field and ruined 

the chance of victory. Edmund continued the fight till nightfall, and 

even by moonlight, and was only forced to retreat by the death of his 



72 The Danish Conquest loie 

bravest warriors. He then withdrew into Gloucestershire, and another 

battle was imminent, when the Witan, acting apparently under the 

_. . . r advice of Eadric, proposed to secure peace by dividing the 

the King- kingdom. Edmund unwillingly gave his consent, and it 

was arranged that he should keep Wessex and East Anglia 

as over-king ; and that Canute as under-king should receive Mercia and 

Northumbria. However, within a few weeks Edmund died, murdered, 

according to one story, by Eadric, and then Canute became king of all 

England. Whether, had he lived, Edmund would have rivalled Alfred 

Death of ^s a ruler it is impossible to say ; but he certainly rivalled 

Edmund, j^j^^ exploits as a warrior, and nothing but the miserable 

treachery of Eadric deprived him of complete victory. The story of his 

brief triumph is the best commentary on the imbecility of Etlielred, 

and shows that it was not so much the degeneracy of Englishmen as the 

incompetence of the central government that had been responsible for 

the disasters of his reign. 

Canute began to reign in 1017 ; and though his early life had been 
stained by many acts of treachery and violence, his character as he grew 
Reign of older underwent a change, and ultimately he became an 
Canute. excellent sovereign. Like Julius Csesar, he possessed the 
faculty of attaching to himself nations whom he had conquered in battle, 
and he soon made Englishmen respect and trust him just as though he 
had been one of themselves. This feeling was reciprocal, and Canute 
frequently promoted Englishmen to bishoprics in his hereditary dominions 
and employed them in his Continental wars. 

As elected king of the English, Canute regarded himself as inheriting 

the imperial rights of his predecessors. He enforced the supremacy over 

„, « ,. the Welsh, and he compelled Malcolm, king of the Scots, 

His Policy. i , • , • . 

to do homage, with his under-kings. His views of dominion, 
however, extended beyond the shores of Britain, and he designed to 
create a northern empire which was to include Norway, Denmark, and 
England, just as the Eoman Empire of the West had been revived by 
Charles the Great. He was already king of England and Denmark, and 
in 1028 he conquered Norway. His dominions, however, fell asunder at 
his death, but the idea of [an empire of the north has not been without 
its influence on the affairs of Europe. Canute's first care was to get rid 
of the surviving members of the royal family. Edmund's baby children 
were sent to the king of Sweden, who passed them on to Stephen, king 
of Hungary, where, contrary to Canute's intentions, they were carefully 
brought up ; Edwy, Edmund's brother, was outlawed and soon after- 
wards slain ; and Canute conciliated the Normans and g-uarded himself 



1021 Canute 73 

against the two sons of Ethelred and Enama by a strange marriage with 
their mother, who came to England and left her children behind her in 
Normandy. Determined to show that he trusted the English, Canute 
dismissed his Danish fleet after paying the sailors by levying a land-tax 
called the Danegeld ; and the only force he retained was his famous 
bodyguard of house-carls, into which he enlisted Englishmen and Danes 
indiff'erently. This force, which was in fact a small The Hus- 
standing army organised under strict military discipline, '^^^^s- 
was perhaps imitated from the guard maintained by the Greek emperors 
at Constantinople, in which many Norsemen served. 

Canute retained the great earldoms. Over the East-Auglians he 
placed Thurkill, a Dane, who had been his right-hand man at the battle 
of Assandun ; over the Northumbrians he set his own The Earl- 
brother-in-law, Eric ; Eadric Streona kept Mercia ; and the ^°"^s. 
king himself acted as earl of Wessex. This arrangement, however, 
did not last long. At Christmas, 1013, Eadric Streona, of whose 
power and character Canute must have been well aware, was put to 
death, as one chronicle says, ' very rightfully ' ; and his earldom was 
given to Leofwine, an Englishman. In 1021 Thurkill was banished from 
England, but made viceroy of Denmark. The earldom of the Northum- 
brians was restored to the ancient line ; and another Englishman, Godwin, 
was made earl of the West-Saxons. 

Godwin, who for the next forty years was the most prominent figure in 
English affairs, seems to have raised himself to favour by his own exertions 
and ability. He is described to us as a man sagacious 

1 . ,.,. . , . o Godwin. 

m counsel, strenuous m war, duigent m the transaction of 
business, weighty in speech, of winning manners, and of admirable 
temper. His early history is unknown, but at the very beginning of 
Canute's reign he was in high favour, and selected to be the king's 
companion on his first journey to Denmark. There he won further 
distinction, and on his return married Gytha, a connection of Canute 
himself. After this he was raised to the earldom of Wessex, which 
remained in his family till his son Harold became king of the English. 
For the remainder of Canute's reign Godwin was the king's most trusted 
servant, his adviser when in England, his representative when business 
required the king's absence abroad. 

With Canute's exploits on the Continent English history has little to 
do. His reign at home was a time of profound peace. Ad- 

• 1,1 1 1 111-.,. -. Good effects 

mn-able order was preserved, and the land was distressed of Canute's 
neither by invasions from without nor by rebellions within. ^°^^'^^' 
The observance of law was enforced on English and Danes alike, and 



74 The Danish Conquest 1021 

Canute took for his model the rule of Edgar, ' whose law,' according to 
the famous formula, ' he promised to observe.' 

The most picturesque event in the later life of Canute is his pilgrimage 

to Kome. As king of England he had always shown signs of religious 

devotion, had founded a church upon the hill of Assandun, and been 

liberal in his gifts to churches and monasteries ; and in 1027 he made 

a pilg-rimacre to Kome, where he was received with great 

His Pil- 1 & o ' o 

grimageto honour both by the pope and by the emperor. Thence 

^°"^^' he wrote to his subjects an admirable letter, written in 

the tone of a father addressing his children, and giving a full account 
not only of his travels but of his designs for the future. 

The long and peaceful reign of Canute is believed to have been a 
turning-point in the history of English towns. Hitherto, except as 
Growth of fortresses, the towns had played a very small part in English 
the Towns, j^fg . ^^^^^ under Canute the union of England, Denmark, and 
Norway was favourable to commerce, and the Danish population which 
had settled in England appears to have been more commercial in its 
instincts than the pure English race. London and York were the chief 
marts for foreign trade ; Oxford, Chester, and Bristol were rising in 
importance ; while Winchester, the ancient capital of the West-Saxons, 
was falling into the second rank. 

At his death, in 1035, Canute left tliree sons, Sweyn, Harold, and 
Hardicanute (Harthacnut). The last was the son of his Norman 
queen Emma ; the others of an Englishwoman, ^Ifgifu, who, strictly 
speaking, was hardly his wife at all. Probably Canute intended that 
Emma's son should succeed him in England, and accordingly Hardi- 
canute was supported by Godwin and the West-Saxons ; but the 
northerners, actuated perhaps by resentment against the favour shown 
by Canute to Godwin and the southerners, preferred Harold. Ultimately 
it was arranged at Oxford, by discussion and compromise, that Harold 

Reign of should reign north of the Thames as over-king, and that 

Harold. Hardicanute should have the south. Hardicanute also 
obtained Denmark, while Sweyn had Norway. However, Magnus, the 
son of Olaf of Norway, soon dispossessed Sweyn ; and as he also 
threatened Denmark, Hardicanute was detained to look after his 
interests there, and was unable to visit the West-Saxons, who were ruled 
by Emma and Godwin. 

This state of affairs encouraged Alfred and Edward, the sons of 
Ethelred and Emma, who had grown up in Normandy, to attempt 
the recovery of their father's throne ; and Alfred at any rate, and 
possibly Edward, came over for that purpose. Alfred fell into the 



1042 



Harold and Harthacnut 75 



hands of Harold's men, who put him to a cruel death at Ely. Whether 

Godwin took any part in his arrest it is impossible to say. If Godwin 

arrested Alfred, he was simply doinf^j his duty ; and it was .,, ^, ^ 

' ^ "^ , "^ Alfred s Ex- 

Harold and his men, and not Godwin, who were responsible pedition and 

Death. 

for the cruelties that followed. However, the result of the 

suspicion against him was to create ill-will between the house of Godwin 

and that of the dukes of Normandy. 

For two years the West-Saxons waited for Hardicanute ; but, as he did 
not come, they then joined the rest of their countrymen in acknowledging 
Harold, and Emma took refuge with Baldwin of Flanders. ^^ ^. 

' ° . , . Hardi- 

There she was joined by her son, and preparations were being Canute's 
made for an invasion of England, when Harold, who had ^^^"* 
for some time been ailing, died at the age of twenty-three. The whole 
nation then chose Hardicanute as king. The new sovereign's reign was 
brief. The only events of importance were the employment of his house- 
carls to collect an oppressive tax and the invitation to England of his 
half-brother Edward, This was accepted, and when Hardicanute died 
suddenly at a marriage feast in 1042 all the English agreed in choosing 
Edward king, and so returned to the ancient line. 



CHIEF DATES. 

Invasions of the Northmen renewed, 
Death of Dunstan, 
Massacre of the Danes, 
Battle of Assandun, 
Accession of Harold, 



A.D. 

980 

988 

1002 

1016 

1017 



CHAPTEE IX 

THE NORMAN CONQUEST ^] 

ENGLISH KINGS 

Edward the Confessor, a.d. 1042-1066 i Harold ii., . . a.d. 1066 

The Character of Edward the Confessor — Influx of Normans — Godwin and his 
Family unsuccessfully oppose the Normans — Visit of William of Normandy 
to England — Return of Godwin and Banishment of the Normans — Character 
of Harold, Godwin's Son — Accession of Harold — Battles of Stamford Bridge 
and Hastings. 

The character of Edward the Confessor is difficult to understand. The 

personal piety which gained him his surname suggests a comparison with 

Henry vi. ; his addiction to foreign favourites anticipates 

Edward the Henry III. ; his fitful energy, combined with incapacity for 

on essor. continuous efl'ort, recalls his father Ethelred. Though a 
man of mature years and of much experience, he was always controlled 
by the influence of others ; and his manliness was chiefly shown in an 
inordinate addiction to the chase. 

During the first part of his reign, Godwin, Leofric of Mercia, and 
Siward of Northumbria continued to be the leading personages. 
Godwin had become an elderly man ; but his sons were growing up to 
manhood. Sweyn (Swegen) and Harold were already earls, and his 
daughter Edith became the king's wife. 

Edward had been brought up in Normandy, and he was naturally 
fond of Norman life and manners. These as a rule were more refined 
than the English, for the Normans, though the last of the Teutonic 
settlers in the Eoman Empire, had shown a wonderful power of 
Introduces assimilating its civilisation. They had entirely given up 
Normans, their own language for French, and delighted to welcome 
among them any foreigners who were distinguished for learning or 
accomplishments. Edward, therefore, was wishful to bring over to 
England what he could of Norman civilisation. He spoke French 
himself, and soon filled his court with French-speaking Normans, some 

70 



1051 Edward the Confessor 77 

of whom he raised to high office in church and state. One, Eobert of 

Jumieges, became bishop of London in 1044 and archbishop of 

Canterbury in 1051. The king's nephew, Ralph, became an earl and 

ruled in Herefordshire ; Richard, another Norman who received lands 

in the same county, built the first private castle in England, and the 

village of Richard's Castle in Herefordshire still perpetuates his evil 

meniorj^ Among the rest arrived Ranulf Flambarcl, afterwards so 

notorious under William Rufus. At the same time, general causes w^re 

brinrnng England into closer touch with the Continent. Foreign 

merchants flocked to London, and it seemed as though a similar change 

to that which had turned the Normans into Frenchmen was beginning 

to take place in England. 

Naturally there was much discontent at this, and Godwin and his 

sons set themselves at the head of the English party. Matters came 

to a head in 1051, In that year Eustace of Boulogne, Discontent, 

brother-in-law of Edward, came over on a visit, and on his E^ngi^g^ 

return marched into Dover as though it were a conquered Eustace of 

town, and attempted to quarter his men on the inhabitants. Boulogne- 

The men of Dover resisted, and a fight followed in which twenty 

Englishmen and nineteen foreigners were slain. Edward then called on 

Godwin as earl of Wessex to punish the townspeople. Godwin very 

properly demanded that the men of Dover should be heard in their own 

defence, and, calling on his sons Swegen and Harold, the ^ , . 
' ' ^ , *=> ' Godwin 

three earls assembled their forces at Beverstone near heads the 
Gloucester, at which town Edward was keeping his court. "^ ^^ 
To balance their force Edward summoned Leofric, earl of the Mercians, 
and Siward, earl of the Northumbrians. On Leofric's suggestion both 
armies were dismissed and a w^itenagemot was summoned at London ; 
but for some unexplained reason Godwin, who seemed all-j)Owerful at 
Gloucester, found himself so weak in London that he was Godwin 
outlawed with his sons and fled the country. Godwin exiled, 
himself, with his sons Swegen and Tostig, took refuge with Baldwin of 
Flanders at Bruges, and Harold sailed for Ireland. Edith, the king's 
wife, was shut up in a monastery at Wherwell, and for a time the 
foreigners reigned supreme. 

While the English party was thus scattered, Edward received a visit 
from William, Duke of Normandy, whose great-aunt Emma was 
Edward's mother, but he had himself no blood relationship „,.„. 

' ^ Wilham, 

with the English royal family. The Duke was now about Duke of 

twenty-four years of age. He was the son of Duke Robert 

and Herleva or Arietta, the daughter of a tanner at Falaise. His father 



78 The Norman Conquest I05i 

dying when he was about eight years old, William had had a hard 
struggle to maintain his doubtful title ; but his courage and resource had 
enabled him while yet a boy in years to triumph over all opponents on 
the field of Val es dunes, and he was now undisputed ruler of his 
duchy, and already recognised as one of the ablest men of his time. 

In England there was everything to rouse his ambition. He knew 
that Englishmen had chosen Canute king and loyally served him. He 
His Visit to found Normans round the king, he saw Normans filling 
England. great places in church and state, he heard French spoken 
on every side ; and it is no wonder that he conceived the idea of being 
himself king of England. For a Norman there was nothing uncommon 
in this. At that very time Robert Guiscard, another Norman, was 
establishing himself as ruler of Southern Italy. William had seen men 
like Harold Hardrada and Swegen Estrithson win the crowns of Norway 
and Denmark ; and if Godwin and his sons were out of the way, and the 
state full of his well-wishers, there was no likeliliood that the Norman 
duke would meet with any serious resistance. It is pretty certain that 
Edward made some sort of promise to secure the succession to William. 
This he had no right to do, and such disposition of the crown could in 
no way curtail the free choice of the Witenagemot ; but it certainly was 
taken as giving William a claim to consideration, if to nothing more, and 
he returned home well satisfied. 

Next year, however, the scene was completely changed. A reaction 
occurred in favour of Godwin, w^ho was encouraged to request leave to 

Return of return ; and on Edward's refusal he gathered an armed 

Godwin. force, and, being joined by Harold from Ireland, sailed up 
the Thames. Edward also gathered his forces, principally from the 
north ; and a battle seemed imminent, when fighting was averted by the 
mediation of Stigand, bishop of London, and it was agreed to submit 
the whole case to a witenagemot to be held the next day. During the 
night the Frenchmen made their escape. Headed by Robert of Jumieges, 
the primary cause of the trouble, and by Ulf, the bishop of Dorchester, 
. who is said to have done ' nought bishoplike,' they fought 

of the their way to the coast and took ship for home. Next 

morning the great gemot met in the open air. Robert and 
Ulf were expelled from their sees and outlawed, Godwin and his sons 
were restored to their dignities, Edith was summoned back from 
Wherwell, and ' good law was decreed for all folk.' The archbishopric 
of Canterbury was then given to Stigand, and the triumph of the English 
party was complete. 

For the last fifteen years of Edward's reign he was as much under the 



1063 Edward the Confessoi' 79 

control of the house of Godwin as he had formerly been under that of 

the Frenchmen. Godwin died in 1053, and, as his eldest son Sweyn had 

died on pilgrimage, his honours passed to his second son 

TT 1 1 1 1 1 T • n Ascendancy 

Harold, who was then about thirty-two years of age. of the house 

Besides his position and influence, Harold also inherited the ° ° ^^"' 

abilities of his father both in war and peace, and he added to them a 

certain nobility of mind which made him a finer character than Earl 

Godwin. In 1055 Siward died, and, as his son Waltheof was yet a child, 

his earldom was given to Godwin's third son, Tostig, who 

„ . . 1 , , . X I T o •, Godwin's 

was a great favourite with the king. In 1057 Leofric, the Sons Harold 
last of the three great earls, also died, and, after being held ^" ostig. 
for a short time by his son ^Ifgar, his earldom passed to his grandson 
Edwin. Gyrth, Godwin's fourth son, became ^Ifgar's ^j^ ^ . 
successor as earl of the East- Angles ; and his fifth son, dom of 
Leofwine, ruled over the group of shires which border the 
estuary of the Thames. Thus the whole land, with the exception of 
some of the midland shires, was under the supervision of Harold and 
his brothers. 

As Edward had no children, it was determined to send for Edward, the 
son of Edmund Ironside, who had grown up an exile in Hungary ; and 
he accordingly returned to England with his wife and three children, 
Edgar, Margaret, and Christina ; but almost immediately on his arrival 
he sickened and died, so that the male line of Alfred was Edgar 
only represented by the boy Edgar. The importance of the Athehng. 
return of Edward is that it shows how little regard was paid to the 
alleged promise of Edward to William of Normandy. 

During the fifteen years of the authority of the house of Godwin much 
progress was made in the conquest of Wales. Since the days of Cadwallon, 
the ally of Penda, no Welsh sovereign had really been 
dangerous ; but in 1039 Griffith, son of Llewelyn (Grufiydd- 
ap-Llewelyn), ascended the throne of Gwynedd or North Wales, and soon 
afterwards, having annexed South Wales to his dominions, allied himself 
with ^Ifgar of Mercia, and made his name a terror in the valleys of the 
Usk, the Severn, and the Wye, and even sacked and burned the cathedral 
city of Hereford. The whole regular force of the kingdom, headed by 
Harold and Tostig, was needed for his overthrow ; but at length, in 1063, 
his people were so discouraged that they slew their too adventurous 
sovereign and brought his head to Harold. His dominions, shorn of 
some of the fertile lowlands, were then granted to two of his relations to 
be held as vassal kingdoms. The power of the Welsh was thus broken 
for many years. 



80 The Nmiiian Coiiquest 1063 

The fall of Grufiydd reduced the number of Harold's opponents, but in 
1065 the power of Harold was seriously weakened by the expulsion of 
Fall of ^i^ brother Tostig from the earldom of the Northumbrians. 
Tostig. Tostig began by being a man of good intentions, but was 
utterly wanting in tact; and he allowed the severity necessary to curb the 
rude Northumbrians to pass into tyranny, and even to be sullied with 
treachery and murder. Accordingly, taking advantage of Tostig's absence 
at Edw^ard's court, the leading Northumbrians held a meeting at York, 
declared Tostig deposed and outlawed, and chose in his stead Morcar 
(iSIorkere), the younger son of JElfgar. With Morcar at their head they 
marched into Middle England, where they w^ere joined by his brother 
Edwin, and even by a body of Welshmen. In face of such unanimity, 
Edward and Harold yielded. Tostig's expulsion and Morcar's election 
were both confirmed, but the earldoms of Huntingdon and Northampton 
were taken from the earldom of the Northumbrians and given to 
Waltheof, the son of Siward. Tostig withdrew to Flanders. 
From that moment his character utterly deteriorated, and he 
became the evil genius of his greater brother. To Harold this revolution 
in Northumbrian aftairs was a most serious blow ; for, besides withdrawing 
North umbria from his control, it practically added it to the dominions of 
Edwin, so that the lands of the house of Leofric were both larger in area 
and more compactly situated than those of the house of Godwin. More- 
over, Edwin was a born intriguer, determined to carry out a separate 
policy for the north and to maintain the independence of that part of the 
country as far as he possibly could. 

The death of Edw^ard soon followed the fall of Tostig. He died on 

January 5, 1066, just after the consecration of his noble abbey church at 

Death ot Westminster ; and then the difficult c^uestion of the succession 

Edward. came up for settlement. Of the direct English line there 

was living the Atheling Edgar ; but he was quite a boy, and even wdien 

he grew up his character was very w^ak. With Tostig burning for 

revenge and William bent on prosecuting his claims, it was no time for 

repeating the minority of Ethelred the Unready ; and as Edward in the 

Reign of solemuest manner had on his death-bed named Harold as 

Harold II. j^[g successor, the Witenagemot lost no time in confirming 

his wishes. The post of honour and of danger was accef)ted by the great 

earl, and a day later Harold was crowned at Westminster by Ealdred, 

archbishop of York. His whole reign was made up of a struggle for his 

kingdom. 

The first act of the new king was to make sure of his accej^tance among 
the Northumbrians by a visit to York ; his next to conciliate Edwin and 



1066 Harold II. 81 

Morcar by marrying their lieautiful sister Eaklgyth, the widow of the 
murdered Griffith. From the first he must have felt the danger in 
which he was placed by the hostility of the house of Leofric, 
the policy of which was to maintain at any cost the virtual ' ^ ^' 
independence of the north, whether the king of the West-Saxons were 
Harold, or Edgar the Atheling, or William of Normandy. 

If Edward the Confessor had been succeeded by Edward of Hungary, 
or his son the Atheling Edgar, William could have said little or nothing ; 
but it happened he could make out a more plausible tale 

William's 

agamst Harold than agamst any other candidate. Accordmg case against 
to the most probable story, Harold had been wrecked during 
a pleasure expedition on the coast of Ponthieu, and had been handed 
over by the count of Ponthieu to the duke of Normandy. Some time 
was spent by him at the Norman court, and he even accompanied 
William in an expedition against the Bretons ; and it is during this visit 
that he is said to have promised to become William's 'man,' to marry his 
daughter, and even to support his claim to the English crown. More- 
over, the oath which he took to fulfil his promise was made additionally 
solemn by William's craftily inveigling Harold into unknowingly swear- 
ing on the most sacred relics. These details cannot be proved ; but it 
is noteworthy that, while French writers place great stress upon the 
oath, English writers attempt no categorical denial. Again, Harold and 
his brothers had incurred the hostility of the Normans by their former 
resistance to foreigners. Something, too, might be made of the murder 
of Alfred the Atheling. More important still, it was possible to secure 
the benediction of the pope for an expedition one of whose objects was 
represented to be the punishment of the English for the uncanonical 
expulsion of Kobert of Jumieges ; and Stigand, his successor, had made 
matters worse by receiving his pallium from an anti-pope, Benedict x, 
Moreover, the adviser of the pope was Hildebrand, afterwards Gregory 
VII., and he may well have seen that a conquest of England by William, 
under the benediction of the pope, would be certain to lead to an 
increase of papal authority over the English church. 

Meanwhile, since his visit to England, William had been steadily 
growing in power. In 1053 he had strengthened his European position 
by a marriage with Matilda, the daughter of Baldwin of „. 

° 5 ta History of 

inlanders; five years later he had decisively beaten the William 
king of France and his ally, Geofi'rey of Anjou ; in 1063 ^'"" '°^^' 
he had annexed the county of Maine ; and he had recently con- 
cluded a successful war wdth Brittany. Each of these triumphs added 
something to his territorv, and strengthened his claim to the title 



82 The Norman Conquest 1066 

of Conqueror or acquirer. However, on the death of Edward he 
turned aside from his French policy and devoted himself entirely 
to the prosecution of his alleged claim to the English 
£r^anTn-°"^ crown : his first act being to put in a formal applica- 
vasion of ^Jq^ fo^ the crown : his next to publish a statement of 

England. , , . i p 

his claims ; and his third to prepare lor an armed invasion 

of the country. 

Armed with this plausible tale of personal and ecclesiastical wrongs, 
William placed his case before the Norman barons, foremost among 
The Norman whom Were William Fitz-Osbern, Odo of Bayeux, Eobert of 
Barons. Montgomery, Hugh of Avranches, Hugh of Montfort, and 

William of Warenne, names long celebrated in English annals. Led by 
William Fitz-Osbern, the barons gave a somewhat hesitating assent, and 
promised to furnish contingents of ships and men ; Eustace of Boulogne 
and Alan of Brittany also agreed to join the host, and a multitude of 
adventurers from all parts of Europe flocked to take part in a holy war 
which promised such substantial rewards of honour and spoil. 

On his side Harold was not idle. For the defence of his kingdom he 
trusted first to his fleet ; secondly, to his land forces, consisting of the 
Preparations house-carls or standing army, the thegns and their followers ; 
of Harold. ^.ndi. lastly, the general levy of the freemen of the realm. 
In the early summer Harold assembled his fleet and army on the 
southern coast, and distributed his men in garrison at the most im- 
portant points. He was, however, before the time, as William had to 
build his fleet before he could sail ; and it was not till August that 
the Norman ships were all ready. By that time, however, the patience 
of Harold's soldiers was quite exhausted ; the harvest required their 
presence at home, and, doubtless much against his will, Harold permitted 
the thegns and the freemen to depart, so that the house-carls alone 
remained under arms. The fleet also retired to London. 

Unfortunately, Normandy was not the only place from which invasion 

was threatened. Tostig was burning to recover his earldom, and was so far 

_ lost to a sense of rio-ht that he was travellino; from court to court 

Tostig. . .* . ^ 

in search of foreign assistance. From William he received 

little attention, for it was no part of the duke's plan to replace one son of 

Godwin by another ; but he contrived to get together a few ships and to 

plunder some of the English ports. However, on the arrival of Harold's 

fleet he made his way to Scotland, where he was well received ; and there, 

Harold either by accident or appointment, he met with Harold, 

Hardrada. surnamed Hardrada, or the stern of counsel, king of Norway, 

who on his own account was preparing for an invasion of England. 



1066 Harold IT. 83 

Harold, who was the younger brother of Olaf the Saint, was a type of his 
mergetic and far-wandering race. As a young man he had served in the 
juard of Norsemen who surrounded the Eastern emperors at Constanti- 
lople, he had visited Jerusalem and Egypt, and had gained a great 
•eputation by slaying a crocodile. He had subsequently fought his way 
;o the crown of Norway, and had the reputation of being not only a 
nighty warrior but also the strongest and tallest man of the north. If 
William's host included representatives of all the Romance-speaking 
lations of Europe, Harold Hardrada had under his banner adventurers 
rom every Scandinavian land. 

With this mighty host Tostig and Harold sailed to the English coast, 
'avaged Cleveland and burnt Scarborough, and then entered the 
number. The Northumbrian fleet had retired up the 
tVharfe to Tadcaster ; so the Northmen left their vessels at by^Tostrg 
iiicall, where they guarded the junction of the Wharfe and ^^ ^^^^^^ 
;he Ouse, and marched by land to York. Harold had 
■eckoned that Edwin and Morcar would fight hard for their own earl- 
loms, and he was not disappointed ; for the earls made a furious attack 
)n the invaders at Fulford, on Wednesday, September 20, Battle of 
)ut were completely routed and driven with great slaughter Fulford- 
nto York. On hearing of this invasion, Harold and his house-carls 
mrried north, and, collecting forces on the road, reached York on Mon- 
iay, 25th, only to find that it had surrendered to the Northmen the day 
jefore. Luckily, however, the invaders had retired some eight miles to 
Stamford Bridge, on the Derwent ; and thither, without a _ , , 

'^ ' ' ' Battle of 

moment's delay, Harold pursued them. He found their Stamford 
irmy encamped at both sides of the river Derwent, and, ^ 

surprising the division on the right bank, he fought his way across the 
aarrow bridge and routed the main body with terrible slaughter on the 
battle-flats ' above. Tostig and Harold Hardrada both lay dead, and 
for years afterwards the fields around were whitened by the skeletons 
Df the slain. 

But while Harold was winning this glorious fight, the south wind, for 
which William had long been waiting, had wafted the Norman transports 
icross the Channel, and his army had effected an unresisted William's 
landing on the shingly beach at Pevensey, where the grass- Landing, 
grown walls of the Roman Anderida told the tale of a yet earlier conquest. 
Spurring horsemen carried the news to York. ' Had I 

V . . . Harold 

been there,' Harold is said to have exclaimed, ' they had marches 

never made good their landing.' No time, however, was 

lost. Edwin and Morcar were enjoined to march south without delay ; 



84 The Norman Conquest 1066 

Harold himself, with liis brothers Gyrth and Leofwine and his house- 
carls, at once took the road to London, where the whole force of England 
was ordered to assemble. From all the southern shires, and from the 
earldoms that owned the sway of Gyrth, of Leofwine, and 

Trcschcrv 

of Edwin of Waltheof the son of Siward, there was no hanging back. 

and Morcar. -p^^^^^ Cornwall to Norfolk, from Worcester to Kent, free- 
men and thegns came to the meeting-place ; but Edwin and Morcar, 
true to their separatist policy, and forgetful that but for their defeat at 
Fulford William's landing might never have been made, held their 
troops back, and Harold, impatient at the stories of Norman plundering, 
was obliged to march without them. 

By this time William had advanced to Hastings. Between the 
southern coast and London are two ridges of downs, one near the coast, 

the other much nearer the Thames ; and between them lay, 
Geography ^^ those days, the forest tract of the Weald. Probably it 
of the South -would have been the best generalship to have compelled 

William to advance through this, and fought on the northern 
ridge ; but Harold refused to allow so much of his kingdom to be 
ravaged, and he also declined an oflFer of Gyrth to go forward with an 
advanced guard, while Harold arrayed the whole strength of the king- 
dom for a decisive battle. The plan which he chose was to make the 
first battle a real trial of strength, and to fight it on the hill of Senlac, 
seven miles from Hastings, on October the 14th, 1066, the day of Saint 
Calixtus. 

The place of battle was admirably chosen for the sort of battle Harold 
had in view — one in which foot-soldiers armed with battle-axes and 
Choice of a javelins were to be attacked by archers and cavalry. In 
Battle-field, many respects the site reminds one of the field of Waterloo. 
It was a ridge which commanded the road from Hastings to London, and 
was so near to the former that William was compelled either to take it 
or starve ; so that Harold gained the great military advantage of forcings 
his enemy to fight on ground of his own choosing, and in the way thati 
suited him best. The ridge of Senlac, now partially covered by the towi 
of Battle, is about a mile long ; and the English had time to strengthen 
its front by a ditch, and possibly by a palisade. For the last fifty years 
the regular weapon of the English professional soldiers had been the 

double-handed axe ; and they used long shields for defence 
and^weapons against the arrows. The house-carls— each of whom was 
En ^Ish thought equal to two ordinary men — took their stand in the 

centre. On the wings were the freemen and thegns, armed,i 
some with axes, others with javelins and the ancient two-handed 



1066 



Harold II. 



85 



swords. Besides their shields, the professional soldiers and thegns had 
coats of mail coming down to the knee, with sleeves reaching to the 
elbow. From their king downward the whole army was on foot. The 
force appears to have been neither too large nor too small for its work ; 
but if some of the freemen could have been replaced by the stout house- 
carls whose corpses lay at Stamford Bridge it would have been more 
efficient, for the freemen, though brave and enthusiastic, were the weak 
point in the array. 




Vz 



34 



I Mile. 



, wmmm-^: 



2^ ^ 







^ 



-\-^4'iii""'' ■ ... •• ' _ ^^^ H^^ iW^ ^^5 




Battle of Hastings or Senlac. 

OCTOBER 14 1066. 

^P^Siiggcstcd position of Palisade. tS%=3 English, 
t^h Norman Archers. ^^ Normans. BB Valley behvecn armies. 



Meanwhile, William made the best dispositions in his power. The 
strength of his army lay in the armoured knights, who trusted chiefly to 
the light javelins which they hurled from a distance or _ 
used at close quarters to stab and thrust, and in the and arms 
archers, whom William had brought to great efficiency ; but, ^or^ans 
as the attack had to be made uphill, both men-at-arms and 
archers were at a great disadvantage. William's plan was to send his 
foot-soldiers to the front supported by archers, and to reserve his men- 
at-arms till they could be used with advantage. He ranged his motley 
force according to nationalities : Bretons on the left, Normans in the 
centre, adventurers on the right. His best chance of success lay in the 



86 The Norman Conquest 1066 

fact that his men were, for the most part, professional soldiers who had, 
doubtless, learned to act in concert, and also that the English, having no 
archers, could do little harm to their assailants except in hand-to-hand 
fighting. 

At nine o'clock in the morning the battle began, and at three in the 
afternoon, though foot and archers and cavalry had done their best, th,e 

Battle of English line was still unbroken. William himself had given 

Hastings, j^jg j^^gn ^n example of reckless daring, and had slain Gyrth 
with his own hand ; Harold himself, constant at his post, where waved 
the Dragon of Wessex and his own standard the Fighting Man, had been 
equally an example of patient endurance. The Normans were beginning 
to despair, some even were counselling retreat, when accident revealed 
to William the weak point of his opponents. Weary of their long wait- 
ing, the freemen on the left broke their ranks to pursue some flying foes, 
and the gap thus left remained unfilled. With the decision of genius 
William ordered a feigned flight, and his skilled followers carried out his 
orders to the letter, and then, turning upon their pursuers, established 
themselves within the stockade, and took the English centre in flank. 
Such a disaster would have been as fatal to Wellington's plans at Waterloo 
as it was to Harold's at Hastings. For a time, however, the shield- wall 
of the house-carls was still unbroken, and night would soon have 
covered the English retreat, when William, as a last resource, ordered 
his archers to shoot into the air so that their arrows might fall on the 
heads of the English. This second device proved as successful as its 
predecessor : Harold himself fell, his brothers Gyrth and 
Harold and Leofwine Were already slain, no unwounded leader was 
the^^ngHsh ^^^^ ' ^^^^' ^^^^^ night closed in, the Normans had possession 
of the place of carnage, and the English, defeated but not 
cowed, and turning upon their pursuers at every point of vantage, 
were making a sullen retreat. Four hundred years passed before such 
another stubborn fight was fought on English soil ; never again till 
Towton did such a multitude of slain bestrew an English field. As at 
Towton, science, and science only, carried the day ; and the descendants 
of both conquerors and conquered may be proud of the fight of Senlac, 
and take the attack and defence as typical of what a British army 
can do now that Normans and Englishmen have united to form one 
nation. 

The real seriousness of the defeat of Hastings lay in the slaughter of 
this English leaders. No one was ready to step into the place of Harold 
and his brothers. Edgar Atheling was a mere boy, and Edwin and 
Morcar were worse than useless. Otherwise the fight might well have been 



1066 Interregnum 87 

renewed, for the survivors of Hastings might have been rallied, and 
Northumbria and Mercia were as yet untouched. As it was, there was 
no one to lead, and William was free to take his own way. 

His first care was to secure his retreat, and for this purpose he seized 
Dover, Eomney, and Winchester. He then marched by way of Canter- 
bury to Southwark. This he burnt, but, making no attempt ,y^,..,. 
to cross London Bridge, he marched up the Thames to march on 
Wallingford, ravaging as he went, and, crossing there, placed 
his camp at Berkhampstead. The place was admirably chosen, as it com- 
manded the junction of the Watling Street, Ermine Street, and Icknield 
Street, and so completely isolated London. 

Meanwhile, a witenagemot at London had elected Edgar Atheling king ; 
but without help from the north his position was hopeless, and Edwin 
and Morcar declined to jeopardy their power in his defence, even had 
William not been barring the way. That such was the case became more 
evident day by day ; and at length, perhaps in hopes that William might 
turn out a second Cnut, an embassage of the chief men of the south, in- 
cluding Edgar himself, made William a formal ofier of the ,„.,.. 

-r T n . , 1 1 • William 

crown, it was accepted, and with that a new epoch m accepted 

English history began. On the whole, we cannot regret the ^^ '"^* 
result of Hastings. In the creation and development of the British 
nation it was a necessary if painful factor. Just as great advantages 
had come to England from her union with the Church of Kome, so it was 
of prime importance to the country to become an important member of 
the family of European nations. The Normans brought with them the 
greatest political ability and their clergy the highest culture then known 
in Europe ; and, though it is a hard thing for any nation to be con- 
quered, still the descendants of the heroes who fought at Hastings have 
derived greater advantages from the defeat of Harold than they could 
possibly have done from his victory. 



CHIEF DATES. 

A.D. 

William of Normandy visits England, . 1051 

Tostig expelled by the Northumbrians, . 1065 

Battle of Stamford Bridge, September 25, 1066 

Battle of Hastings, October 14, . . 1066 




Typo.htdiitig Co.Sc. 



Book II 
THE NORMAN KINGS OF ENGLAND 

1066-1154 



III.— THE NOKMAN KINGS OF ENGLAND, 1066-1154. 



William the Conqueror, = Matilda of Flanders. 
1066-1087. 



Robert, Duke William Rufus, Henry, = Matilda Adela= Stephen of 



of Normandy, 
d. 1135. 



1087-1100. 



1100-1135. 



(seel.), 
d. 1118. 



William, William, Matilda=^(l) Emperor Robert of 

Henry V. Gloucester. 
(2) Geoffrey 
of Anjou. 



d. 1128 



d. 1120. d. 1167. 



(2) Henry II., 
1154-1189. 



Blois. 



Stephen, = Matilda of Henry, 

1135-1154. Boulogne. Bishop of 
I Winchester. 



Eustace, 
d. 1153. 



And others. 



IV.— THE KINGS OF SCOTLAND, 1066-1214. 



Duncan I., 1034-1040. 



Malcolm III. 
1058-1093. 



Margaret, Donald Bane, 1094-1097, 

d. 1093. ancestor of John Comyn, 

murdered by Bruce, 1306. 



Duncan I., Edgar, Alexander I., Matilda, David I.,--=Dau. of 



1093. 1097-1107. 1107-1124. d. 1118, 1124-1153. 

m. Henry I. , 
d. 1135. 



Waltheof. 



Henry, Earl of Huntingdon. 



Malcolm IV., 
1153-1165. 



William the Lion, 
1166-1214. 



David, 

Earl of Huntingdon, 

ancestor of Bruce 

and Balliol. 



signities illegitimate. 



I 



CHAPTER I 

WILLIAM L: 1066-1087 
Born 1027 ; married, 1053, Matilda of Flanders. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY FRINGES 

Scotland. France. Emperor. 

Malcolm iii., 1056-1093. Philip i., 1060-1108. Henry iv., d. 1106. 

Popes. 
Alexander II., d. 1073 ; Gregory vii., 1073-1085. 

Joinpletion of the Conquest — Apportionment of the Soil and Offices — Discontent 
of the Normans — Doomsday Book— Quarrels in the Royal House. 

William the Conqueror was crowned at Westminster on Christmas 
i' Day, 1066. Nominally his right to be king was derived from his 
election by the Witenagemot, in reality he reigned as the victor of 
Hastings ; but in all his legal documents Harold's rule was ignored, 
and William was spoken of as the successor of Edward the William's 
Confessor. This twofold right of election and conquest Position, 
received a sinister illustration on the coronation day. Within the 
abbey the ceremony was performed as heretofore, and the consent 
of the congregation was demanded as usual ; but without it stood a 
guard of Norman soldiers, who, taking the acclamations of the con- 
gregation as the roar of an outbreak, set fire to the neighbouring build- 
ings, and the day ended in destruction and massacre. The advantages 
of the election and coronation were immense. Henceforward William 
was a full king, and any movement against him would, in the eyes of 
the law, be not legitimate warfare but treasonable rebellion. 

The conquest of the country was, however, far from complete. At 
Hastings William had overthrown the standing army of Harold and 
the forces of the southern and south-eastern shires ; but he „ 

Partial 

had yet to fight against the Mercians, the Northumbrians, nature of the 
and the men of the south-west. What Edwin and Morcar ^o"'!"^^^- 
might do was uncertain ; but within a few weeks they presented them- 
selves before William and accepted him as king, so that William's position 

91 



92 The Norman Kings 1067 

at the beginning of 1067 was not unlike that of Edward the Elder 
before the conquest of the Danelaw. William accepted this, and, leav- 
ing the earls undisturbed, contented himself with apportioning among 
his followers the lands of the house of Godwin and of those who had 
fought against him at Hastings. In March 1067 he paid a visit to 
, Normandy. In his absence the general management of 

William "^ . 

visits Nor- English affairs was entrusted to his half-brother Odo of 
man y. Bayeux, who in Norman eyes was a man ' worthy as well 
of love as of respect,' and to the king's great friend William Fitz-Osbern, 
who as long as he lived was always called on for service when anything 
specially difficult required to be done. However, in the Conqueror's 
absence the insolence of the Norman adventurers seems to have goaded 
the English to revolt ; and in Herefordshire they rose under Eadric 
the Wild, and in Kent with the help of Eustace of Boulogne. The 
First Eng- risings were unconnected ; and as William had taken with 
lish Risings, j^-jj^ j.(jg.^j, Atheling, Edwin, Morcar, Waltheof, Stigand, 
and the abbot of Glastonbury, there was no one to weld them into a 
national movement, and consequently they were easily put down. 

However, on William's return he resumed the work of systematically 
conquering the island. His first attention was given to Exeter, where 
Gytha, the widow of God^vin, and her grandchildren, the sons of Harold, 
had taken refuge, Exeter seems to have had some idea of becoming a 
free city ; but William would hear of no half-allegiance, and after a 
siege of eighteen days Harold's family made their escape and Exeter 
capitulated. The same year Edwin and Morcar and Edgar Atheling 
escaped from the court, and a revolt was organised under the 
nominal leadership of Edgar. As the rebels expected aid of Swegen 
Danish In- Estrithson, king of Denmark, the danger was formidable, 
terference. ^^^^ William marched north in person. His advance was 
slow but sure, for, repeating the tactics of Edward the Elder, he seized 
town after town in the midlands, and secured each by the erection of a 
Castle- Norman keep, strong, well-provisioned, and holding such a 
building, powerful garrison that no insurgents would dare to leave 
their lands at its mercy. Among others, Warwick and Nottingham 
were so treated. At the news of his approach, Edwin and Morcar lost 
heart and submitted, and Edgar fled to Scotland ; so William contented 
himself with erecting a castle at York, of which William Malet was 
made governor, and then, marching southwards, he erected castles at 
Lincoln, Stamford, and Cambridge. As he had already erected fort- 
resses at Hastings, Dover, Winchester, London, Norwich, Exetei 
Bristol, the permanency of the conquest in the south was now fully^ 



.071 JVilliam I. 93 

provided for, and two attempts of the sons of Harold to raise the west 
?anie to nothing. 

The north, however, was still unsubdued ; and in 1069 the men 
)f Durham murdered Kobert of Comines, who had rashly accepted 
William's offer of the earldom of Northumbria (meaning the district 
oetween the Tees and the Tweed), and encouraged by this the men of 
!fork rose. Again William marched to York, and erected Revolt of 
mother castle on the opposite side of the Ouse. In the ^^^ North, 
lutumn, however, a great Danish fleet entered the Humber ; and the 
English under Waltheof having joined them, the wooden castles of York 
were both burnt to the ground, and the garrisons captured or slain — an 
action in which Waltheof gained great renown by his personal courage 
and strength. A third time William made his way north ; and now, im- 
patient of the obstinacy of the men of Yorkshire, he harried the arable 
country between the Humber and the Tees, so as to interpose a wilder- 
ness between him and his northern antagonists. Convinced of the hope- 
lessness of the struggle, Waltheof then made his submission, while the 
inaction of the Danish fleet was secured by a payment of money. The 
north being now ' pacified,' William crossed the hills into Chesliire and 
subdued Chester, the last English town to maintain its independence. 
Meanwhile, Edgar Atheling had taken refuge with Malcolm, king of 
S'cots, but did little for his cause besides repeatedly crossing the Tweed 
and plundering the northern counties, so that what little had been left 
l)y the mercy or weakness of William fell a prey to the rapacity of 
Malcolm. So great was the ruin of the north, that it is doubtful if that 
district, always less fertile than the south, ever recovered either its 
material prosperity or its relative civilisation till after the great revival 
of manufacturing industry during the latter half of the eighteenth 
century. 

The fall of Chester in 1069 marks the completion of the actual conquest; 
but in the same year the men of the Fens rose under Hereward the Wake, 
who found a stronghold in the Isle of Ely. In 1071 Edwin Revolt of 
and Morcar again took heart to revolt ; but Edwin was Hereward 
killed, probably by his own men, during an attempt to Edwin and 
make his way to Scotland, and Morcar joined Hereward. o^^ar. 
Their insurrection, however, was short-lived. William made his head- 
quarters at Cambridge, and attacked Ely both by land and water. 
Hereward seems to have escaped ; Morcar was captured and imprisoned 
for life. Hereward, however, soon made his peace, and like Waltheof 
was admitted to favour. The insurrection at Ely was the last attempt 
NPPi?&glishmen, as Englishmen, to maintain their independence. 



94 The Norman Kings i07i 

After these insurrections were over, William directed his attention to 

the three great objects of his general policy : (1) To secure his hold 

over the country, (2) to reward his Norman followers, (3) 
William's ^ ^^"^ , 1 « 1 . PI 

General to keep the Norman nobles from becommg too powertul. 
o icy. rpj^g ^g^ YiQ had already in a great measure accomplished 
by castle -building in the south and ravaging in the north ; but he also 
Grants of secured his position by grants of land held from himself, 
Land. which made every Norman landlord a representative of the 

Norman ruling class in his own district, while in all but a comparatively 
few cases in each county the English landowners sank into the under- 
tenants of the Norman lords. Also, all English freeholders were forced 
to receive back their lands by the king's sj)ecial grant, so that there was 
not a rood of English land from the Land's End to the Tweed the title 
Knight to which was not based upon the king's grant. These grants 
service. were made on condition that the holder served the king 
^\^.th a certain number of knights {dehituin servitium), apparently calcu- 
lated at five or some multiple of five, who could be called on to serve 
with the king's person for forty days in each year, in which the coming 
and going were not counted. 

It was, however, a most difficult matter to prevent the great nobles 
themselves becoming a source of danger to the royal power — capable on 
Danger from the one hand of defying the authority of the king, on the 
the Nobles, other of destroying every vestige of liberty in the people. 
This was what happened in Germany and in France, and it is due to the 
genius of William the Conqueror that it did not happen in England. He 
had himself been duke of Normandy, and he was determined that no 
one in England should have similar power under him. Accordingly, in 
rewarding his followers with titles and lands he followed a well thought- 
out plan. To very few was given the title of earl, and if a man were 
earl of two shires they were never adjoining. Of land he had plenty to 
dispose, for he not only forfeited the property of all who had fought at 
Hastings, but each subsequent outbreak was followed by wholesale 
confiscation, while what remained of the old folkland was henceforth 
regarded as the estate of the king. The greater part of these vast ter- 
Distribution ritories were distributed to his followers ; but care was 
of Property, taken that if a man had many manors they should lie in 
different parts of the country. For instance, William's half-brother, 
Robert, count of Mortain and earl of Cornwall, had seven hundred and 
ninety-three manors ; but they were situated in twenty counties. 
Moreover, the power of the sheriff*, the king's representative in each 
county, was carefully preserved, so that it was no easy matter for such 



1071 William I. C 9g 

I noble to concentrate his military forces and prevent his followers bein^j 
crushed in detail by the royal officers. 

Strictly speaking, only three exceptions were made : the bishopric of 
Durham, the earldom, of Kent, and the earldom of Chester. In these 
bhe whole land of the county was held by the earl. There 
were no tenants-in-chief of the king, but all landholders, 
except the clergy, held mediately from the earl. The bishopric of 
Durham was designed to guard against invasion from Scotland ; and as 
bhe bishop was unable to found a legal family, at every vacancy the kino- 
could secure an occupant for the see well disposed towards himself. 
Similarly, the earldom of Kent was given to Odo of Bayeux, who was 
likewise an ecclesiastic ; and after his death no successor was appointed. 
The earldom of Chester, granted to Hugh of Avranches, was the only 
palatine earldom in lay hands ; but the positions of Eobert of Mont- 
gomery, earl of Shrewsbury, and of William Fitz-Osbern, earl of 
Hereford, were not very dissimilar, so that the three great earls of the 
Welsh border were the most powerful subjects of the king. Fortunately, 
their energies were usually absorbed in fighting with their turbulent 
neighbours, the Welsh. 

Again, in regard to the building of castles, William, with very few 
exceptions, kept all castles in his own hands ; he named the governor 
or constable and paid the garrison, so that, unlike the con- Garrisoning 
tinental castles, which were the strongholds of disaffection of Castles. 
and robbery, under William the Conqueror each castle was a guarantee 
for the quiet both of the English and Normans of its neighbourhood. 

Just as William placed Normans at the head of the landholders, he set 
Normans, or at any rate men of foreign birth, at the head of the church. 
As abbeys and bishoprics were vacated by death or deposition, Foreign 
foreigners took the place of Englishmen. In 1070, Stigand, Bishops, 
whose position as archbishop had always been dubious, was set aside ; 
William gave the office to his friend and adviser Lanfranc, abbot of 
St. Stephen's abbey at Caen, and about the same time 
Thomas of Bayeux, one of the most learned men of his time, 
became archbishop of York. Lanfranc was a real statesman, and the 
changes which he made in the English church were on the whole 
beneficial. He raised its spiritual condition by frequent councils, 
encouraged learning, revived the discipline of the monks, and also 
followed the most advanced thought of his time by forbidding for the 
future the marriage of the clergy. These changes all tended to make 
the clergy a distinct body ; and as William the Conqueror deprived the 
bishop of his right to sit with the earl as president of the shire-moot, and 



90 The Norman Kings 1072 

crave him a court of his own in which clerical offences and ecclesiastical 
cases were to be tried, the general effect of his policy was to make more 
distinct than before the separation of church and state. 
• These changes resulted in a substitution of foreigners for Englishmen 
in all position! of importance ; but the old English laws were not done 
Reluitofthe away with, and the English courts, from the Witenagemot 
cSHges. downwards, were still preserved, though their importance 
was materially diminished. French was, of course, the language of the 
oreat ; but there was no attempt to prevent the use of English, and the 
kino- himself is believed to have taken lessons in the language of his 
subjects. He certainly tried to ascertain what the English laws were, 
for in 1070 he caused twelve men from each county to be chosen for 
the purpose of stating on oath the customs of the country. 

While William was carrying out his domestic policy he steadily main- 
tained the rights of the old English kings. He invaded Scotland, 
penetrated as far as Abernethy, near the banks of the Tay, 

F^reil!!''^ and compelled Malcolm to 'become his man' in 1072. 

Policy. Probably by the same treaty, he secured the expulsion of 
Ed^ar Atheling, who is next heard of as a sojourner with the count of 
Flanders. A year earlier Malcolm had married Edgar's sister, Margaret. 
This marriage was a turning-point in Scottish history. Hitherto the 
Condition of kings of the Scots had preserved their Celtic character ; but 
Scotland. Malcolm's stay with Siward acquainted him with English 
manners, and his predilection for them was confirmed by his marriage. 
Henceforward his English earldom of Lothiaa was recognised as the most 
important part of his dominions. English habits were adopted by the 
king and his courtiers, and for many years the king of Scots held the 
position of first lay baron at the court of the king of England. The 

Wales and overlordship of the king over the princes of Wales was 

Ireland. likewise strictly enforced. At the same time something 
was done towards acquiring influence in Ireland. Two successive Danish 
archbishops of Dublin came to Lanfranc for consecration, and it is said 
that William's sudden death alone prevented him from attempting to 
effect the conquest of the sister island. 

With Pope Gregory vii., the famous Hildebrand, William had also 

many dealings ; but he refused to acknowledge that he held England 

in any respect as a fief of the papal see, saying that 

Relations such had never been the practice of his predecessors. 

Pap^acy! Moreover, he carefully defined the conditions on which 

the authority of the pope over the English church was 

to be exercised. To provide against the case of a disputed election, 



1074 Willimn I. 97 

' no pope was to be recognised in England unless by the king's 
authority'; and to secure that no orders of the pope should interfere 
with the royal power, 'no papal bull was to be received 
unless it had first been inspected by the king.' More- siastical 
over, no council of the clergy was to be held without the " ^^' 
king's approval, and no laws or canons were to be enacted but with his 
consent. Nothing had been a more fruitful source of trouble abroad than 
the enforcement against the royal officials of the ban of excommunication, 
so William gave out that in the ecclesiastical courts none of his lieo-e- 
men or officials should be excommunicated or proceeded against for vice 
without the king's express sanction, 

William's determination to secure the royal power and to put a check 
upon that of his barons was a sore disappointment to those who had 
joined in his expedition in the hope of themselves becoming- 
dukes or earls when their duke himself became a king. For of the 
one hundred years they and their successors struggled ^""^^s- 
against the bonds imposed on them by the Conqueror's system, and 
attempted to secure the freedom from restraint which they saw enjoyed 
by their fellows on the Continent. Against their efforts the king was 
usually able to rely on the clergy, the English, and especially on the 
townspeople. 

Before the Conquest we saAV that the towns were beginning to 
be of considerable importance ; and the new order of things was 
extremely favourable to their growth. The new tastes Growth of 
introduced by the foreigners, the security of property ^^^ Towns, 
so sternly enforced by King William, the constant traffic between 
the English and Norman ports, all tended to foster commerce, and soon 
the English boroughs assumed an importance wholly unknown in earlier 
times. 

The disaff'ection of the barons first showed itself in 1074. The leaders 
of the movement were Ealph of Wader or Guader, earl of Norfolk, son 
of an old Breton officer of Edward the Confessor, and Koger 
of Breteuil, second: son of William Fitz-Osbern, who on the Hon of the 
death of his father had been made earl of Hereford. ^^'■°"^- 
Ralph, against William's injunction, married Emma, the sister of Roger ; ^ 
and Waltheof, son of Siward, who since his adhesion to the court had 
been made earl of Northumberland, and had married the Conqueror's 
niece Judith, was a guest at the wedding. At the marriage Roger and 
Ralph decided on an insurrection, which was to be undertaken while the 
king was in Normandy, and Waltheof was asked to join. Tf they 
^ ' There was that brideale to many men's bale.' 



98 Norman Kings 1074 

succeeded, one of the three was to be a king, the other two dukes. In 
an evil moment Waltheof gave his consent ; but soon repenting, he 
acquainted Lanfranc with what was on foot. According to the plan, the 
joint-rising took place in 1075 ; but against such a movement William 
could rely on the church and the English; and while Wulfstan, the 
English bishop of Worcester, with the sheriff of Worcestershire, dealt with 
Roger, Odo of Bayeux and others advanced against Ralph. Roger was 
captured. Ralph fled to Denmark, but his newly married wife held out 
in Norwich Castle for three months. Roger and Waltheof were then 
tried before the Witenagemot. The guilt of Roger was notorious, that 

Death of of Waltheof doubtful ; but nevertheless Roger was sentenced 

Waltheof. ^^ imprisonment, and Waltheof to death. Even if guilty, 
he was the less guilty of the two ; but the sentence was carried out at 
Winchester, and many regarded the earl as a martyr. His daughter 
married David, afterwards king of Scots, and through her the earldom 
of Huntingdon was long held by the Scottish kings. 

William's next trouble arose in his own family. He had three sons 
who grew to manhood — Robert, born about 1056, William, born about 

William's 10^0, and Henry, born in 1068. It was part of his policy 

V Sons. ^Q g^yg jjQ English lands to his children, and this is said 

to have caused the anger of Robert, who, though distrusted by his 

father as unstable and frivolous, was the favourite of his mother Matilda. 

In 1078 Robert left his father's court, and, with the help of some 
other young men, among whom was Robert of Belleme, son of the earl 
Rebellion of of Shrewsbury, led a wandering life for some years. In 
Robert. IQ'iQ the king of France established him in the border 

castle of Gerberoi. There Robert was besieged by the Conqueror, and, 
father and son having met in single combat, William was unhorsed, and 
only saved from death by the bravery of an Englishman, who paid for 
his loyalty with his life. Some time afterwards Robert was reconciled 
to his fiither, but William's distrust of his character remained to the last. 
He was, however, employed in a raid on the Scots, and signalised his 
stay in the north by building the fortress of Newcastle-on-Tyne at one 
end of the Roman Wall. 

In 1082 the wrath of the king was excited by the unbridled arrogance 
of his half-brother, Odo, bishop and earl. After the death of Waltheof, 
Imprison- William's attention had been occupied mainly with Con- 
mentofOdo. tinental affairs, and during that time Odo had been left in 
charge in England. His rule had been by no means to his brother's 
liking. He had oppressed the poor, he had irritated the whole people 
by unjust exactions, he had punished the murder of the bishop of 



1085 



milimn I. 99 



Durham with wholesale and indiscriminating cruelty, he had stolen from 
Durham a pastoral staff, and finally, dreaming of the papacy, he had 
enlisted soldiers for a campaign beyond the Alps. The last action 
roused William to interfere. Crossing the Channel, he arrested Odo, not, 
as he said, 'as bishop of Bayeux, but as earl of Kent,' sent him to 
Normandy, and confined him in the castle of Kouen. A year later 
Matilda died ; and 1084 was memorable for an expected invasion from 
Denmark, only prevented by the assassination of the Danish king, 
Canute, by his own subjects. 

This event concentrated William's attention for a time on England, 
and in 1085, after ' mickle thought and very deep speech with his 
Witan,' he decided on a great survey of the country to find 'how 
it was set, and by what men,' and, moreover, how much land each 
man had and what payments were due to the king. A year was 
occupied in the inquiry. Commissioners were sent to the shire-moots, 
where they learned the great divisions of the shire ; and finally they 
had before them the reeve, the parish priest, and six villeins from each 
manor, from whom they asked the following particulars: Doomsday 
What the manor was called ; who held it in the time of Book. 
King Edward ; who held it now ; how many hides ^ ; how many plough- 
lands ^ were in the lord's demesne ; what was the population ; how 
many were respectively villeins, cotters, slaves, freemen, and socmen ^ ; 
how much wood, meadow, and pasture ; what mills and fishponds (or 
fisheries) ; how much had been added or deducted ; how much it was 
worth as a whole, and how the amount was made up ; how much each 
freeman and each socman possessed. The answers were to refer to 
three dates — that of the time of King Edward, that of the grant of the 
manor to its present owner, and that of the date of the survey ; and they 
were to add whether it could be held at a higher rate than at present. 
Similar questions were put to the townspeople, and the whole was care- 
fully enrolled in what was afterwards spoken of as the Doomsday Book. 
The information was not extracted without difficulty. All men resented 
such minute inquiries into their conditions ; and the writer of the 
Peterborough chronicle said that 'it was a shame to speak what he 
thought it no shame to do.' But William was strong enough to efi'ect 
his purpose. Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland, and Durham 
were unsurveyed, the two former being in the hands of the Scots, the 
two latter being utterly wasted. The result, however, to us is the 

1 A varying amount, fixed by Henry ii. at 100 acres. 

2 The amount a man with one plough could till in a season — a variable quantity. 
Free landowners not noble. 

L.otC. 



100 Norman Kings 1085 

possession of the most complete and accurate record of the condition 
of our country eight hundred years ago that it is the privilege of any 

nation to possess. 

To William himself the immediate results of the Doomsday survey were 

of the hio-hest value. On its completion he at once summoned every free- 

^u o 1- holder to Salisbury, and there, on the plain below the ancient 

The Salis- •' ' 

bury Oath. \{t\\ of Sarum, William exacted from each man the oath 
of allegiance to himself. The importance of this can hardly be over- 
estimated. On the Continent no freeman took an oath of allegiance to 
any one but his immediate lord : the men of Normandy, for example, 
owed no duties except to their duke ; to the king of France they were 
under no obligation. If their duke rebelled against the king, it was 
their business to follow him to battle. To do so was no act of treason ; 
but in England all was different. Vassals as well as lords fought against 
the king with a halter round their neck, and few things did more to 
curb the power of the great nobles than this principle of double responsi- 
bility. By it, moreover, William was placed at once in a position more 
powerful than any of his predecessors. He stood to his subjects in a 
position far stronger than that occupied by Alfred, by Edgar, or by 
Canute, and by doing so he had placed the unity of England and the 
nationality of the English nation on a far firmer basis than before. 

Though this oath was not only not feudal, but struck at the very founda- 
tion of feudalism, it is not inconvenient to take the meeting of Salisbury 
as the date of the establishment in England of what is 
vaguely called feudalism. The central ideas of the organisa- 
tion of feudal society are : (1) that all land is ultimately held by grant 
from the king ; (2) that the grant is made on condition of performing 
some service to the sovereign, of which the most honourable was military 
service, and paying him certain dues ; and (3) that those who hold 
directly from the king are bound together by so doing in a certain 
Tenants- l^gal and social relation. Moreover, it was the privilege of 
in -chief. each of the 'tenants-in-chief,' as those are called who hold 
Mesne direct from the king, to sublet his land on the same terms 

Tenants. ^0 others, who held from him as 'mesne tenants,' who might 
in turn also sublet on similar terms ; though the lowest grade of land- 
holders, even if required to fight for their lord, usually held their lands 
Serfs. ^^ ^^^^* ^^^ c^^^di servile tenure— that is, by doing certain 

customary services, as ploughing, sowing, and the like. 
Moreover, both the king and his tenants were in the habit of holding law- 
courts, in which the tenant of the king or the subtenants of the tenant- 
in-chief were bound to attend and have their cases tried according to the 



1087 



miliam I. 101 



rules of the country. Besides, the king or tenant-in-chief had the right 
to levy taxes called tallages or tallies on their vassals. 

This was the ideal of feudalism, but in England it never existed in 
perfection. There had been traces of it before the Conquest, and after the 
Conquest all land was certainly held by the king's grant ; but in other 
respects the practice varied. Besides the Salisbury oath, the importance 
of which has been pointed out, the preservation in England of the 
witenagemot, and of the courts of the shire and the hundred, prevented 
the feudal courts from engrossing jurisdiction ; and the 
Norman kings and their successors were quick to perceive Modifica- 
that their true interest lay in preserving every institution peudaHsm 
which could be used to check the power of the great vassals. 
Still, for one hundred years the struggle between the king and the 
barons took the form of a contest as to how far the bar-ons should intro- 
duce into this eountry the forms of Continental feudalism. The first 
blow was struck at their plan by the division of estates, the second by 
the oath of Salisbury. 

During the whole of his reign William was engaged in more or less 
open hostility with Philip, king of France, who naturally looked askance 
at the successes of his powerful vassal. In 1073 an English army attacked 
Maine, a French province lying between Normandy and Anjou, and 
effected its capture ; in 1079 we saw Philip giving his wars with 
countenance and aid to William's rebellious son. In 1087 France. 
William, stung by a coarse joke of the French monarch, invaded the 
Vexin, the district between Normandy and Paris, of which the chief 
town is Nantes on the Seine. This William burned, and while riding 
through the streets his horse plunged on some hot cinders William's 
and threw his rider violently against the high iron pummel ^^^ath. 
of the saddle, causing a fatal internal injury. For six weeks William 
lingered at Kouen, attended by his sons WiUiam and Henry ; and then, 
after releasing his prisoners and making a disposition of his property, he 
died. 

William was a harsh ruler, and it is impossible, on moral grounds, to 
justify his invasion of England and the atrocities to which it gave rise ; 
but, nevertheless, he bestowed on the country a great boon, wiUiam's 
for he made England a united kingdom, in a sense which Character, 
she had never been before. He arrived at a critical moment of history, 
when the great earls were developing a system of local independence 
which in all probability would have run the same course as a like move- 
ment did in France and in Germany, and produced the same weakness in 
the crown, the same oppression for the people. From this fate William 



202 Nmiiian Kings 1087 

saved Enoland ; and by making the crown powerful, and relying on the 
Euoiish and the clergy against the barons, and enforcing one law and one 
allegiance, he took a great step towards making her a strong and united 
kingdom. It cannot, however, be doubted that his character was sullied 
by terrible crimes. The judicial murder of Waltheof cannot be defended 
on the evidence known to us ; and his barbarous action of laying waste 
a vast area of cultivated Hampshire to create the New Forest was a sin 
against civilisation. Churches and villages alike were levelled to make 
room for the 'tall deer,' whom the king was said to love 'as though 
he were then- father.' Still, on the whole, William must be reckoned 
as one who, according to his lights, strove to do what was right, and 
whose best deeds have left a mark more enduring than his crimes. 

Among the changes of this reign, the waste lands not enclosed in any 
manor or township began to be called the Forest, and were reserved for 
the king's sport. The bishoprics, which the English had usually placed 
in villages, were transferred to towns, as Dorchester to Lincoln and 
Crediton to Exeter. The name township, though retained, was usually 
superseded by the manor. 



CHIEF DA TES. 

A.D. 

Conquest of England completed, . . 1071 

Conspiracy of the Norman Earls, 1074 

Doomsday Book produced, .... 1086 

Great Court at Salisbury, .... 1086 



CHAPTER II 

WILLIAM II. : 1087-1100 
Born c. 1060. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 
Scotland. France. Emperor. 

Malcolm ill., d. 1093. Philip i., d. 1108. Henry iv., d. 1106. 

Pope. 
Urban II., 1087-1099. 

Contest with the Barons continued — The enforcement of the Feudal Dues — 

The first Crusade. 

In disposing of his property, William the Conqueror followed the ideas 

of the time, which happened to agree with his own. To his eldest son 

Eobert he bequeathed his hereditary duchy of Normandy, 

with the adjoining county of Maine. The second, William, queror's 

he despatched to England with his dying recommendation 

to the primate Lanfranc to secure his election to the crown. The third, 

Henry, a lad of nineteen, had to content himself for the present with a 

legacy of ^5000. 

Lanfranc had been tutor to the younger William, and had knighted 
him. He knew well both the abilities and the vices of his pupil ; and 
while, in accordance with the request of the late king, he summoned 
such an assembly of magnates as might constitute a witenagemot, and 
recommended William for election, he was careful to exact _, 

Election of 

a solemn oath that the new sovereign would 'preserve "William 
justice, fairness, and mercy in every transaction,' would 
defend ' the peace, liberty, and security of the church,' and would in all 
cases be guided ' by the advice and counsels ' of Lanfranc himself. 

William ii., who was called Rufus from his ruddy countenance, is 
generally admitted to have been a man of bad life, though it must be 
remembered that his character was drawn by monks, to ^is 
whom he was no friend ; but his abilities, especially for Character, 
war, were decidedly great, and during the thirteen years of his short 
reign he not only retained the hold which his fether had won over his 

103 



104 Norman Kings los? 

newly acquired dominions, but in many directions made himself more 
powerful and more secure than his father had ever been. The instinct 
of self-preservation made him the natural foe of the great barons, whose 
tendency to make themselves omnipotent in their own districts was the 
greatest danger to civilisation ; and his steady check on castle-building 
and rigid enforcement of the king's peace were of the greatest service to 
the townspeople, on whose prosperity the advancement of the country 
ultimately depended. Moreover, his struggle with the barons compelled 
him to secure as far as possible the goodwill of the English ; and so 
circumstances obliged him, whether designedly or not, to follow such 
measures as would in the end advance the unity and prosperity of the land. 

During the first six years of the reign, the chief attention of William 
had to be given to the movements of his brother Eobert and of the 
Trouble with barons with whom he was in alliance. As these had lands 
Robert. |^q|.j^ jj^ Normandy and in England, their policy consisted 

in preventing either a war or a separation between the kingdom and the 
duchy ; but as most were of opinion that the yoke of the easygoing and 
affable Eobert would be lighter than that of his brother, Eobert had no 
difficulty in finding adherents who would help him against William. 

Of these the most formidable were Odo, bishop of Bayeux and earl 
of Kent, whom the Conqueror's death had released from prison, Eoger 
of Montgomery and his turbulent son Eobert of Belleme, and Eobert 

Odo's Con- Mowbray. Odo took the lead, and, bargaining with Eoljert 

spiracy. ^^^ ^|^g ^-^j ^£ ^ Nomiau army, organised in England a vast 
conspiracy which was to include risings in no less than seven districts. Ee 
himself led the Kentish insurgents, and, intrusting Eochester to Eustace 
of Boulogne, awaited in Arundel Castle the landing of Eobert. 

William's first care was to secure the j^erson of Odo, and after a siege 
of seven weeks Arundel Castle was taken ; Odo was then despatched to 
order the surrender of Eochester, but he treacherously threw himself 
into the castle and made a most formidable resistance. In these circum- 
stances William saw that his best chance was to appeal to the English, 
who naturally regarded the tyranny of a host of petty chieftains as 

Siege of worse than that of a single king. Accordingly, he sum- 
moned the ' brave and honourable English,' and called on 
them to lead their countrymen to his aid, declaring at the same time 
that any who held back would be branded with the name of ' nithing,' 
or ' good-for-nothing fellow,' which the English regarded as disgraceful, 
and accordingly flocked to his standard in crowds. 

By their aid the castle was taken ; but even William dared not proceed 
to extremities against his uncle, and, much to the disappointment of the 



1095 



miliam 11. 105 



Enciish, who wished to hang him, contented himself with driving Odo 
into an ignominious exile. Meanwhile, Kobert had dallied in Nor- 
mandy, partly through indolence, partly from want of money ; and many 
of his followers who had ventured over by themselves had fallen into 
the hands of privateers whom William had permitted to be fitted out by 
the English ports. The conspiracy, therefore, completely failed, for all the 
local risings had been put down by the king's men. Koger Montgomery 
made his submission ; and though Kobert Mowbray in the north was still 
unsubdued, southern England was completely in William's grasp. 

Seeing that he was the stronger, some of the barons were now ready 
to aid him to dispossess Robert of Normandy ; and in 1091 William him- 
self appeared with an army in the duchy. The French king Philip, how- 
ever, offered his mediation, and the barons negotiated a treaty between 
the brothers by which Robert renounced all claim to Eng- Treaty with 
land, and agreed in consideration of the grant of some ^°^^^^- 
English estates to allow William to retain several strong castles in 
Normandy. A [provision was also inserted that whichever brother 
survived should succeed to both Normandy and England. As William 
repeatedly delayed to hand over Robert's indemnity, war again broke 
out, and William was carrying all before him when the French king 
again interfered. In the emergency William ordered an English force 
of foot-soldiers to be assembled at Hastings ; but when they arrived his 
justiciar Ranulf commuted their services for a payment of ten shillings 
per man, and sent the money to the king. With it William bought off 
the French king, and was again driving Robert to extremity when the 
serious state of affairs on the Welsh border forced him to return to 
England in 1094 

His presence was sorely needed, for the Welsh had seized Mont- 
gomery Castle, and, the barrier being thus broken, had poured out of 
their fastnesses over Cheshire, Shropshire, and Herefordshire. William 
met the danger by an organised invasion of the mountains, wars with 
It was, however, a failure, for he had not yet learned by ^^^ Welsh, 
experience that his heavy cavalry were no match for the agile Welsh- 
men, who, refusing all offers of a pitched battle, contented themselves 
with cutting off stragglers in their mountains and ravines ; and a second 
invasion in 1095 met with no better success. Thus baffled, William left 
the war to be carried on by less regular though more effective methods, 
and, having arranged that all lands taken from the Welsh should be held 
by its conqueror as a free grant, he departed. This plan afforded occu- 
pation to the unruly barons of the border, and was so successful that in 
a short time almost all the lowlands of Wales and the southern coast 



106 Norman Kings 1089 

were in the hands of Norman adventurers, whose castles crowned the 
hill-tops of the marches or border-land. 

With Scotland William had better luck. Malcolm, king of Scots, 
took advantage of William's first absence in Normandy to invade the 

Invasion of northern shires. On his return William invaded Scotland, 

Scotland. ^^^^ Malcolm agreed to become his man and do all such 
obedience as he had done to his father. On his homeward march William 
was struck with the excellent military position of Carlisle, 
commanding the passage of the lower Eden. Accordingly, 
he ordered it to be fortified, and peopled it with a colony of south 
countrymen, said to have come from the New Forest. Situated near 
the western extremity of the Roman wall, Carlisle matched Newcastle 
at its eastern end, and these two towns long remained the gTcat fortresses 
of the northern border. As Strathclyde had been since the grant of King 
Edmund in the hands of the Scottish king, the fortification of Carlisle, 
^ which carried with it the loss of Cumberland, was naturally resented ; and, 
finding no redress, Malcolm again took up arms, but perished, with his 
eldest son Edward, in an ambush near Alnwick in 1093. After his 
death a series of contests for the Scottish throne kept the north of 
England in peace. William's difficulties with the Scots and Welsh 
being thus dealt with, his arms were turned against Robert Mowbra}'-, 
who was again conspiring to dethrone him. Bamborough Castle, how- 
ever, which was too strong to be stormed, and too accessible by sea to 
be starved into surrender, defied his attacks, so William contented him- 
self with building over against it another stronghold, Malvoisin, or the 
ill neighbour. The plan was successful. Decoyed from his fastness, 
Mowbray was captured by the garrison, and a threat to put out his eyes 

Ca ture before his wife's face compelled her to surrender Bamborough 

of Bam- in 1095, The next year Robert found reason to pledge 

°^°^s ■ Normandy to William for ten thousand marks (13s. 4d. 
each), which concluded the long contest between William and his brother. 

Lanfranc died in 1089. He was in many ways a great man, if not a 
great bishop ; and so long as he lived he was thought to have exercised a 

Death of restraining influence over the young king. No archbishop 

an ranc. ^f Canterbury was appointed for four years, but in temporal 

matters William gave his confidence to Ranulf, surnamed Flambard, or 

Ranuif the Torch, a clever, witty, but unscrupulous ecclesiastic, 
who had been in England in the time of the Confessor, and 
had been one of the commissioners of the Doomsday survey. It was he 
who took money instead of service from the foot-soldiers at Hastings. 

The customary payments made by the feudal landholders for their 



1095 



mUiam 11. 107 



land were called feudal dues, and down to the reign of Charles ii. these 
constituted the bulk of the royal revenue. It must always ^ , , ^ 

•^ . . Feudal Dues, 

be borne in mind that the first idea of feudalism was to 

provide the king with an efficient cavalry force, and that the tenants-in- 

chief, as commanders of their sub-tenantry, were in a position somew^hat 

analogous to colonels of regiments at the present day. When one of 

these died, his heir had to pay a sum of money called a ' relief,' so named 

from the Latin releviiim, which meant 'the taking up again ' „ i- *• 

Relief, 
of land which had lapsed to the king by the death of the 

former tenant. If the heir was a minor, and consecjuently incapable of 

discharging the duties of his position, the king appointed a guardian who 

managed the estates for the benefit of the king and super- „, , , . 

, 1 . mi • Wardship. 

intended the bringing up of the young heir. This was 

called ' wardship,' and was a source of much profit ; and when the 

minority ended, a relief had to be paid as usual. If the heir was a 

woman, the king, on the ground that she must not ally herself with one 

of his enemies, claimed the right to bestow her in marriage, ., 

. , . . , . Marriage, 

and in this way the king rewarded his friends. If the 

person suggested was distasteful to the lady, he would sometimes excuse 

her on the payment of a sum of money. Those three rights, ' relief,' 

' wardship,' and ' marriage,' were strictly enforced by William Rufus and 

his successors. Besides these payments incidental to the life of the 

tenant, three other dues came into use subsequently, incidental to the 

life of the sovereicjn. These were the payment of an aid to 

*^ . / "^ Ransom, 

ransom the lord from captivity, as in the case of Richard i. ; 

another for the marriage portion of his eldest daughter on her first 

marriage ; and a third payable on the knighting of his 

eldest son. These were first enforced in the reign of Po^-ticnfof 

Henry i. The tenants-in-chief of the king exacted the ^aufhter*^^^* 

same dues from their subtenants ; but in the case of the Knighting 

lesser tenants the relief was commonly called a /^mo^, which of King's 

. eldest son. 

recalled the giving-up of the tvar-gear to the chief on the „ • 

death of his follower. The right to collect these feudal 

dues in reasonable amounts, and with proper regard to the interest of 

the tenant, was not disputed ; but bitter complaints were made of the 

atrocious exactions of William and Flambard, who set custom at 

defiance in their greediness of money. 

The clergy held the greater part of their lands just like laymen, by 

feudal tenure, but with this difference. There were no Ecciesiasti- 

minorities and no heiresses, so the king and Flambard ^^^ Holdings. 

made up for this loss to the revenue by keeping bishoprics and abbeys 



108 Norman Kings 1095 

vacant while they seized the revenue, and instead of a relief they exacted 
a large payment of money from the incoming bishop or abbot. 

Thus after Lanfranc's death no successor was appointed for four years, 
and William was only induced to name Anselm as archbishop when he 
believed himself to be at the point of death. Anselm was 
an Italian by birth, who had made his way to the monastery 
of Bee, where he succeeded Lanfranc as prior. He was a man who had 
the confidence of Lanfranc, and at the moment of his appointment he 
was on a visit to the earl of Chester. He w^as a man both of ability 
and courage, of pure and saintly life, and his book Cur Deus Homo 
proves him to have been one of the greatest theologians of his time. 
Altogether the choice was an excellent one ; but on his recovery William 
found that in his new archbishop he had to deal with a man whose stern 
rectitude brooked no tampering with vice of any kind. With such a 
man William had nothing in common. Anselm would neither stand by 
and see the church plundered nor wink at the sinfulness of William's 
court. A series of quarrels followed, and in 1097 Anselm, unable to 
bear the wickedness of William, retired to Rome in order to lay his case 
before Pope Urban 11. 

In 1096 all Europe was stirred by the preparations for the First 

Crusade. In 635 Jerusalem had been conquered by the Arab followers 

The First of Mahomet ; but under the influence of Mohammedanism 

Crusade, ^^le Arabs had become a comparatively civilised people, of 

the stamp depicted in the Arabian Nights. After the first conquest was 

over they had begun to treat the Christians well, and allowed them 

either to live in the city or to come and go as pilgrims and merchants. 

Under their rule the great Easter fair at Jerusalem became one of the 

Causes of. ^^^^^ events of the commercial world, where Italian traders 

from Amalfi, Pisa, and Genoa, and latterly from Venice, 

met the merchants of the East and exchanged the manufactures of 

Europe for the silks and spices which were brought across the desert in 

caravans from Arabia and India, and even from distant China. All this 

was changed, however, when, in 1076, Jerusalem fell into the hands of 

the Seljukian Turks, a wild tribe of Mohammedan mountaineers, who 

emerged from the highland fastnesses of Central Asia and invaded the 

civilised lowlands, much as the Goths and Vandals had done in Europe. 

They hated Clnistianity with all the old Mohammedan frenzy, and cared 

nothing for conmierce ; so they persecuted the pilgrims and robbed the 

merchants. Moreover, their steady advance into Asia Minor threatened 

to rob the Eastern Emperor of some of his most valuable dominions, 

and even menaced Constantinople itself The cries, therefore, of the 



1099 William, II. 109 

persecuted pilgrims, the murmurs of bankrupt merchants, and the 
demands for assistance from the Eastern Emperor, Alexius Comnenns, 
created great excitement in Europe. The Normans, too, who during the 
last fifty years, under Eobert Guiscard and his brother Koger, had recon- 
quered Southern Italy and Sicily from the Saracens, were most anxious 
to carry their arms into Asia ; and all joined to make the most of a wave 
of enthusiasm excited by Peter the Hermit, who had himself suffered 
from j)ersecution, and who travelled through Europe to preach a holy 
war for the recovery of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre. Pope 
Urban ii., seeing that such a course would redound to the honour of the 
papacy and make for the unity of Christendom, placed himself at its 
head. At the council of Clermont, the cry of ' Dieu le volt ! ' was 
adojDted as the watchword of the Christian army. Thousands of soldiers, 
some from pure motives, some from interest, others from mere love of 
adventure, were eager to join in the expedition. The kings of France 
and England approved of it, for it took away some of their most warlike 
subjects ; and William Rufus was glad to advance ,£6666, or 10,000 
marks, in pledge for Normandy, to enable his troublesome brother Robert 
to betake himself to the East. The main body of the 
Crusaders, led by Bohemund of Taranto, Godfrey of Bouillon, 
Robert of Normandy, Stephen of Blois, and other chieftains, made their 
way to Constantinople. There they crossed the Straits, and, after 
winning a battle near Nicara over the Turkish cavalry, besieged and took 
Antioch. Jerusalem was taken 1099, and a Christian capture of 
kingdom on a feudal model was established there under Jerusalem. 
Godfrey of Bouillon. Except a few of the leaders, such as Bohemund 
of Taranto, who became prince of Antioch, few of the Crusaders gained 
much except glory from their efforts ; but the real importance of the 
Crusades was much more considerable than is represented by the transient 
fame of the knights or the short-lived splendour of the kingdom of 
Jerusalem. The tide of Mohammedan conquest was 
undoubtedly turned back many years, and a fresh lease of 
existence was gained for the Empire of the East. Co-operation in the 
Crusades spread a European feeling among the hitherto disconnected 
countries of Europe, and opened up the knowledge of a higher civilisation 
to those which were less advanced. A taste for the luxuries of the 
East raised the whole standard of Western civilisation. Even learnine: 
and literature profited. Peace and order were better secured by the 
consolidation of the great monarchies, and the merchants of the Italian 
Republics re-established their trade with the East. 
The cession of Normandy to William made him the most powerful 



110 Norman Kings iioo 

monarch of Western Europe. He had successfully put clown the power of 

his rebellious vassals, and had filled his cofi'ers at their expense. The 

Greatness of Scots and the Welsh had ceased to be dangerous. An ex- 

WiUiam. pedition against Ireland, which would have completed the 

plan of the Conqueror and consolidated the British Isles, presented no 

very serious difficulties. In 1100 the duke of Guienne and count of 

Poitou had actually oftered to pledge his dominions to the rich English 

king. WiUiam was barely forty, and it seemed as if his career might 

have only begun, when a sudden death brought it to a close. 

Though many and picturesque accounts have been given of his death, 

the actual manner of it is unknown. After a jovial meal, he and his 

companions set out to hunt in the New Forest, and in the 
His Death. . , /• ,i i • • i i i , 

evenmg the corpse oi the kmg, with an arrow through the 

heart, was found by a poor woodman. Who shot the arrow none could 

tell, and whether it struck the king by accident or by intention was 

never known. One story pointed to Sir Walter Tyrrel as the accidental 

slayer of the king ; but he denied it on his oath, and no witnesses of the 

deed were forthcoming. The corpse was taken in a cart to Winchester, 

and there buried ; and in the excitement of a new reign few cared to 

inquire how the Red King met his end. 



CHIEF DATES. 

A.D. 

Lanfranc dies, 1089 

Cumberland taken from the King- of Scots, 1092 

Anselm becomes Archbishop of Canterbury, 1094 

Jerusalem taken by the Crusaders, . 1099 



I 



CHAPTEE III 

HENRY I. : 1100-1135 

■D lAco ™ -if 1100, Matilda of Scotland. 
Born 1068; married^ no, a i i ^r 

I 1121, Adela oi Louvain. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 
Scotland. France. Emperors. 

David I., 1124-1153. Philip i., d. 1108. Henry iv., d. 1106. 

Louis VI., d. 1137. Henry v., d. 1125. 

Conciliatory measures— Suppression of the Barons — The Investiture question — 
Reorganisation of the central Government — Social progress. 

The sudden death of William and the absence of Eobert in the East left 
the throne vacant for the Atheling Hemy, the only one of the Con- 
queror's sons born after he became kino;. Left landless by ,, 

^ . Henry s 

his father, Henry's cool and calculating nature had shown early 
him how to make his own fortune out of the quarrels and 
weaknesses of his brothers. He invested three thousand pounds of his 
father's legacy in buying from the spendthrift Kobert the investiture of 
Mont-Saint-Michel and the surrounding district ; and he soon showed 
William that it was better to have him as a friend than a foe in his 
wars with his elder brother. Accordingly, after 1095, Henry had lived 
for the most jDart in England, and was now ready when the opportunity 
came. His first act was to gallop to Winchester and seize the treasury, 
his next to get together a hurried meeting of the witena- Elected 
gemot and secure the form of election. From the first he King, 
was well aware that he would have to fight for his crown against Eobert, 
and for the dignity of the throne against the barons ; so his conciliatory 
next steps were all directed to secure a party for himself, measures. 
His main hope was from the English, and, to secure their goodwill, he 
married Matilda of Scotland, niece of Edgar Atheling and 
the heiress of the claims of the old English line, in order 
that his children, as descendants of William the Conqueror and of 
Alfred, might have an equal claim to the goodwill and allegiance of both 

races. He also hoped to conciliate the barons by imprisoning Ranulf 

111 



212 Norman Kings iioo 

Flambard, and by the issue of a Charter of Liberties ; and he delighted 
churchmen by recalling the saintly Ansehn. 

Henry's Charter is a very important document ; for it shows us what 
were the chief grievances of which the nobles and clergy complained, and 
the way in which they might be remedied. After boldly 
His Charter, g^^^- ^^g ^.j^^^ j^g j^^d been crowned by the ' common counsel 
of the barons of the whole realm,' Henry declared that the church should 
be free and that on the death of archbishops, bishops, or abbots he 
would exact nothing from their lands, or from their men, until a 
successor had entered upon possession. In regard to feudal dues, the 
heirs of tenants were not, ' as in the time of his brother,' to pay an extor- 
tionate sum, but a just and legal relief ; and the tenants-in-chief were 
to observe the same rule with regard to their subtenants. Barons were 
to notify to the king the intended marriage of their female relations (as 
in the case of Eoger of Breteuil), but the king would neither exact a fee 
nor forbid the match, unless the proposed husband was an enemy. 
Heiresses were to be given in marriage according to the advice of the 
barons ; and childless widows should not be married except at their own 
pleasure. Similar treatment was to be given by the tenants-in-chief to 
their subtenants. The king's sole right to coin money was to be 
maintained. Money and personal property might be disposed of by 
will. Forfeitures were not necessarily to forfeit a man's whole estate, 
as they had done under the two Williams, but should be moderate 
in amount. Lastly, the law of King Edward, with the improvements 
of the Conqueror, was to be restored. These arrangements were 
a distinct improvement, and show the king in his best light as 
the medium of securing even justice between one class and another. 
In one particular, however, a most dangerous privilege was intro- 
duced. Lands held on military tenure, so long as the nobles kept 
themselves well furnished with horses and weapons for the king's 
wars, were to be free from any other tax or service. The danger of this 
enactment lay in its creating a non-taxpaying class, who, if the feudal 
service fell into disuse, as it subsequently did, would be relieved 
from contributing to the expenses of the country, as actually happened 
in the case of the French nobles. 

The imprisonment of Eanulf Flambard was pleasing to churchmen, 
nobles, and people alike. It was said that he had not only fleeced but 

Imprison- ^^^^^ ^^^ flock. His ill-gotten wealth, however, helped 

ment of him to get a rope conveyed into the Tower in a iar of 

Flambard. . i -,1 • , , 

wme, and with it he managed to escape and fled to Nor- 
mandy, where he soon occupied himself with intrigues against Henry. 



1100 Henry I. 113 

The need of all these concessions was shown when, at the close of 1100, 
Eobert returned to Normandy. For he was at once invited to attack his 
brother, both by Eanulf Flambard and by a majority of p ^ ^ 
the barons of England, who begged him to come and be claims the 
their king, and to rid them of the goodman Godric and his 
wife Godiva, as they called Henry and Matilda, after some English story. 
But, though the barons were faithless, Anselm and the English, who 
rejoiced in Henry's marriage and made much of his English birth, were 
loyal, and declared that if Henry put himself at their head they had no 
fear of meeting the Normans. Accordingly, when Eobert landed at >^-^ 
Portsmouth, Henry met him at Alton with a powerful army, and the 
issue was so doubtful that terms were made. Eobert gave compromise 
up his claim in exchange for a yearly pension of ,£2000 ; arranged. 
Henry handed over to Eobert almost all his Norman possessions ; 
and it was arranged that the survivor should inherit the dominions 
of the other if the deceased left no lawful heirs. Eobert then went 
home. 

The invasion, however, had shown Henry which of his barons were 
faithless, and he methodically set himself to deprive them of their dan- 
gerous power. The strongest and most turbulent of all was Robert of 
Eobert of Belleme, now earl of Shrewsbury, whose castles Beileme. 
in Sussex and on the Welsh border, and especially that of Bridgenorth, 
made him a most formidable subject. Forty-five charges of treason were ^~- 
brought against him, and, as he failed to appear when called on, Henry 
at once marched on Bridgenorth, and in three weeks it surrendered. 
The fall of Shrewsbury and Arundel quickly followed, and Eobert was 
forced into exile in 1102. All England rejoiced at the oppressor's 
departure, and cried with one voice : 'Eejoice, King Henry, and praise 
the Lord God because you have begun to reign in freedom, now that you 
have conquered Eobert of Belleme, and driven him out of the country.' 
Similar justice overtook others. Ivo, of Grantmesnil, wdio boasted that 
he was the first man in England who had ' declared war on a neighbour,' 
was heavily fined, to hinder others from doing the like ; William of Mor- 
tain, the unworthy son of the great Eobert, was also banished ; so that, of 
WiUiam the Conqueror's great earldoms, the bishopric of Durham and 
the earldom of Chester alone were left. 

The troubles with Normandy, however, were not yet concluded. The 
clever Eobert of Belleme contrived to win Duke Eobert to his side, and 
in 1104 war again broke out between the brothers. For invasion of <:. 
some time no decisive battle was fought ; but in 1106 Normandy. 
Henry, fighting on foot, English fashion, at the head of an army composed 

H 



114 Norman Kings iioe 

of Anglo-Norman barons and English footmen, defeated Robert and his 
Norman chivalry. This battle was fought on September 29th, the fortieth 
Battle of anniversary of the landing of Dnke William ; and the English 
Tenchebrai. .^pg ^r^{^ to have regarded Tenchebrai as a proper revenge for 
Hastings. Indeed, these wars between the English kings and the Nor- 
man dukes must be regarded as chiefly important because they fostered 
an English, as against a Norman, feeling, so that the sons and grandsons 
of the victors of Hastings began to regard themselves as Englishmen 
when matched against the barons of Normandy. In the battle Robert was 
taken prisoner, and lodged in Cardiff Castle, where he remained till his 
death in 1135. Henry was now undisputed king of England and duke 
of Normandy. With Scotland he was on friendly terms, as brother-in- 
law of its king. The Welsh princes, bridled in their mountains by a ring 
of castles, were giving no trouble ; and the Teutonic element west of the 
Severn was further strengthened in 1105, when Henry liberally gave 
homes in Pembrokeshire to a colony of Flemings whom a sudden inroad 
of the sea had deprived of their native district. For more than ten j-ears 
the whole of Henry's lands enjoyed peace. 

The year 1107 witnessed a most important alteration in the method of 
appointing bishops and abbots. The question how this should be done 
Investiture ^"^'^^ ^^r some years been the subject of a struggle between 
Question. the popes and the emperors, generally known as the 'con- 
test about investitures ' ; and Anselm, during his residence abroad, had 
imbibed the papal views on the subject. At that date a bishop or abbot 
filled two different positions. As a churchman, his functions were those 
of an ecclesiastical authority, and of a sacred character ; as a landholder, 
he was a feudal vassal of the king and a leader of soldiers. The two 
were obviously incompatible ; but, as such was the case, it was of the 
utmost importance to the king that bishop or abbot should not be one of 
his enemies— to the church, that he should not be a mere partisan soldier 
of the king. The difficulty, in fact, was not unlike that raised by the 
marriage of heiresses, in which a voice in the choice of a husband was 
claimed both by the king and by the lady. Before the Conquest such 
elections had been made in the witenagemot, practically in deference 
to the wishes of the king ; and a similar practice had been in use under 
the Conqueror. Anselm now wished that the bishop or abbot should be 
elected by the clergy, and that he should receive the ring and crozier, 
the insignia of his office, not from the king, but from the archbishop. 
For some time neither Henry nor Anselm would give way, and Anselm 
again left England. But as Henry and Ansehn were both reasonable 
and far-sighted men, who knew well how much each had to lose by a 



1107 Henry I. 115 

quarrel with the other, a compromise was arrived at in 1 107. The election 
of bishops was to he in the hands of the cathedral chapters, or in the 
case of Canterbury of the monks of Christ Church, but was settled by 
to be held at the king's court. On election, the new bishop Compromise, 
was to do homage to the king for his lands, and, that done, he was 
to be consecrated by the archbishop and bishops and receive the ring and 
crozier. In this way the spiritual rights of the church were secured, 
and due stress laid on the ecclesiastical character of its prelates, while 
the royal influence was paramount at the election, and his rights as 
feudal superior were fully guarded. This arrangement was afterwards 
adopted as the basis of the settlement of the same question on the 
Continent between Pope Calixtus v. and Henry's son-in-law, Henry v. 
The contest about investitures was only one phase of the great question 
of the proj)er relation between church and state. During the middle 
ages it was the constant aim of the clergy to raise the church into a self- 
governing corporation, as far as possible independent of the state. To 
complete their scheme, they required to elect their own officers, to make 
their own laws, to try their own criminals, and to pay taxes Aims of the 
only to ecclesiastical authorities ; and at one time or Church, 
another every one of these became the subject of a struggle with the 
English kings. It was a part of the same scheme to separate the clergy, 
as far as possible, from all external interests and connections ; and for 
that purpose the more advanced thinkers among them were for rigidly 
enforcing the celibacy of the clergy. Anselm attempted to enforce this 
rule in England ; but it was long before it was very strictly observed by 
the beneficed clergy. In England the gift of parishes was usually in 
the hands of the lord of the manor, and consequently the laity always 
retained a strong hold over the secular clergy, both in the upper and 
lower ranks. 

The first bishopric to which an election was made, according to the new 
method, was that of Salisbury ; and the choice showed the working 
of the new system, for it fell upon Henry's chaplain and treasurer, 
Koger, whom he had originally engaged on the ground of the Roger of 
extreme rapidity with wdiich he could perform the Mass, Salisbury, 
which it was then usual to hear daily. Koger, however, soon showed 
himself to be an excellent man of business, equal to everything placed in 
his hands, and after Henry's accession he became the king's right-hand 
man in everything which concerned the business of the kingdom. Henry 
delighted in order, and the years of peace that followed the battle of 
Tenchebrai gave him the opportunity he desired of putting both the 
local and central government of the country on an orderly footing. 



j^lC Norman Kings 1108 

Accordingly, between 1108 and 1112 an order was issued for the 
holding of the courts of the 'hundred' and the ' shire' 'according to the 
fashion in which they had been held in the time of King Edward, and 
not otherwise.' The importance of this was twofold. First, 
Courts^of the .^ secured that justice should be administered at every 
and the man's door ; and second, it checked the tendency for the 

administration of justice to fall, as it did on the Continent, 
into the hands of the barons, and kept it in those of the king. The courts 
were presided over by the king's ofl&cer, the sheriff. The decisions in 
cases between man and man were made by the whole body of persons 
who attended the court by right ; in criminal cases the ancient practice 
of compurgation and the ordeal were still used, though the Normans 
preferred the methodof trial by judicial combat between the accuser and 
the accused, or their representatives. 

After the Conquest the place of the Witenagemot was taken by the Mag- 
num Concilium, or Great Council. The difference, however, was mainly 

Maffnuml 0^® ^^ name, as the Normans spoke of, as a great council, 

Concilium, ^yliat the English described as a witenagemot. The arch- 
l)ishops, bishops, abbots, and earls still held their places ; but the king's 
thegns were now called barons, for the English thegns, if they retained 
their lands, became tenants-in- chief, and all new grants of land after the 
Conquest were made on feudal terms. As the archbishops, bishops, 
abbots, and earls held their lands on the same tenure, the council was in 
practice a meeting of the king's tenants-in-chief, and in this its character 
as a witenagemot became gradually lost. The fuU Magnum Concilium, 
however, was only summoned on very great occasions, such as the meet- 
ing at Salisbury in 1086 ; and the ordinary business of state was done 

by the King's Council, or Curia Eegis. This body, whose 
Curia Regis. "^ ......,, , "^ . , *^ 

exact position it is impossible to define, consisted, generally 

speaking, of the king in council with the chief officers of state, such as the 

justiciar, the chancellor, the treasurer, the chamberlain, the constable, 

the marshal, and any other persons whose attendance the 

Its Members. , . , 

kmg chose to require. The justiciar, under the Norman and 

early Angevin kings, wasthe chief officer of the realm. When the king 
was in Normandy he acted as regent, and in his absence presided over 
the Curia Regis. His memory is still preserved in the title of the Lord 
Chief- Justice, the head of our system of common law. The chan- 
cellor was the king's chief secretary, and keeper of his seal. The 
chamberlain had charge of the king's household. The constable and 
marshal were chiefly concerned with military matters touching the 
feudal array. 



1118 Henry I. 117 

The duties of this body were most varied. When it was sitting to 
give advice to the king on matters of state, it was called the king's 
' ordinary council,' as opposed to the Magnum Concilium, 

,., .,. c, ,- -. .1 Its Duties. 

which sat on special occasions. Sometimes it acted as a 
law-court, and tried cases between great barons, such as would formerly 
have come before the witenagemot, or cases brought up on appeal 
from the shire-moot. It was then called simply the Curia Eegis. A 
great part of its business concerned the collection of the revenue, and 
when sitting for this purpose it was called the Court of The 
Exchequer. Fortunately, its accounts were most carefully Exchequer, 
kept ; and as the Pipe Roll, or revenue account of 1130 has been pre- 
served, a good idea may be formed of the working of the court. Every- 
thing turned upon money, for Roger was just as strict as Ranulf 
Flambard had been in exacting every penny due to the king ; and in it 
is seen what a profitable source of income were reliefs, wardships, and 
marriage, to say nothing of payments to expedite or delay justice, to 
secure the king's influence, or permission to be relieved from duties or 
absolved from promises, to take up an office or be allowed to vacate 
one — for in Henry's days everything had its price, and every function 
of life was made somehow or other to contribute its quota to the 
royal exchequer. 

Through the various functions of this court-of-all-work the king was 
able to keep a tight hand over the government of the country ; and it 
was mainly through its working that a superstructure of Norman 
centralisation was placed over the strong groundwork of 

'- '^ ^ Norman 

English local government, which is the great constitutional Centralisa- 
achievement of the family of the Conqueror. To complete 
the system, however, it was needful to create a close connection between 
the central Curia Regis and the local courts; and the way to do this was 
indicated in 1124, when a special deputation from it was sent to hold a 
session in the country, and 'hanged so many thieves as never was 
before, being in that little while altogether forty -four men.' This 
vigorous administration of justice by the royal authority gained Henry 
the title of the ' Lion of Justice ' ; and the stern grasp which was 
knitting together the inhabitants of England of all races into the English 
people was an immense boon to the country. 

Queen Matilda died in 1118, leaving Henry two children — Matilda, a 
girl of sixteen, and William, fifteen. Matilda had at eight _ , , 

„ I . ^ Death of 

years of age been married to Henry v., the emperor, and Queen 

her marriage portion was levied as a feudal aid, at the rate 

of three shillings per hide. At the moment of his wife's death Henry 



"^ 



11^ Norman Kings iiis 

was again at war, for Louis vi., king of France, had formed a league 
ao-ainst him, which included Fulk of Anjou and Baldwin of Flanders, 
^William and was designed to aid the interests of William Clito, the 
Clito. only son of the imprisoned Duke Kobert of Normandy. 

Baldwin, however, died the saniQ year ; Fulk was detached from the 
leacrue by a promise that Henry's son should marry his daughter ; and 
in 1119 Henry defeated Louis and William Clito in a skirmish at 
Brenville. The league was thus broken up, and soon after, by the media- 
tion of the pope, peace was restored. 

Henry's next object was to secure the succession of his son to the 
English throne. He had already had allegiance sworn to him by the 
Norman barons, and Avas returning in triumph to England, 
Henry's son, when the prince was drowned in the 'White Ship,' w^hich 
WiUiam. ^^g ^^^ upon a rock by the drunken carelessness of the 
crew. After the death of his son, Henry married again, but had no 
children, so his hopes of keeping the succession in his own line rested 
on his being able to persuade the barons to accept as queen his daughter 
Matilda, who was left a childless widow in 1125, and returned to England. 
Accordingly, in 1126 he induced the Great Council to swear to receive 

Matilda as the future sovereign. A formidable rival, how- 
Matilda . , . , ^ p TT--1T /^Ti 1 

accepted as ever, existed m the person oi William Clito, who was a 
young man of excellent character and considerable ability, 
who had by no means relinquished his hopes of succeeding his uncle. 
In 1123 he had risen in Normandy with the aid of Count Waleran. 
FoQed there, he again allied with the king of France, who named 
him count of Flanders, as the representative of his grandmother 
Matilda, on the death of Charles the Good. Henry's resentment, 
however, pursued him here, and aided the disaffected to revolt. 
D ath f '^^'^^^ ^^1^16 William was victorious ; but, unluckily for 
William him, a slight wound from a lance was allowed to mortifv, 
and he died just when good fortune seemed to be return- 
ing, in 1128. 

A few months before the death of William Clito, Henry married his 
daughter Matilda to Geoffrey, eldest son of Fulk, count of 

Matilda . . ^ ^ t> n c n^i 

marries Anjou, a lad ot hlteen. The counts of Anjou had long 
Anjouf^ °^ played an important part in the history of Northern France. 
Their territory of Anjou, with the neighbouring districts of 
Maine and Touraine, over which they claimed and often exercised a 
suzerainty, adjoined the lands of the dukes of Normandy, Brittany, and 
Aquitaine, and the royal domains of the kings of France. As a family 
they had shown a remarkable aptitude for affairs, both military and 



1135 Henry I. 119 

civil ; had, as a rule, been distinguished by thoroughness ; and had con- 
siderable inclination for intellectual studies. Fulk himself had been a 
very successful ruler, and the marriage of his heir to the heiress of 
Henry of England was a great triumph for his house. Geoifrey himself 
though now quite a boy, was quick-witted, handsome, and attractive, 
though his sharp temper and the disparity of the ages of bridegroom 
and bride prevented the marriage from being a really happy one. No 
child was born to Geoffrey and Matilda till 1133. 

From the point of view of both English and Normans this marriao-e 
was most unpopular : with the English, because it was a marriao-e out 
of the country, which was understood to be contrary to the kind's 
promise ; and with the Normans, because they hated the Angevins, and 
regarded the acceptance of an Angevin ruler as a sort of degradation. 
Henry, however, repeatedly insisted on a renewal of the oaths made to 
Matilda ; and when her son Henry, afterwards Henry ii., was born, the 
name of the child was joined in the oath with that of Henry's 
his mother. On the birth of his little grandson, Henry Death, 
finally left England, and died somewhat suddenly in Normandy, in 
1135. 

Henry i. was a great king. Policy made him identify himself with 
what was best for his people, who wanted nothing so much 

Henry's 

as to be safe from the tyranny of the great landowners. For Character 
two-and-thirty years— almost a generation — he secured ^^^' 

absolute peace in England ; and the great strides made by the country 
in material and intellectual progress attested the value of the work of 
the peace-loving king. During this time commerce increased by leaps 
and bounds. The connection of England with the Continent brought it 
within the influence of the wave of commercial prosperity which was 
stimulated by the Crusades. The union of Normandy and England 
under the same crown made the Channel for many years almost an 
English lake ; and our merchants traded regularly not only within 
Henry's dominions but with Ireland, Brittany, Flanders, and Denmark, 
and even further afield. Moreover, the good order kept in England, 
and particularly its freedom from the Continental curse of private war. 
induced numbers of artificers and craftsmen from other lands to settle 
under Henry's protection, and their industry gave a further impetus to 
the growth of the middle classes. 

In these circumstances the townsmen were anxious to get from 
the king such constitutional rights as would secure them Growth of 
something at any rate of the local self-government en- *^^ Towns, 
joyed by the free cities of the Continent. At first the beginnings 



120 Norman Kings iioo 

were small. The great desires of the townspeople were— (1) to pay 
the hurgifirma or principal tax of the town direct to the king, instead 
of having it collected by the sheriff and counted with the contribution 
of the shire ; (2) to elect their own officers, and to have their cases 
tried in their own courts ; (3) for the chief traders to form themselves 
into a guild recognised by the feudal law. In most cases English towns 
were on the demesne of the king ; in others, as in that of Beverley, 
on that of the archbishop of York ; in others, as Leicester, on that of 
the earl. Charters granted to London and Beverley in the reign of 
Henry i. are still preserved, and may be taken as examples of what 
other towns were aiming to acquire. 

The progress made by the monastic bodies during the peace was 
almost as important as that of the rise of the middle classes in the 
towns. The Norman Conquest of England nearly coincided with a 
considerable revival of religious life in Europe, phases of 
Avhich were the reformation of the papacy under Gregory vii. 
(Hildebrand), the struggle about investitures, the great outburst of 
crusading zeal, and finally the reformation of old and the foundation 
of new monastic orders. This movement took its rise from 
the abbey of Clugny ; and the priories founded as off- 
shoots of that great monastery, of which Pontefract, Beading, and 
Lewes are examples, carried its ideas into this country. The 
Clugniac monks made much of the services and decorations of their 
chapels, and may be regarded as the ritualists of monasticism. They 
were also most important as being the first monastic body which 
regarded its different monasteries as being all part of a congrega- 
tion which managed its affairs as a whole. Their example stimu- 
lated others, and soon two other orders came into existence, both 
Austin designed to improve on their ideal. The first of these was 
Canons. ^j.^^ Austin Canons, designed to be a link between the 
secular parish clergy and the monks, of which the first priory founded 
was that of Holy Trihity, Aldgate, in London. The second and more 

_. , . important w.^s that of the Cistercians, so called from 

Cistercians. ^ ^ ' 

Citeaux, in Burgundy. The true founder of the order was 
Stephen Harding, an Englishinan ; and its most distinguished member 
the famous St. Bernard. The Cistercians were the puritans of monasti- 
cism. Unlike the Benedictines, whose great abbeys had become centres 
of industrial life and the nucleus of flourishing towns, the Cistercians 
sought the wild and more unfrequei\ted valleys for the sites of their 
houses ; unlike the Clugniacs, they disdained all ornaments in their 

\ 



1135 Henry I. 121 

chapels. They had no coloured glass and no bell-tower, and by their 
white dress they endeavoured to indicate they were not as the black- 
robed Benedictines. 

This effervescence of new monastic life seems to have had a stimulat- 
ing effect upon other orders ; and William of Malmesbury, himself a 
Benedictine, tells us that the Cistercians were ' a mirror to the diligent, 
a goad to the negligent, a model to all.' Situated as abbeys were in 
flourishing towns, or by the side of a Norman castle, and acting as hotels 
where great and small, king and palmer, found accommodation for the 
night, an observant monk found himself in touch with every movement 
of his time ; and one of the most remarkable proofs of the reality of the 
better life springing up under Henry, and a strong proof of how rapidly 
Saxon and Norman were mingling into one nationality, is the revival of 
an entirely new interest in the history of England. The Revival of 
only survivor of Alfred's scheme of a regularly kept history, 
chronicle was that preserved in the abbey of Worcester. About the 
year 1120 a copy of this was made for the use of the monks of Peter- 
borough ; and while the original has been lost, the copy remains, and was 
continued by the Peterborough monks in English till the year 1154. 
Besides this, Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon, began about the same 
year to collect materials for a complete history of England ; and William 
of Malmesbury, the greatest historian since Bede, was 

. . 1 . . . , William of 

writing his Acts of the Bishops and his Acts of the English Malmes- 

Kings, and brought his history down to the events of his "^^' 

own time. Henry himself was a scholar. He spoke English, French, 

and Latin. His children were well educated ; and his illegitimate 

son, Eobert of Gloucester, was a personal friend of William of 

Malmesbury. The Latin classics were by no means unknown. One 

copy, at least, of Euclid found its way to England. 

It is from the reign of Henry i. that we can trace the first beginnings 

of the university of Oxford. Henry built a palace at Beaumont, on the 

north side of the town, and it is possible that his presence Beginnings 

attracted learned men. At any rate, it is certain that of" Oxford. 

between 1117 and 1121 Thibaut d'Estampes, a learned Norman, was 

teaching letters to some sixty to one hundred scholars. In 1133 Eobert 

Pullein, afterwards a cardinal, gave lectures on the Holy Scriptures. 

The name of another teacher is also known — Robert of Cricklade ; and 

in the following reign Vacarius further enlarged the course of studies 

by lecturing on the civil law. From this time forward Oxford appears 

to have had an uninterrupted succession of scholars and teachers. 



122 



Norman Kings 



1135 



Altogether the England of Henry i. exhibited in almost ever}- direc- 
tion a hopeful promise both of constitutional order, national feeling, and 
material and intellectual prosperity, Avhich is the best record of the 
success of its scholarly sovereign. 



CHIEF DATES. 

Expulsion of Robert of Belleme, 
Battle of Tenchebrai, 
Investiture Question settled, 
Battle of Brenville, 
Matilda marries Geoffrey of Anjou. 
Birtii of Henry of Anjou, . 



A.D. 

1102 
1106 
1107 
1118 
1128 
1133 



CHAPTER IV 

STEPHEN : 1135-1154 
Born c. 1094 ; married, 1124, Matilda of Boulogne. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 

Scotland. France. Enq^eror. 

David I., d. 1153. Louis vi., d. 1137. Frederic Barbarossa, 

Malcolm iv., d. 1165. Louis vii., d. 1180. 1152-1190. 

Stephen's success — Contest for the Crown — Battles of Northallerton and Lincoln 
— Siege of Oxford — Effects of the War— Henry of Anjou. 

When her father died in Normandy, Matilda was in Anjou ; and she and 
her husband, instead of hurrying to England and securing it at all hazards, 
made the fatal mistake of making the first attempt upon Mistakes of 
Normandy. If they thought that in consequence of the Matilda, 
late king's arrangement the succession of Matilda was a matter of course, 
they were completely mistaken ; for a rival was already in the field, and 
acting with such promptitude that the crown of England had slipped from 
Matilda's reach almost before her movement in Normandy had begun. 

This rival was Stephen of Blois, third son of the Conqueror's clever 
daughter Adela and her husband the count of Blois, count of Mortain 
by gift of Henry, and of Boulogne by right of his wife, the character of 
heiress of the younger Eustace. Stephen was a man of Stephen, 
whom it might be said that he would have been thought to have had 
every qualification for kingship if he had never reigned. He was now 
about forty years of age, handsome and vigorous in body, and a master of 
all chivalric exercises. His courage was unimpeachable, and his personal 
character excellent. His wife was the daughter of Christina, younger 
sister of the good Queen Matilda ; so his children, like those of Henry, 
represented the old English line. Unlike Matilda, who was barely known 
to the English people, he had been bred in Henry's court, lived all his 
life in England, and had been formally acknowledged to be, after the 
king of Scots, the first baron of the realm. He seemed just the 
man to be an ideal English king in every way superior to his rival 

123 



124 Norman Kings '^'^Tn 

Matilda, by birth a woman— and no distafl' had yet reigned over th( 
chivalry of Western Europe— by education a German, by marriage arj4* 
Ancrevin, who represented, moreover, in the eyes of the baronage th( ' 
stern system of repression and exaction as practised by Eanulf Flambarc 
and Eoger of Salisbury. 

It was not, however, by the nobles that Stephen was first chosen aj 
kinc^. Sailing at once from Boulogne, he was accepted with enthusiasn 
His prompt ^^1 ^^e men of London ; and, their aid being secured, he mad( 
action. j-^jg -^^y to Winchester, where he was gladly received by hi? I 

brother Henry, the bishop, and put in possession of the king's treasure 
Already the confusion incident on the cessation of the king's peace, ai 
the death of the king, showed the necessity for an immediate decision 
and, actuated probably by this, Eoger of Salisbury, the justiciar anci 
official representative of law and order, threw in his lot with Stephen, 
bringing with him his nephew Nigel, bishop of Eh'', the treasurer, and 
his illegitimate son Eoger-le-poer, the chancellor. William, archbishop 

Crowned of Canterbury, performed the coronation ; so that, with 

^^"^- the townspeople, the officials, and the church on his side. 

Stephen's position seemed well assured. Some of the barons hesitated 
longer, especially Eobert of Gloucester, eldest son of the late king ; but 
eventually Stephen won them by lavish promises, and the Norman 
barons, thankful to escape from an Angevin ruler, followed suit. Foi 
a time it seemed as if Matilda was not to have a single open adherent, 
either in England or in Normandy. 

Before long, however, the real unfitness of Stephen for his post began 
to show itself. He was too lavish both of promises and gifts. Besides 
Unfitness of promising generally to observe the good laws and customs 
Stephen. ^f Henry and Edward the Confessor, which he did in two 
charters issued at his coronation, and at the holding of his first council, 
he also recklessly diminished his wealth by lavish grants of lands, and 
all without winning the real affection of the recipients or binding them 
to him by obligation. A favourite maxim of the Empress Matilda, 
' Never glut a hawk if you wish him to serve you,' may well have been 
derived from observation of Stephen's error. 

The first person to declare in Matilda's favour was David, king of 

Scots ; but Stephen bought him off for a time by the grant of the 

earldom of Carlisle, with the county of Cumberland for his 

David, King -n- t-i j • -.i^^ i 

of Scots, son Henry. But m 1138 he again took up arms, and, after 

Maifma.^°'^ cruelly ravaging Northumberland and Durham, made his 

Avay into Yorkshire. By this time, however, he was not 

Stephen's only opponent : Eobert of Gloucester and Miles of Hereford 



.139 Stephen 125 

vere in rebellion, and Stephen was amply occupied in a series of sieges 

entailed by the need of bringing them and their friends to reason. 

j'ortunately, the north was in good hands. Archbishop Thurstan of York 

tnd Walter Lespec, the founder of Eievaulx abbey, assembled the 

lortherners at York ; and, the aged Thurstan being left behind, Walter 

ed them out to Cowmoor, two miles beyond Northallerton, and there, at 

;he spot where the Hambledon Hills come near to the lower spurs of 

;lie Pennine range on the west, they awaited the onset of the Scots. 

The whole army fought on foot round a car on which, as 

, , Battle of 

I standard, were placed on masts the sacred banners of Northaller- 

5t. Peter, St. Wilfrid, and St. John of Beverley. The ^°"' 

charge of the Scots was fierce and well sustained, but they could make 

10 impression on the solid array of spearmen, while the archers, already 

beginning to take their place in English warfare, sent their shafts with 

'atal efiect among the unarmoured Scots. In the end the Scots withdrew, 

eaving more than a thousand dead, and all their spoil and baggage ; and 

"or nearly two hundred years the memory of the Battle of the Standard 

saved Yorkshire from invasion. 

Meanwhile, Stephen's military skill had served him well in the south. 

Bristol was unassailable, but Hereford and Shrewsbury fell into his 

hands. His queen captured Dover ; Eobert and Miles fled the country ; 

md the hanging of some of the garrisons taught a severe lesson to the 

rest. Altogether, the year 1138 was Stephen's fortunate year. Its 

successor, 1139, was as unfortunate. Hitherto, Stephen had wisely kept 

on good terms with Eoger of Salisbury, in whose hands rested the 

administration of the country, and had even granted his Stephen 

most exorbitant requests ; but in a fatal moment he quarrelled quarrels 

with Eoger and his family, seized their castles of Salisbury, Roger of 

Ely, and Devizes, and flung them, bishops as they were, into ^ ^^ " ^' 

prison. Nothing more foolish could well have been done. The fall of 

Roger threw the whole administrative machine out of gear ; while the 

imprisonment of a bishop, which might have been tolerated from the 

Conqueror, was not to be endured from his grandson, and had the efiect 

of throwing Henry of Winchester and the whole infiuence of the church 

on the side of the empress. On August 29th Henry summoned his 

brother to appear before a church council to answer for his conduct ; and, 

though Stephen tried to save himself by a humiliating submission, 

Matilda and her brother Eobert landed at Arundel on the , ., , 
. , Matilda 

last day oi September, where they were received by Adela, arrives in 
the late king's widow. Eobert soon passed on to Bristol ; "S a" • 
but Matilda was for some weeks besieged at Arundel by Stephen. 



126 Norman Kings U39 

Eventually, however, feeling probably that liobert was his more dangerous 
opponent, Stephen allowed Matilda to join her brother. The personal 
contest between Stephen and Matilda was almost confined to the years 
1139-1143. After Matilda joined her brother, Stephen made no attempt 
to penetrate into the west-midland shires, where the influence of Robert of 
Gloucester and Miles of Hereford was supreme, but contented himself 
with holding the shires that lay east of a line drawn from the Peak 
to Wareham, with securing the waterway of the Thames, and en- 
deavouring to prevent other barons from going over to the side of the 
empress. 

In the winter of 1140 the earl of Chester, the one English earl whose 
position approached that of Continental feudalism, and whom Stephen 
had done all in his power to win, seized Lincoln castle. The citizens 
and Bishop Alexander appealed to Stephen to aid them against the 

tyrant. On arriving at Lincoln, Stephen found that Randolf, 
captured at or Ralf, of Chester had left the castle to be defended by his 

■wife, and had himself gone to Chester to raise forces. The 
castle of Lincoln, which with the cathedral is situated on a high rock on 
the north side of a gap in the wolds, through which the Witham, rising 
near Grantham, makes its way round to the sea at Boston, is an ex- 
tremely strong place ; and before Stephen could take it, the earl, who 
had been joined on the Fosse way by Kobert of Gloucester, arrived to 
relieve it. Swimming their horses across the ford of the Witham, they 
attacked Stephen's forces in the early morning on the low ground 
between the river and the castle height. The followers of the two earls 
vied with each other in the energy of their attack. Stephen's Flemings, 
under William of Ypres, were put to the rout ; and he himself, after a 
terrible conflict on foot, in which he broke a battle-axe over the helmet 
of the earl of Chester, was taken prisoner. The city was then sacked to 
punish the citizens for their appeal to the king. This happened in 
February 1141, and for a short time Matilda carried all before her. 
Robert d'Oilly, the constable of Oxford castle, put that important 
fortress into her hands. Henry of Winchester, disgusted at his brother's 
failure, and alarmed for the interests of the church, used his authority as 
Matilda P^^P'^^^ legate to bring the clergy over to her side ; the 
recognised submission of London followed, and Matilda was formally 

3,s i-^ady . _ 

of the recognised as Lady of the English, No sooner, however, 

"^ '^ • was Matilda in power than, like Stephen, she began to show 

Topu" d'ty ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ *^ govern. If he listened only too readily 

to foolish counsellors, she would give heed to no counsel 

at all— not even to that of the old king of Scots or of Henrv of 



1147 Stephob 127 

W^inchester. She confiscated wholesale the lands of her opponents, 

lisposed as she pleased of church property, refused to give to the citizens 

)f London the laws of Edward the Confessor, and browbeat the most 

nfluentiid citizens in order to exact money. 

Meanwhile, Stephen's queen, Matilda of Boulogne, had been showing 

lerself a worthy great-granddaughter of Edmund Ironside. With the 

lid of William of Ypres she had landed in Kent, and her 

1 T 1 1 • T 1 • • 1 i London 

ipproach to London determined the citizens to revolt. As declares for 

)ne man they rose against the empress, and an ignominious ^^ 

licrht to Oxford brought her brief success to a close. Again Henrv 

)f Winchester changed sides ; and Matilda, furious at his want of 

'aith, at once besieged him in a new castle which he had just built at 

^Vinchester. To aid the bishop, Matilda of Boulogne and William of 

i^'pres marched with the Londoners and Flemings. Matilda Stephen 

ivas again compelled to fly, and in trying to cover her retreat released. 

ler brother, Robert of Gloucester, was captured. In November he was 

jxchanged for Stephen. 

In 1142 Robert of Gloucester went to the Continent to persuade 

j-eoffrey to come to his wife's assistance ; and in his absence Stephen 

oesieged the empress in Oxford castle. The importance of 

r^ P -, , . • -■• ., . ,. n . Matilda 

Dxiord Jay m its commanding the navigation oi the upper besieged in 

Thames ; its strength in its situation on a spit of land ^ °^ • 

between the Thames and the Cherwell, surrounded on all sides but one 

by marshes. With great difficulty Stej^hen forded the river and formed 

the siege ; but before long a frost set in, the marshes and rivers were 

frozen hard, and the castle could be strictly blockaded. Before Robert 

could relieve her, the case of the garrison was desperate ; but with four 

chosen knights all dressed in white the empress escaped across ice and 

snow to Wallingford, where she was welcomed by Brian Fitz- Count, one 

of her stoutest supporters. Oxford immediately surrendered, and shortly 

afterwards the forward movement of the empress's party Returns to 

came to an end. The empress herself remained in England Normandy. 

till the death of Earl Robert in 1147, soon after which she returned to 

Normandy. 

Meanwhile, her husband Geofirey had been far more successful. When 

his wife set off for England he had begun a campaign against Normandy. 

Here his engineering skill stood him in good stead. Castle 

after castle fell before his machines, and by 1144 the whole success in 

of the duchy was in his hands. Till 1147 Geoffrey kept it N°^"^^"dy' 

under his own control ; but, his son Henry being then fifteen years of 

age, Normandy was given over to him. 



\^ 



128 Norman Kings 1147 

Younf Henry had received an excellent education, partly conducted 
under the eye of his scholarly father, partly under the no less competent 

Robert of Gloucester ; and he was now expected to take his 
Hen?yof ° part in activc life. In 1149 he visited England, and was 
Anjou. knighted by his great-uncle David of Scotland ; but he soon 

returned, and till 1152 was busied in the affairs of his duchy, which he 
had to defend against the attacks of Louis vii. 

In 1151 the differences between the house of Anjou and the king of 
France were arranged by the mediation of St. Bernard. In the same 
year Geoffrey died, leaving his son count of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, 
besides being duke of Normandy ; and in the spring of the next year 
Henry made himself the mightiest uncrowned head in the west by 

acceptincr an offer of marriage made to him by Eleanor, 

He marries -to o j j 

Eleanor of duchess of Aquitaine and countess of Poitou, Saintonge, 

and Limousin, the divorced wife of Louis vii. Another 

war with the French king followed, in which Henry had decidedly the 

better; and in the spring of 1153 he found himself strong enough to 

leave the Continent and renew the contest with Stephen. 

Since the siege of Oxford, the war in England had ceased to be carried 

on in any regular way ; but that brought no diminution of its horrors to 

-- the wretched -inhabitants of the country. All the lawless 

rl errors " 

of the spirits of the time took advantage of it to work their own 

Civil War. .„ ,-, - . „ f. . 

Aviil. Oastles sprang up m all directions, and the garrisons 
lived on the plunder of their neighbours. For the only time in English 
history men built castles when and where they listed ; and no less than 
twelve hundred of these dens of iniquity, giving an average of thirty a 
county, sprang up during Stephen's reign. Barbarism was rapidly re- 
turning. ' If three men came riding into a town,' wrote the chronicler, 
' all the inhabitants fled.' You could ride a day's journey without seeing 
a man cultivating the ground. Trade and ag:riculture were alike ruined ; 
and it was said that ' God and his saints were asleep.' Some barons 
made horrible things called ' rachentages,' or neckties, so devised that 
when one was put on a man he could neither ' sleep, nor stand, nor lie, 
but had to bear all the iron ' ; others threw their prisoners into noisome 
dungeons with rats and toads ; others hung them up and caused smoke 
to blow over them, so that they were all but choked. Such things were 
the everyday life of France and Germany, but in England, happily, they 
were new ; and the experience of Stephen's reign taught Englishmen, 
once for all, that without a strong central administration the bcirons 
could not be kept in check. 
. Since the death of Robert of Gloucester, however, Stephen had been 



1154 Stephen 129 

gradually gaining ground ; and in the winter of 1152 he besieged Brian 
Fitz-Count in his castle of Wallingford. To save him an appeal was 
made to Henry of Anjou, and he came over in person. The 
two armies met at Malmesbury, but the retreat of Stephen arrives in 
prevented a battle. The barons of neither side were "^ ^" 
anxious for a complete victory, but wished to prolong the war for their 
own interests. At this critical moment, however, Stephen lost his eldest 
son Eustace, for whose interests as well as his own he was now fighting. 
Archbishop Theobald took advantage of the occasion to propose a com- 
promise ; and in November 1153 it was agreed at Walling- Treaty of 
ford that Stephen should hold the crown for the remainder Wallingford. 
of his life, and that Henry should be his adopted son and successor. 

The treaty of Wallingford brought the long contest to a close. As 
recognised successor, and, according to one account, with the actual office 
of justiciar, Henry took into his own hands the restoration of order ; 
and so well did he do his work that it was said that, during the two last 
years of his reign, Stephen had more of the reality of sovereignty than 
he had ever possessed before. So much progress, indeed, Stephen's 
was made that Henry was able to revisit his Continental l^eath. 
dominions, and was there in 1154 when Stephen's death made him the 
recognised king of England. 

In spite of all the horrors of Stephen's reign, perhaps aided by them, 

the monastic revival had made much progress. The military knights of 

St. John and of the Temple had established many of their _ , . 
^ . ^ . "^ Ecclesias- 

depots in the country. The Premonstratensian order of tical Pro- 
canons had also been founded ; and a peculiarly English 
order of convents for monks and nuns had been founded by Gilbert of 
Sempringham. The church, too, had gained strength. The only 
element of consistency to be found in the policy of Henry of Winchester 
is his attachment to the interest of the church ; and his aims were more 
rationally pursued by Archbishop Theobald, whom the pope was per- 
suaded to recognise as the ' born legate ' of the pope in England. Theo- 
bald collected round him a number of the ablest young men of the time, 
among whom was Thomas of London, afterwards the famous archbishop 
of Canterbury. 

CHIEF DATES. 

A.D. 

Battle of Northallerton, .... 1138 
Arrest of the Bishop of Salisbury, . . 1139 
Matilda in England, .... 1139-1142 

Henry of Anjou marries Eleanor of Guienne, 1152 
Treaty of Wallingford, .... 1153 

I 



Book III 

THE EARLIER ANGEVIN KINGS 

SOMETIxMES CALLED PLANTAGENETS 



z 


o 


o 


H.". , ,^- 


O t^?« 


••= 


AN 

lULUSTR 
RS IN T 

66-181 




P5?2^ 


UJc. 


Fh ^ 


m 


u 


cJ 



ui 
O 

-z- 

> 




M « E^ W &-S 



v.— THE EARLIER ANGEVIN KINGS, 1154-1272. 



Henry II., = Eleanor of Guienne, 



1154-1189. 



divorced wife of 
Louis VII. , d. 1204. 



Heiiry, Richard I., Geoffrey, 
d. 1183. 1189-1199. d. 1186. 



Constance John, 
of Brit- 1199- 
tany. 1216. 



Arthur, 
d. 1203. 



-Isabella Eleanor=Kiug of 



of An- 

gouleme. 



Henry III., 

1216-1272. 



Eleanor of 
Provence. 



Joan, 
m. Alexander 
of Scotland. 



I 

Eleanor 

m. Simon de 

Montfort. 



Edward I., 
1272-1307. 



Edmund Croucliback, 
d. 1295. 



Margaret, 

m. Alexander ill. 

(see VI.). 



Castile. 



Blanche, 
Louis of France 
(see VII.). 



Richard, 

King of the 

Romans, 

d. 1271. 



VI.— THE KINGS OF SCOTLAND FROM 1153-1286. 

Henry, Earl of Huntingdon (see iv,). 



Malcolm IV., 1153-1165. 



William the Lion, 1166-1214. 



Alexander II.. = Joan, sister of Henry iii. 
1214-1249. 



Alexander III., 

m. Margaret, daughter of Henry iii., 

1249-1286. 



133 



VIL— THE KINGS OF FRANCE, 987-1285. 
Hugh Capet, 987-996. 

Robert I., 996-1031. 

Henry I., 1031-1060. 

Philip I., 1060-1108. 

Louis VI., 1108-1137. 

Louis VII., = (1) Eleanor of Provence, 



1137-1180. 



divorced 1152. 

(2) Constance of Castile. 

(3) Alice of Champagne. 



Philip Augustus (3), 1180-1223. 

Louis VIII. = Blanche of Castile 



(invader of England 1216), 
1223-1226, 



(see v.). 



Louis IX. (Saint), 1226-1270. 



Philip III. 1270-1285. Robert (see v.), 

ancestor of the Bourbon kings. 



134 



CHAPTER I 

HENRY II. : 1154-1189 
Born 1133 ; married, 1152, Eleanor of Guienne. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 
Scotland. France. Emperor. 

Malcolm iv., d. 1165, Louis vii., d. 1180. Frederic i., d. 1190. 

William the Lion, d. 1214. Philip Augustus, d. 1223. 

Po2)es. 
Hadrian iv. (Nicholas Breakspear), 1154-1159 ; Alexander ill., 1159-1181. 

Reorganisation of the Kingdom — The great Scutage— The Becket Quarrel — 
Judicial Reforms — Concptest of Ireland — Abortive Revolt of the Barons — 
Quarrels in the Royal Family. 

The acquisition of the English crown made Henry ii. the monarch of 
greatest consequence in Europe. He was king of England, with feudal 
rights over the sub-king of Scothind and the prince of North Dominions 
Wales; he was duke of Normandy, count of Anjou and of^enryll. 
Maine ; and in right of his wife he was duke of Aquitaine, which gave 
him not only the actual rule of Poitou, Perigord, Querci, Limousin, and 
Gascony, but also a suzerainty more or less real over all the countries 
which lay west of the Rhone, chief among which was the county of 
Toulouse. To these extensive dominions he virtually added the duchy 
of Brittany, through the marriage of his son Geoffrey to its heiress 
Constance in 1160. After this event he had in his hands the mouths of 
the Seine, the Loire, and the Garonne, and with them command over the 
greater part of the coasting trade of France. These possessions would 
have made any prince powerful ; but Henry owed their acquisition mainly 
to his own character, and the energy and skill with which he had made 
the most of the advantages he derived from his birth. 

Henry's gifts, both of mind and body, were clearly to be traced to his 
ancestry. The bent of his mind was Angevin, and showed the same 
eagerness and thoroughness, combined with versatility, that His Char- 
had long been characteristic of the counts of Anjou. His a'^t^^- 
body, strong, thick-set, and sinewy, might have been derived from either 



136 Earlier Angevin Kings U54 

side of his descent. Like all his ancestors, he was thoroughly versed in 
war, and had the Angevin talent for diplomacy, while his love of law 
and order connected his mind with that of Henry i. His energy was 
wonderful. Not for a moment was he idle. His days were spent in war 
or the chase, in the conduct of business, or in vigorous discussion. He 
rarely sat down ; and so difficult was it for him to sit still and do 
nothing, that he usually occupied himself with drawing pictures 
while hearing the Mass. Such a man gave little rest to his at- 
tendants. He kept his courtiers working till they were tired. He 
rarely slept two nights in the same place ; and so rapid were his 
journeys, that hardly an officer in all his dominions could be certain that 
the king might not visit him in the course of the day. In days when, 
as had been amply demonstrated in the time of Stephen, the whole 
working of the administrative machine depended on the personal 
influence of the king, these qualities were invaluable. He had also the 
royal gift of remembering faces he had once seen ; but his good qualities 
were to some extent marred by the inheritance of the terrible Angevin 
temper, which often led him into actions which afterwards cost him dear. 

One of Henry's first actions indicated the lines of his future policy. 
He sought out Roger of Salisbury's nephew Nigel, bishop of Ely, and 
. , made him his treasurer, with orders to restore the exchequer 
mentofthe to the condition under which he remembered it in the old 
equer. ^^y^ of Henry I. This Nigel did, and from 1156 we have 
handed down to us the first extant pipe roll since that of 1 130. The 
accounts clearly show the disastrous efiects of the late reign. The revenue 
had diminished by two-thirds, and the large sums needed for repairs prove 
the ruinous condition of the royal property. From that time forward 
there was a steady improvement, and Nigel was able to hand his office 
on to his son Richard, bishop of London, from whose pen in the 
Dialog us de Scaccario we have a most interesting and even amusing 
account of the working of the exchequer in his day. Henry appointed 
two justiciars— Richard de Lucy, honourably known as the loyal 
constable of the Tower of London and of Windsor Castle, and Robert, 
earl of Leicester. The chancery he gave to an even more interesting 
character, Thomas of London. 

Thomas was born at London in 1117, and was the son of Gilbert Becket, 

a native of Rouen, and Rohesia of Caen, his wife. His father was a 

Thomas of burgess of London, and at one time port-reeve. The boy 

was sent to be educated by the Austin canons at Merton 

in Surrey, and then for a short time to Paris. He then entered business, 

but friends found him a more congenial place in the household of arch- 



1158 Henry 11. 137 

bishop Theobald. His talents were fully appreciated by the archbishop, 
who made him his confidential adviser. With Theobald he went to Eome 
in 1143, and to the Council of Eheims in 1148 ; and some time between 
these dates he gave a further year to study at Auxerre and Bologna. In 
1155 Thomas took deacon's orders on his aiDpointment to the important 
position of archdeacon of Canterbury ; and when Henry became king, 
Theobald strongly recommended him for the office of chancellor. The 
new chancellor was now thirty-four years of age, of an extremely 
handsome appearance, charming manner, and also a thorough man of 
business ; and before long he made himself as necessary to Henry as he 
had been to archbishop Theobald. 

At his coronation, and again at his first council, Henry promised 
reformation, and in general a return to the ' days of his grandfather ' ; 
and the first years of his reign were devoted to this work. Abuses 
The foolish grants of crown-lands made by both Stephen abolished, 
and Matilda were resumed ; the eleven hundred and fifteen ' adulterine 
castles' built in Stephen's reign were ordered to be levelled to the ground ; 
the bad money issued from irregular mints was replaced by a good 
coinage, issued in 1158. The bands of Flemish and other mercenaries 
who had fought for either side and plundered for themselves were 
expelled from the country ; and in 1155 and 1156 the judges from the 
king's court went on circuit through thirteen shires as they had done in 
the time of Henry i. The most troublesome matter was to get back the 
royal castles from the hands of the barons, and Henry found it necessary 
to march in person against some of the more recalcitrant. Thus earl 
William of Aumale, lord of Holderness, was made to give up Scarborough ; 
and upon this William Peverel of the Peak and Koger of Hereford 
submitted. Hugh Mortimer, strong in his castles of Cleobury, Wigmore, 
and Bridgenorth, tried resistance, but utterly failed ; and, the most 
powerful being thus subdued, the rest submitted. 

At the same time Henry insisted upon his sovereign rights ; forced his 
cousin Malcolm, king of Scots, to give up Cumberland, Westmorland,^ 
and Northumberland, with the strong castles of Newcastle, Scotland 
Bamburgh, and Carlisle, which had been held by the Scots ^"'^ Wales, 
during the last reign ; and Malcolm acknowledged himself to be Henry's 
man, 'in the same manner as his grandfather had been the man of 
Henry the Elder.' Henry had more trouble with Owen, prince of North 
Wales, with whom he fought an indecisive battle at Consillt, near Flint, 
in 1157 ; but eventually Owen, alarmed by the landing of an expedition 
sent to Anglesea, agreed to do homage, and his submission carried with 
it that of his vassal princes of South Wales. 



138 Earlier Angevin Kings 1158 ; 

England being now at peace, Henry was able to go to France in 1158 | 

and stay there six years, and occupied himself with enforcing his rights j 

over his Continental dominions. He had already paid a 

Jhrcond- Hying visit there in 1156, in consequence of the pretensions 

"^"*" of his brother Geoffrey, who, under his father's will, claimed 

Anjou, Touraine, and Maine as soon as Henry became king of England. 

Henry, however, declined to recognise his right, and not only compelled 

him to give up his claim, but took from him his castles. The chief 

object of his present visit was to secure the town of Nantes, and he then 

County of went on to assert his claims to the suzerainty over the 

Toulouse, county of Toulouse. The right of the dukes of Aquitaine 

to this was somewhat uncertain, but it had been asserted by Louis vii. 

so long as Eleanor was his wife ; now, however, he denied it, and 

prepared to help the count in resistance to Henry's demands. Henry 

therefore organised a great expedition to Toulouse ; but on arriving there 

he found that the king of France had thrown himself into the town, and, 

declining to set his own vassals the bad example of a vassal besieging his 

liege lord, Henry retreated, taking care, however, to retain possession of 

all the castles which he had taken in his advance. Eventually, in 1172, 

Raymond did homage to Henry for his county of Toulouse. 

The expedition to Toulouse of 1159 had indirectly an effect of much 
import to the future of the English nation by being the occasion of the 
The Great imposition of the Great Scutage. According to feudal 
s outage. j.^^y^ ^ tenant-in-chief was bound to serve his lord either in 
person or by deputy for forty days each year, in which the coming and 
going did not count. This plan worked fairly well for an expedition to 
Wales or a short campaign against an unruly baron ; but it was obviously 
unsuitable for continued warfare, and, when the scene of strife was 
distant, inflicted great hardship upon the tenant. Accordingly, in 1156, 
when Henry made his expedition to Normandy against his brother 
Geoffrey, he excused the clerical holders of fiefs from attendance on 
payment of so much per knight's fee of shield money ; and in 1159 he 
extended the same privilege to all the barons of Normandy and England, 
and used the £180,000 so obtained in hiring soldiers, while he exacted 
personal service from the men of his father's dominions and of Aquitaine. 
Scutage, therefore, in its institution appeared as an indulgence 
advantageous alike to both king and barons ; in reality, however, it 
struck a hard blow at feudalism. For, in the first place, by enabling 
the king to hire trained soldiers, it made him independent of baronial 
assistance ; and, secondly, it broke down the unwise concession of Henry's 
charter, that lands held by knight service should be liable to no other 



1163 Henry II. 139 

impost. Scutage, which, once begun, rapidly became a regular institution, 
also helped to make the feudal tenants less warlike, and aided the tendency 
which was rapidly making progress in England by which feudalism, 
instead of being, as on the Continent, the basis of society, -^^^^^ of 
was becoming merely one among the four usual methods of Land 

. . Tenure. 

land tenure. These were knight service, free socage, frank 

almoign (the tenure on which some church lands were held), and 

customary service or villein tenure. 

The institution of scutage, even if not suggested by Becket, was pro- 
bably carried into effect by him. Thomas had made an admirable 
chancellor, throwing himself into all Henry's plans with 
characteristic energy, perhaps even sinking too much the elected 
deacon and friend of archbishop Theobald in the lay official. 
Clergymen, at any rate, thought he had been hard on his own order in 
the matter of the scutage ; and when, on the expedition to Toulouse, he 
appeared in full armour, and actually overthrew a French knight in 
single combat, he seemed no whit behind the military ecclesiastics of an 
earlier age. Henry therefore was perfectly satisfied ; and when Theobald 
died in 1161, he was determined that Becket should add to his office of 
chancellor that of archbishop, that the threads of both civil and ecclesi- 
astical administration might be in the hands of his most trusted servant, 
Theobald, too, had desired Becket for his successor ; so in 1162 he was 
elected archbishop by the monks of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, in 
presence of a great council — Gilbert Foliot, bishop of Hereford, alone of 
the council objecting on the ground of the scutage — and was consecrated 
by the aged Henry of Winchester. The king, however, had made a 
mistake. As those who knew him best had always expected, Becket 
showed himself to be at heart the ecclesiastical disciple of Theobald. 
From the moment of his consecration he set himself to magnify his 
office, and, in proof of his new attitude, roused Henry's disgust by resign- 
ing his post of chancellor, as inconsistent with the demands of his new 
position. The resignation, indeed, meant more than Henry at first im- 
puted to it. For it marked the moment when the ecclesiastical revival, 
which under various forms had been promoted by Anselm, Henry of 
Winchester, and Theobald of Canterbury, had made the old relations be- 
tween the church and the state impossible. Many causes had led to 
this, and it was a question rather on what battle-ground the next quarrel 
between church and state should be fought, than whether there should be 
a contest at all. 

The first question on which the king and the archbishop difi'ered was 
one of taxation. In July 1163, Henry, in a council held at Woodstock, 



140 Earlier Angevin Kings 1163 

proposed that a tax of 2s. per hide, the greater part of which had of late 
been used to pay the expenses of the sheriffs, should go direct into the 
king's exchequer. For some reason Becket objected to 
with the*'^'^^ this, and declared that he would take care that no more 
Archbishop. ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^^ church lands. The matter is obscure, but 
ultimately the king gave way, and the tax under the old form was 
apparently abolished. The incident, however, is the first example since 
the Conquest of successful resistance to taxation. In the end, however, 
the quarrel turned, not as might have been expected on scutage, or upon 
the taxation of church lands, but on the right way of dealing with clergy 
accused of crime. Before the Conquest, when the bishop sat with the 
ealdorman in the shire-moot, and the archdeacon brought his cases 
before the hundred court, little distinction had been made between lay- 
men and ecclesiastics. William the Conqueror, however, probably with 
the sole view of weakening the influence of the English bishops, had re- 
moved the bishop from the shire-moot and given him a court of his own, 
and ordered that the archdeacon should no longer bring suits in the 
hundred court. Henceforth all clerical cases were tried in ecclesi- 
TrialofEc- astical courts according to the church, or canon, law; 
c esiastics. .^^^-^ ^^iq lay authorities were directed to aid the clergy in 
carrying out the sentences of their courts. The change, however, was 
wider than William had ever anticipated. The practice of using the papal 
tribunal as a court of appeal from the English ecclesiastical courts was 
the logical consequence of the new system ; while the use of the canon 
law, made even more a distinct branch of laAv by the attention given to 
the revived study of the Roman law, did more than anything else to 
make the clergy a separate caste. 

Moreover, the ecclesiastical courts could inflict no punishment which 
involved the loss of life or limb. Its sentences were restricted to a fine, or 
to imprisonment in a monastery, or to depriving the criminal of his orders. 
The Clerical This state of affViirs was most serious. The word ' clergy,' as 
then interpreted, included bishops, priests, and deacons, who 
were described as clerks in holy orders ; subdeacons, acolytes, exorcists, 
readers, and ostiarii ; and also persons who had received the ' first 
tonsure ' but were for all practical purposes laymen, so that in practice 
all the professional classes, except regular soldiers, were included in 
it. Moreover, the king's justices complained that since his accession 
no less than one hundred murderers and innumerable thieves and robbers 
had made their escape from due punishment on the plea that they were 
clerics. The facts, indeed, were notorious ; but the clergy, who feared 
that, if the jurisdiction of the lay courts over 'criminous clerks' were 



1164 Henry 11. 141 

once admitted, a serious diminution of clerical independence would 
follow, believed that the right remedy was to be found in a stricter exa- 
mination into the character of candidates for the tonsure ; and Becket, 
on becoming archbishop, at once set himself to do this. Henry's 
Henry, however, was not prepared to wait the action of so Proposition, 
slow a remedy, and proposed that for the future a criminal, who, on 
being brought before the ordinary courts, claimed to be a clerk, should 
be handed over to the bishop to be tried before the ecclesiastical court in 
the presence of a royal officer. If convicted, he was then to be unfrocked, 
and handed back to the lay authorities for the infliction of the usual 
punishment. To this Becket demurred, asserting that it would be 
sufficient punishment for a cleric to be degraded from his orders. If 
he oftended a second time he would do so as a layman, and could be 
treated as such. In 1163 the case of Philip de Broi, a clerk accused of 
crime, drew special attention to the matter, and the question was raised 
at a council held at Westminster in October 1163. The council of 
discussion was renewed at Clarendon in January 1164, and Clarendon, 
there Becket, under some pressure, agreed to ' obey the customs ' of the 
realm. The question arose what these customs were. Accordingly, 
Henry appointed a commission to inquire, headed by Kichard de Lucy. 
In nine days it presented its report in the form known as the ' Constitu- 
tions of Clarendon.' 

These constitutions, however, sixteen in number, dealt with many 
other things than the trial of ' criminous clerks,' and attempted to settle 
most questions then in dispute between the church and _ 

n^^ • ■ CoHStltU- 

state. Thus, questions about advowsons and presentations tions of 
to livings were to be tried in the king's court. Clerics 
were not to quit the realm without the consent of the king. Appeals 
from ecclesiastical courts were to go to the king ; and unless he consented 
that they go no further, the litigants were to be content with the 
decision of the archbishop. The old rule of William the Conqueror that 
no tenant-in -chief or minister of the king should be exconnnunicated 
without his consent, and the rule that clergy were to hold their 
lands as tenants-in-chief, and to perform all duties and attend the 
kings court with the other tenants-in-chief, were reaffirmed. Elections 
of archbishops, bishops, and abbots were to take place by order of 
the king, in the king's chapel ; and the bishop or abbot elect was to do 
homage for his lands before he was consecrated or installed. These were 
merely restatements of ordinary practice and of the settlement of Henry 
and Anselni. A clause, however, that the sons of villeins should not be 
consecrated without the consent of their lords was new. It was probably 



142 Earlier Angevin Kings 1164 

designed partly to safeguard the rights of the lords of the manor, 
Avho lost the services of the villein who took orders, and partly 
to put a check on the ordination of the lower classes. In practice, 
the leave of the lord could always be obtained on payment of a 
small sum. 

These constitutions, therefore, amounted to a code, and justified 

Becket's fears that in agreeing to ' obey the customs ' he was committing 

himself to more than he intended. For six days they were 

Bucket's 

Opposition debated, clause by clause, and finally he refused to give his 

and Flight. ^^Qj^gg^^^ During the spring and summer Thomas twice 
attempted in vain an escape from England and appeal to the pope ; 
and meanwhile his enemies at court w^ere doing all they could to foment 
the quarrel between him and the king. Their success was seen when the 
council met at Northampton in November. A series of charges were 
brought against Becket, culminating in a demand for the immediate pro- 
duction of the whole of the moneys that had passed through his hands as 
chancellor. Becket, on his side, seems to have lost his temper under 
persecution, and behaved with such rashness that Gilbert Foliot, now 
bishop of London, called him 'a fool.' His brother bishops were unable to 
persuade him to bate a jot of his pretensions by way of meeting the king. 
Henry, on the other side, was full of fury at the arrogance of the arch- 
bishop ; and at length, escaping from the town at dead of night, Becket 
made his way to the coast and took ship for the Continent. His departure 
was a serious matter for Henry, as Becket's presence on the Continent 
introduced a new complication into his difficulties with the king of France, 
and also because the open quarrel between the king and the archbishop 
dissolved the alliance between the church and the crown which, on the 
whole, had been preserved since the Conquest, and so far strengthened 
the hands of the feudal barons. 

Becket found the pope unwilling to take his side, for at that moment 
Alexander iii. was contending against the pretensions of an anti-pope, 

Becket ^^^ ^^^ supported by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa ; 

appeals to and too much enthusiasm for Becket might have thrown 
Henry on the same side. For six years, therefore, the 
struggle went on. Henry's first move was to confiscate the whole of 
the property of the see of Canterbury and drive from the country all 
the kindred of Becket. In 1166 the archbishop retorted by excom- 
municating seven of Henry's strongest adherents, at the head of whom 
was the justiciar, Richard de Lucy ; and in 1167, after an unsatisfactory 
interview with Henry, Becket excommunicated Gilbert Foliot and 
nine others. In time, however, both Becket and Henry grew weary 



1170 Henry 11. 143 

of the struggle. The archbishop was anxious to return : Henry had 
recognised how much harm was being done to him by Reconciiia- 
Becket's alliance with the French king ; so in 1170 a H°e"nry^^d^" 
reconciliation between them was patched up, without any Becket. 
settlement of the question of the Constitutions, and after some delay 
Becket returned to England on December 1st. 

It is difficult to see how such a reconciliation could have been more 
than a truce ; but, unfortunately, a new cause of offence had been 
given to Becket. Some years before Henry had formed a New 
scheme for getting his eldest son, Henry, crowned king of Quarrel. 
England during his own lifetime ; and in the summer of 1170, before his 
reconciliation with Becket, he determined to carry it out. By ancient 
right the function of crowning the king of England was a privilege of 
the archbishop of Canterbury ; but in Becket's absence Henry decided 
to have the ceremony performed by the archbishop of York, Koger 
Pontl'eveque, an old rival of Becket. The exiled archbishop was furious, 
and obtained a papal bull forbidding Eoger to perform the ceremony ; 
but, in spite of this, Roger persevered, and, supported by Foliot, bishop 
of London, and Jocelyn, bishop of Salisbury, performed the coronation 
in Westminster Abbey, in the presence of Henry himself. In spite of 
this, the reconciliation took jjlace ; but, on returning to England, Becket 
brought with him letters from the pope suspending all the bishops who 
had taken part in the coronation ceremony. 

Becket was warmly received by the populace, but was treated coldly 
by both the laity and clergy of the upper classes, and was forbidden to 
visit the young king. His spirit, however, was in no way Murder of 
depressed. He refused to absolve the bishops, and on Becket. 
Christmas day he issued another excommunication against Ealf de Broc, 
who had been steward of the lands of Canterbury during his exile. 
Meanwhile, the bishops of York, London, and Salisbury had hurried 
over to Normandy to lay their case before the king ; and exaggerated 
tales described Becket as traversing the country surrounded by a guard 
of supporters. Furious at the bishops' story and the other reports, Henry 
let fall the words : 'Are there none of the cowards eating my bread who 
will rid me of this turbulent priest ? ' It was not the first time Henry 
had used words to much the same effect ; and probably he meant 
nothing except that he was very angry, for a council was called to 
deliberate on the matter, and arrangements were made for arresting 
Becket on a charge of treason. However, before this could be done, a 
terrible crime had been committed. Four knights, Hugh de Morville, 
William de Tracy, Reginald Fitz Urse, and Richard le Breton, took 



144 Earlier Angevin Kings 1170 

Henry's rash words in a literal sense ; and, slipping unnoticed from the 
court, they made their way separately to England, and met one another 
at the house of Ralf de Broc. Thence, on December 29th, they pro- 
ceeded to Canterbury, and, making their way into the archbishop's 
palace, demanded in rude terms that he should withdraw the excom- 
munication of the bishops. Becket refused with equal rudeness, and 
then made his way into the cathedral, pursued by the knights. There, 
after further altercation, in which equally exasperating language was 
used on either side, the knights drew their swords, and, being deserted 
by all his companions save his cross-bearer, Edward Grim, who himself 
tells the story, the archbishop was butchered on the altar-steps of his 
own cathedral. 

Nothing worse could have happened both for Henry and for England. 
Public opinion, which had looked coldly on Becket during his life, veered 
Effect of round after his death. In spite of all Henry could do to 
the Murder. gj^Qp ^he reports, it was believed that miracles had been 
wrought at Becket's tomb, and his fame as a saint and a martyr were 
fully established. That Henry was guiltless of any intentional part in 
his death was generally admitted ; and, having sworn his innocence, he 
received full absolution from the papal legates. To enforce the Constitu- 
tions, however, was utterly impossible ; and, consequently, for over three 
hundi-ed years criminous clerks continued to be tried by the ecclesias- 
tical courts ; appeals continued to be sent to Rome ; and, the royal power 
over church aflairs having received a decided check, opportunity was 
given for an increase of the influence of the pope, of which full advantage 
was taken. For years the pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas of 
Canterbury was the most popular event in English life ; and it was only 
by very slow degrees that the state recovered the hold over the clergy 
and the church which was lost by the fatal impatience of the murderers 
of Thomas Becket. 

During the time the struggle with Becket was going on, Henry 

had not ceased to carry forward his schemes for the reform of the 

Judicial administration of justice. As early as 1155 he had revived 

Reforms. Yv\^ grandfather's plan of sending judges from the curia 

regis to sit in the county courts. The visitations of the judges may be 

regarded as a substitute for the regular journeys of the English kings, 

serving to connect the local courts with the central administration, to 

keep in check the power of the provincial magnates, and to bring to 

Justices- every one's door the power of appeal to the highest autho- 

in eyre. ^.j^^ -j^ ^^^ Iqjx,^, These judges were called justices-in-eyrCf 

a corruption of the latin form in itinere. The administration of justice, 



1170 Henry II, 145 

however, was not their only business. To look after the collection of the 
king's revenue was quite as important a function : and they had also to 
see that the proper precautions were taken for keeping the hinges peace ; 
that the oath of allegiance was taken by those from w^hom it was due ; 
and that care was taken that every one should be enrolled in a frank 
2)ledge or association of ten men for mutual security, which was an 
ancient device for securing the apprehension of criminals, and making 
each person's good conduct a matter of concern to a number of others. 
In 1173 the circuits of the justices-in-eyre were fixed at six — the home, 
midland, eastern, western, north-eastern, and northern circuits — and 
remained substantially the same till recent times. 

Besides arranging the regular circuits of the judges, Henry also intro- 
duced changes into the method of administering justice, both in civil and 
criminal cases. In old English times, civil cases or disputes Trial by 
between individuals were decided by the whole body of J^^y- 
suitors at the shire-moot, in accordance with the oaths of persons 
who knew the facts, such as where the boundary of the estate 
ran, or who owned a certain wood. The Normans, however, had intro- 
duced the method of trial by battle, or of a judicial combat between the 
litigants or their representatives. Such a decision was obviously unfair, 
and was extremely unpopular, especially among townspeople ; so Henry 
introduced an improved method. Ever since the Conquest, and possibly 
earlier, use had been made of the method of ' sworn inquest,' by which 
a body of sworn men were employed to record certain facts. William 
the Conqueror employed it to discover the laws of the old English in 
1070, and again in the Doomsday survey. This plan Henry 

^1 Vll \^ nScS* 

II. now applied to civil cases, offering it, however, as an 
optional alternative. The new regulation was promulgated in the grand 
assize, the date of which, however, is unknown, but must be earlier 
than 1164, for in that year a clause in the constitutions of Clarendon 
enjoined the use of the same plan in the case of disputes about ecclesias- 
tical property. 

In 1156 the process of criminal judicature was dealt with by the 
assize of Clarendon. Hitherto the old English method of compurgation 
and the ordeal, or the Norman plan of trial by battle, had criminal 
been in use ; but Henry now ordered that, when the royal Cases, 
judges came into a county, twelve legal men of each hundred, and four 
legal men from each township, should present to them on oath any one 
in the township or hundred who was notoriously a robber, murderer, or 
receiver of such ; and in case the judge was not in the county but near it, 
the sheriff had to make a similar inquiry and report to the judges. The 

K 



146 Earlier Angevin Kings 1170 

accused were then put to the ordeal of water. If they failed, they were 
punished by hanging or otherwise as the judges directed ; but if they by 
any chance passed the ordeal, it was assumed that men who stood so 
badly in the opinion of their neighbours must be good-for-nothing 
fellows, and they were ordered to leave the country within forty days. 
Jury of Pre- ^^e body of sixteen men who formed the 'jury of present- 
sentment. ment ' may be regarded as a sort of grand jury who decided 
that the prisoners ought to be tried, or, in modern parlance, ' returned a 
true bill against the accused ' ; but the question of guilt or innocence was 
determined by the ordeal. This scheme was reissued and the severity of 
the punishment increased by the assize of Northampton, enacted in 1176. 
However, in 1216 a Lateran Council, held in Kome by the famous 
Innocent iii., forbade the use of the ordeal as an institution too barbarous 
for Christian men, A substitute for it was found in the institution of 
the petty jury or little jury. This consisted of twelve 

Petty Jury. 

sworn men, M'ho w^ere taken from the neighbourhood where 
the crime was committed, and were supposed to know the facts of the 
case. If they did not agree, others were added till twelve gave a verdict 
one way or another. This plan, how^ever, was awkward, and by degrees 
the additional jurymen came to be merely witnesses, who gave their 
evidence before the court ; and the verdict was pronounced by the 
original twelve, who were required to be unanimous. As the petty jury 
was a substitute for the ordeal, which was regarded as the judgment of 
God, there was no appeal from its decision. Moreover, the accused was 
not allowed to call witnesses on his own behalf or to be represented by 
an advocate. It was, however, assumed that unless the jury were quite 
satisfied of a prisoner's guilt he should have the benefit of the doubt — 
an assumption, however, not always observed in practice. 

Meanwhile, during the course of the Becket struggle a step had been 
Conquest of taken towards the conquest of Ireland. The condition of 
Ireland. Ireland had long been an invitation to interference. Both 

in regard to the constitution of its society and its system of land tenure 
that country was still in the state of tribal organisation from which 
every other Aryan nation in Europe had long ago emerged. The only 
state of the social tie recognised was real or imaginary relationship to 
Country. g^^^g chieftain, which constituted membership of his sept or 
clan. To this the land of the district belonged in common ownership ; 
and individual ownership of land, which experience has shown to be 
necessary for any serious advance in agriculture or civilisation, was 
practically unknown. Among the crowd of petty chieftains, however, 
four had a pre-eminence, styling themselves respectively kings of 



U70 Henry 11. 147 

Ulster, Connaught, Leinster, and Munster ; but their authority was of 
a most fluctuating character, the power of the Ardriagh or head king 
was absokitely nominal, and the country was kept in continual turmoil 
by their dissensions and rivalries. On the coast were the settlements 
of the Northmen, in Dublin, Waterford, Cork, and Limerick ; but the 
Ostmen never succeeded in conquering the inland districts. 

At one time it seemed possible that a new invasion of the Northmen 
, might lead to the establishment, of a strong government, either Norse 
or native. This, however, did not happen. On the one 

Invasions of 

hand, the Northmen were defeated by the natives in the the North - 
great battle of Clontarf in 1017 ; on the other, Brian Boru, "^^"' 
or Boroimhe, the strongest of the native kings, fell at the moment of 
victory ; and though the invaders had been driven off, the country 
relapsed into its old tribal condition. In England the unity of the 
church had been a most powerful factor in promoting the unity of the 
state ; but in Ireland the church was almost powerless for this purpose. 
Ever since the synod of Whitby it had been cut off from intercourse 
with the churches of the West ; it had never been organised 

mi T 1 1 T • • T • 11 Irish Church, 

by a Theodore, and consequently had mamtamed its old 

defective monastic organisation without properly defined dioceses ; and 

when its immense monastic institutions, which had been the home of its 

famous learning, such as Bangor or Clonmacnoise, had been sacked by the 

invading Northmen, it sank into profound disorder. Since the Norman 

conquest of England, however, something had been done to improve its 

condition. Lanfranc and Anselm had both tried to make obedience to 

Canterbury the basis of a reorganisation of the Irish bishoprics ; and 

owing to the exertions of St. Malachi, who became archbishop of 

Armagh in 1134, a papal legate was sent, dioceses were properly divided 

and placed under the direction of four archbishops, those of Armagh, 

Tuam, Cashel, and Dublin. 

Meanwhile, the conquest of Ireland, as the natural completion of that 

of England, had often been mooted at the English court ; and in 1155 

Henry ii. took advantage of the papacy of Nicholas Breakspear, the 

only born Englishman who ascended the papal throne, to obtain from 

him a bull authorising him to conquer Ireland 'for the 

^ ^ Papal Bull, 

enlargement of the church's borders^ for the restraint of 

vice, the correction of morals, and the planting of virtue.' Nothing, 

however, was done at the time, for the Empress Matilda strongly 

advised Henry to defer any action ; and eventually the squabbles of the 

Irish princes, and not English ambition, proved the cause of the loss of 

Ireland's independence. 



148 Earlier Angevin Kings ii70 

As early as 1152, Dermot Macmorrougli, king of Leinster, had carried 
off by force Devorgil, the wife of O'Ruarc. the chief of the men of 
Breffny, in the adjoining kingdom of Connaught. For eighteen years the 
Dermot of injured husband never forgave the thief; and he found his 
Leinster. opportunity of revenge when his friend Roderic O'Connor, 
kino- of Connaught, defeated Murtogh O'Lochlainn, the representative 
of the ancient house of the O'Neals of Ulster, and had become the most 
powerful king in Ireland. O'Ruarc persuaded him to order the banish- 
ment of Dermot. Accordingly, Dermot was compelled to fly ; but he 
betook himself to Bristol, and, thence making his way to Henry's court, 
offered him homage and fealty, and implored him to aid him against his 
enemies. At the moment, 1166, Henry was far too busy to undertake 
an expedition himself; but he accepted the homage and the fealty, 
promised a speedy aid, and gave him a letter authorising any of his 
subjects to join the Irish prince. Armed with this letter, Dermot 
sought aid among the Norman settlers in South Wales, who represented 
the forward movement of the conquering Normans in this country, and 
Richard de "^on over to his side Richard de Clare, earl of Striguil, 
Clare. better known as Strongbow, to whom he offered the hand 

of his daughter Eva and the prospect of succeeding to the crown of 
Leinster. By the promise of the crown of Wexford he also enlisted the 
services of two half-brothers, Maurice Fitzgerald and Robert Fitz- 
Stephen. Accompanied by a small band, Dermot then returned to 
Ireland in 1167, but was promptly defeated by Roderic O'Connor, and 
compelled to await in hiding the arrival of his Welsh allies. However, 
in 1168 Robert Fitz-Stephen landed at Bannow, joined Dermot, and 
captured Wexford. Some time was then spent in a series of expeditions 
against Dermot's special enemies ; but in 1169 Maurice Fitzgerald 
made his appearance, and the allied forces then captured Dublin. Not 
till 1170 did Strongbow cross the Channel. Waterford was immediately 
taken. The marriage of the earl of Striguil and Eva followed. In 1171 
the death of Dermot transferred his rights to the husband of Eva ; but 
the invaders had much ado to hold their own in Dublin against an 
army of Northmen from Man and the Western Isles, who had been 
summoned to the aid of their kinsfolk ; and, the Northmen being expelled, 
they had to repel another attack of Roderic O'Connor. It was now 
clear to Henry that the Norman adventurers were in all probability 
about to set up a semi-independent power across St. George's Channel, 
Henry in which might be a cause of the utmost annoyance to him- 
re an . ^^^^ jj^ therefore determined to interfere, and in 1171 he 
came over to Ireland with a large force, and received the submission 



r 



U73 Hennj II. 149 

of the English adventurers. The adhesion of the Irish chieftains soon 
followed. The first to do homage was Dermot Macarthy, king of South 
Munster. His example was followed by Donell O'Brien, king of North 
Munster, and others ; and in 1172 Koderic O'Connor of Connaught, who 
claimed to be king of all Ireland, also yielded. Henry then placed 
garrisons in Waterford and Wexford, and made a grant of Dublin to 
the Bristol merchants ; but his projects for a complete conquest of the 
island were frustrated by the necessity of himself returning to England, 
and he never found another opportunity of revisiting the country. 
In 1177, however, he formed a plan for making his youngest son, 
John, lord of Ireland ; but no real progress was made in the 
work of reorganising the country, and the English with difficulty 
maintained their hold on Dublin, Waterford, and Wexford, and the 
districts immediately round them, which came to be known as the 
English pale. . 

One reason for Henry's visit to Ireland had been his desire to be out 
of the way till " the storm of indignation caused by the murder of 
Backet had in some degree subsided ; but during his absence the 
threads of a formidable conspiracy were woven, which broke out in 
1173 and 1174, and taxed to their utmost the resources of the court. 
This conspiracy had its origin in two causes — (1) The vexa- 

1 • 1 TT Conspiracy 

tion 01 the barons at the succession oi blows which Henry of the 
had struck at the power of feudalism ; (2) the dissatisfac- ^'^°"^- 
tion of Henry's sons with his proposed disposition of his dominions. 
Since Henry's accession, the barons felt that their rights and privileges 
had been invaded on every side. The resumption of the royal castles 
had reduced their military power. They were no longer allowed the 
privilege of coining money. Scutage had not only diminished their 
military efficiency, but had destroyed their cherished hope of immunity 
from general taxation. The aids for the knightino- of the kinsr's eldest 
son and for the dowry of his eldest daughter had been rigorously col- 
lected. Above all, the assize of Clarendon had shown that the king 
meant to be in all cases and over all causes supreme, and that no 
baronial privileges or immunities were to stand in the way of the equal 
administration of the law of the land. To such men as the great earl of 
Chester, Hugh Bigod, earl of Norfolk, Robert, earl of Leicester, the 
unworthy son of the old justiciar, and Robert Mowbray, who regarded 
themselves as the representatives of the great barons of the Con- 
quest, his whole policy seemed one long insult to their class, and 
they were only waiting their opportunity to set on foot a formidable 
rising;. 



150 Earlier Angevin Kings U73 

In the second place, Henry had signally failed to preserve harmony 
in his own house. His coronation of his son Henry had proved to be a 
mistake, for the young man could not understand that his 
Dissensions, fj^ther designed his coronation to be little more than a means 
of securing his undisputed succession to the throne, while his marriage 
to a daughter of the king of France exposed him to the influence of his 
intriguing father-in law, Louis vii. It was a rumour of young Henry's 
discontent which recalled his father from Ireland ; and after a visit paid 
to the court of France in 1172, the young king asked his father to give 
him England, Normandy, and Anjou as a separate sovereignty. Henry, 
however, had never designed to play the part of King Lear, and refused 
to do anything of the kind. For his younger children, Richard and 
Geofi'rey, Henry thought he had made ample provision ; Richard was to 
succeed his mother and be duke of Aquitaine. Geoffrey was to be duke 
of Brittany as the husband of Constance, daughter of Duke Conan. In 
1167 his plans, however, were somewhat upset by the birth of his 
youngest son John, whom he forthwith named Lackland ; and it was the 
necessity of providing for this child that was at the bottom of much of 
his subsequent trouble. In 1173 Henry proposed to give the castles of 
Chinon and Mirebeau, formerly held by his younger brother Geoffrey, as 
a provision for John ; but to this scheme the young Henry, as count of 
Anjou, refused consent, and, escaping by night from the court, fled to the 
king of France. There he was joined by his younger brothers, Richard 
and Geoftrey ; and their mother Eleanor, disguised in men's clothes, was 
also on her way, when she was arrested and imprisoned. The French court 
then became a centre of intrigue, and the young princes spared no bribes 
to gain allies against their father. They found few, however, among 
Henry's Continental vassals ; but the English barons jumped at the 
opportunity, and soon a most formidable conspiracy was on foot, led by 
Hugh of Chester, Hugh Bigod, Robert of Ferrers, and Robert Mowbray. 
William the Lion, king of Scots, was won over by an offer of the earl- 
dom of Northumberland ; Hugh de Puiset, prince-bishop of Durham, 
alone among ecclesiastics also took the same side ; while a promise of 
the earldom of Kent and the county of Mortain won the assistance of 
Philip of Flanders and Matthew of Boulogne. 

Against this formidable conspiracy Henry relied, for the defence of 
his Continental dominions, on the service of twenty thousand Brabanters, 

Henry's whoui his wealth enabled him to hire as mercenaries ; for 

Successes, ^.j^^^ ^f England, he depended on the efforts of Richard 
de Lucy, the justiciar, William Mandeville, earl of Essex, Ralf Glanville, 
sheriff" of Lancashire, and a number of lesser barons and officials. He 






1174 Henry II. 151 

had also on his side all the bishops except Hugh of Durham ; all his own 
towns ; and, of more importance still, the goodwill of the masses of the 
people, who were ready to serve in the militia and give a loyal support 
to his officers rather than risk a renewal of the evil days of King 
Stephen. Taking advantage of the absence in Normandy of the earls 
of Chester and Leicester, the king's friends struck the first blow by 
besieging and taking the town of Leicester in July 1173 ; in the same 
month a chance shot killed Matthew of Boulogne ; and in August, Hugh 
of Chester was taken in the castle of Dol. Louis would gladly have 
made peace ; but as Henry still refused to give up his hold over the 
government of his dominions, his sons were determined to carry on the 
war. Accordingly, Eobert of Leicester made his way to England and 
joined Hugh Bigod in his stronghold of Framlingham in Suffolk ; but 
the two earls were utterly routed by the constable Humphrey de Bohun 
at the battle of Fornham, and their Flemish mercenaries were killed off 
almost to a man by the peasantry. The Earl of Leicester himself was 
taken, and joined Ralf of Chester and Queen Eleanor in the dungeons of 
Falaise. Meanwhile, the king of Scots had been checked from joining 
his friends by the necessity of breaking through the line of strong border 
castles from Carlisle to Newcastle which barred his southern march ; but 
they were one by one falling into his hands when Henry, in 1174, found 
himself strong enough to leave Normandy, and, taking his prisoners and 
Margaret, wife of the younger Henry, with him, crossed the Channel to 
Southampton. Henry had long before acquitted himself in the eyes of the 
law and the church from complicity in the murder of Becket ; but he felt 
it needful to do something which would strike the popular imagination, so 
he at once proceeded to Canterbury, made his way barefoot Henry's 
to the cathedral, submitted to be scourged before the mar- Penance, 
tyr's tomb, and spent a whole night in prayer before his shrine. Thence 
he went to London, where the joyful news reached him that, at the very 
moment that he was on his knees at Canterbury, the king of Scots, made 
venturesome by success, had been surprised and taken at 
Alnwick by Robert de Stuteville, sheriff of Yorkshire. The the King of 

• Scots 

material and moral effect of the capture and coincidence 
was invaluable to Henry ; and he lost no time in following up his 
success by marching on Framlingham and compelling Hugh Bigod to 
surrender. The leaders being thus disposed of, the surrender of their 
castles soon followed. Hugh of Durham gave up Durham, Norham, and 
Northallerton ; Robert Mowbray surrendered Thirsk. In the three 
weeks from his landing Henry had received the submission of all the 
rebels, and the country was once more at peace. 



152 Earlier Angevin Kings 1174 

Such a signal collapse of the English rebellion, proving as it did how 

completely the policy of Henry was supported by the English people, 

and how little even the quarrel with Becket had disturbed 

^f°the"^^°" the loyalty of the church, completely discouraged Henry's 

Barons' continental foes. Louis w^as soon compelled to sue for 
Rebellion. ... -i ,t , n -, • 

peace. Young Henry's submission, and that 01 his 

brothers followed ; and, a general amnesty being agreed on, they 

accepted the terms offered by their father the year before. Thus closed 

the last attempt of the English barons to compel the king to permit them 

to make feudalism as it was on the Continent— as it happened, just a 

hundred years after the first attempt for the same purpose. 

Of the capture of William the Lion Henry took instant advantage 

to place on a definite footing the relations between England and 

Scotland. Ever since the days when Constantine, king of Scots, 

with the consent of his people, took Edward the Elder for father 

and lord, the Scottish kings had at intervals done homage to the 

kings of England ; but as, in addition to Scotland proper, they also 

held Galloway by a special grant of King Edmund, and Lothian as 

an English earldom, it was not very clear what the homage meant, 

and naturally the Scots interpreted it in the most limited, the English in 

Treaty of ^^^^ widest sense. Henry now determined to set the matter 

Faiaise. ^^^ pgg^ Qj^^g f^p ^jj gy ^j^g treaty of Falaise, William 
agreed for himself and his heirs to be the liegemen of the English king 
for Scotland and all his other lands, and, as security for his good 
behaviour, placed in Henry's hands the castles of Edinburgh, Stirling, 
Koxburgh, Jedburgh, and Berwick. 

The rebellion being thus put down, Henry was able to give his atten- 
tion to reforms. By a series of measures all the castles in the kingdom 

^ . were either destroyed or taken into his hands. In 1176 the 

Assize _ '' 

of North- assize of Northampton renewed that of Clarendon, and also 
contained a number of other regulations for the better pre- 
servation of the king's peace. In 1178 he made a change in the con- 
stitution of the curia regis, which was a great step in developing a 
judicial system. As business increased, there was a natural tendency 
that the cnria regis, which in the days of Henry i. had dealt with all the 
business of the crown, should split up into smaU committees. The 
earliest of these was the Court of Exchequer, for financial matters. In 
1178 Henry made a selection of five judges from those of the curia regis, 
Law Courts '"^^ intrusted to their hearing a great part of the judicial 
business which had formerly come before the court as a whole. 
Before long this court developed into two courts of King's Bench and 



U81 Henry 11. 153 

Common Pleas. In theory, the Court of Exchequer tried cases con- 
nected with finance ; that of King's Bench, pleas in which the king was 
concerned, including some criminal business ; and that of Common Pleas, 
cases between one subject and another. In practice, however, their 
functions were not so distinct. From each of these courts there was, in 
civil cases, an appeal to the king in the Ordinary Council. 

His last measure of reform in England was the assize of arms, issued 
in 1181. In old English times the defence of the country had been 
intrusted to the fyrd, or militia (see page 44), in which Assize of 
every man between the age of sixteen and sixty was bound Arms, 
to serve if required. To this the Danish kings had added the huscarls, 
a body of professional soldiers (see page 73) ; and, though these 
perished at Hastings, no king since the Conquest had been without a 
body of paid soldiers, whom he employed in garrisoning his castles, and 
in warfare both in England and on the Continent ; and since the institu- 
tion of scutage, Henry ii. had relied mainly on hii-ed troops. Moreover, 
since the Conquest, the feudal array, of which some germs were to be 
traced at an earlier date, had become a regular part of the military 
machinery of the country. However, since the institution of scutage 
Henry had used the feudal obligation as a means rather of raising money 
than soldiers. He was naturally jealous of anything which might 
increase the military efficiency of the barons, while circumstances had 
fully shown how excellent a force the fyrd might be made, and how 
loyal the freemen who composed it were. It had done excellent service 
against the Scots at Northallerton and Alnwick ; and against the 
rebellious barons of 1173, 1174, it had formed almost the sole reliance of 
the justiciar. Such a trustworthy force deserved encouragement, and 
in 1181 Henry issued the assize of arms, in which it was carefully 
stated what weapons of oftence and defence every freeman was to possess, 
in accordance with the value of his estate, and arranged for the inspec- 
tion of these at regular intervals. No serf was allowed to serve in the 
militia. In this way the king had two armies : one a small one of paid 
troops, whom he hired to garrison his castles and fight his battles on the 
Continent ; the other the militia, on which he relied for the defence of 
England against foreign foes, or for putting down insurrections at home. 
From this time forward, feudalism became more than ever a mere method 
of land tenure. 

In those days armies were rarely large. Fighting consisted almost 
entirely in the defence and besieging of castles. Very Method of 
few pitched battles were fought, and it was in sieges and ^^^'■^^'■^■ 
not in open warfare that Henry and his son Kichard won their great 



154 Earlier Angevin Kings iisi 

reputations as soldiers. The art of castle-lniilding had been carried 
to a very high pitch, and as a consequence the machines used for 
attackino- them were also most elaborate. Enormous catapults and 
mangonels capable of hurling huge rocks were employed; and the 
arts of mining and countermining had been developed to a high 
pitch. Indeed, gunpowder had comparatively little to add either to 
the violence of the projectiles used or to the murderous nature of the 

assault. 

After the rebellion of 1174 Henry had no more trouble with the 
English barons ; but for the remainder of his reign his troubles with his 
sons never wholly ceased. This was partly due to the intrinsic difficulty 
of governing the unruly barons of Aquitaine. This task Henry intrusted 

Henry's to Ms second son Richard, whom he designed to succeed his 

Sons. mother as duke. At seventeen Richard undertook the task, 
and, throwing himself into it with all the energy of his nature, soon 
established apparent peace. The barons of the south, however, to whom 
private war was as much a part of life as the songs of their troubadours, 
bitterly resented any interference with their habits ; and one of the 
ablest of them, Bertrand of Born, who added the qualities of a born 
lampooner to those of a political intriguer, set himself to stir up strife, 
not only among his fellow-barons, but also between Richard and his 
brothers. The jealousy between them soon grew to such bounds that 
Henry with difficulty kept the peace. Young Henry w^as in constant 
alliance with his father-in-law Louis, and, after his death in 1180, with 
his brother-in-law Philip Augustus ; while Geoffrey of Anjou was so 
unpopular that his difficulties with his own barons of Brittany were 
a constant source of anxiety. However, in the middle of these 
disputes, young Henry died in 1183 ; but his death rather 
accentuated the difficulties with Richard, who hated Henry's 
plan of removing him from Aquitaine in order to give it to 
John, and consequently was willing to make common cause with 
Philip of France, to w^hom he offered to do homage for hi^ duchy 
of Aquitaine and all the hereditary dominions of the house of 
Anjou. In 1186 Geoffrey too died ; but as he left a daughter, Con- 
stance, and a posthumous son, Arthur, his death made little difference 
to the situation. 

The next year matters were still further complicated by a proposition 

for a third Crusade. The small Turkish states, which had been singly no 

Third match for the Christians, had lately been united into a 

Crusade, powerful kingdom, stretching from the Euphrates to the 

Nile, by the genius of Noureddin and his son Saladin ; and before its 



1189 Henry II. 155 

strength the Christians of Jerusalem were defeated at the battle of 
Tiberias, in July 1187, and Jerusalem was taken. This news stirred Europe 
to its depths. Pope Gregory viii. at once proclaimed a third Crusade ; 
and in 1189 the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa started for the East. To 
Henry ii. the disaster came home with especial force. On the marriage 
of Geoftrey Plantagenet to the Empress Matilda, his father Fulk had 
retired to Palestine, married Milicent, the daughter of Baldwin i,, and 
the heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem. An Angevin dynasty therefore 
reigned both in Palestine and in England ; but in 1186 the male line of the 
Jerusalem Angevins died out, leaving a girl, Sibyl, who bestowed herself 
and her crown on the valiant Guy of Lusignan, who had made the last 
stand against Saladin's advancing host. To Henry, therefore, the fall of 
Jerusalem was almost a family disaster. His first impulse was to join 
the Crusade at once ; and to provide money he ordered the tenth part of 
the goods of every man in England to be collected under the name of the 
Saladin tithe, an impost of some constitutional importance Saladin 
because it was levied on personal property, and not, like all Tithe, 
previous taxes, on land. As early as 1185 Henry had proposed to go to 
the aid of the struggling Angevins ; but a great council had implored 
him not to abandon his people, and the project had been given up. 
Now, however, he felt that he ought to go ; but the difficulties in his way 
were enormous. 

Philip and Richard were again making common cause, and endeavour- 
ing to compel Henry to permit the marriage of Richard to Philip's sister 
Adela, to whom he had been^long betrothed, and who had been Henry's 
brought up and educated under Henry. Before this alliance ^^^th. 
Henry was able to make little resistance. The linal blow fell upon him 
in 1189, when he found his Angevin dominions suddenly invaded by a 
powerful army from France proper led by Philip, and another from 
Poitou under the command of Richard. Henry was ill ; he had no 
English troops with him, his mercenaries had deserted for want of pay, 
and few of his old followers remained to aid him but his illegitimate son 
Geoffrey and William Marshall, who, having been the faithful friend 
of the younger Henry, had now attached himself to the falling fortunes 
of his father. In spite of all Henry's efforts, both Tours and Le Mans 
were lost ; and, all hope being abandoned, the sick and worn-out man was 
compelled to come almost as a suppliant to a meeting-place appointed for 
him, and to accept a humiliating treaty by which all the demands 
of Philip and Richard were granted without reservation. Among 
them Henry had agreed that the allegiance of all Richard's associates 
should be transferred to him ; and when at the head of this list he 



156 Earlier Anc/evin Kings 1189 

read the name of his favourite son John, he abandoned himself to 
despair, allowed the fever to take its course, and the third day he 
died. 



CHIEF DA TES. 

A.D. 

Thomas Becket becomes Archbishop of 

Canterbury, 1162 

Constitutions of Clarendon, . . . 1164 

Assize of Clarendon, 1166 

Murder of Becket, 1170 

Norman expedition to Ireland, . 1169-1170 

Great rising of the barons defeated, . 1174 

Treaty of Falaise, 1174 

Assize of Arms, 1181 



I 



CHAPTER II 

KICHAKD I.: 1189-1199 
Born 1157 ; married, 1191, Berengaria of Navarre. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 

Scotland. France. Emperors. 

William the Lion, d. 1214. Philip Augustus, d. 1223. Frederic i., d. 1190. 

Henry vi., d. 1197. 
Pope. 
Innocent III., 1198-1216. 

Exploits and Imprisonment of Richard — In his absence the Kingdom is governed 
by his Ministers — Constitutional and Social Progress of the time — Richard's 
Death. 

On the death of his father, Richard was immediately accepted as king, 
even by such immediate followers of Henry as William Marshall, 
who had fought Richard hand to hand a few days before. Accession 
He at once despatched his mother Eleanor to England, o^^^ichardi, 
Avhile he stayed to make terms with Philip Augustus, whom Henry's 
death had changed from a friendly colleague into a jealous rival. He 
then crossed the Channel, and was crowned with unusual ceremony at 
Westminster. 

Richard's character was cast in a different mould from that of any of 
his predecessors. His huge frame, long legs and arms, and herculean 
strength might remind men of his ancestor the Conqueror, 

, ^ . ^. ' Character. 

whose genius for war and whose uncompromising will he 
also inherited. His fresh complexion and golden hair also showed his 
Norse descent, and when he was in the East his natural aptitude for 
naval affairs showed him no less the descendant of the Vikings. The 
firmness with which he had enforced law and order in Poitou proved him 
to be no Stephen ; but, on the other hand, he had little aptitude for 
business or for the subtler forms of diplomacy in which the Angevins 
excelled ; and, except as a leader of the host and enforcer of order, and a 
magnificent personality, he had few of the qualities needed for an English 

157 



158 Earlier Angevin Kings ii89 y 

kinf^. Fortunately, however, Eichard was aware of his own deficiencies, 
and throughout his reign he had the good sense to intrust the govern- 
ment of England to subordinates ; and usually he chose as his officials men 
who had been well trained in the methods of his more businesslike father. 
Richard had taken the Cross in 1187, and wished to start on the 
Crusade as soon as possible ; so his first measures were directed to raising 
money and to making the necessary dispositions for the good government 
of the country during his absence. It had long been a custom that 
officers of state should pay for leave to undertake their duties and for 
leave to lay them down. Eichard took advantage of this to make a 
wholesale change in his officials, to fill up as many vacant offices as 
possible both in church and state, and to grant rights and immunities to 
any one who was willing to pay for them. Among other appointments, 
Eichard Fitz-Nigel, author of the Dialogus de Scaccario, the treasurer, 
was made bishop of London, William Longchamp bishop of Ely, and 
Hubert Walter bishop of Salisbury. Ealf Glanville, who was going on 
the Crusade, had to pay for resigning the office of justiciar, and Hugh 
de Puiset or Pudsey, bishop of Durham, and William Mandeville for 
sharing it between them. Most of the sherifi'doms also changed hands ; 
charters were granted to towns ; and, above all, the treaty of Falaise with 
the Scots was cancelled. For a payment of 10,000 marks the castles of 
Roxburgh and Berwick were restored to the king of Scots, and he and 
his heirs were released for ever from the homage promised for Scotland 
itself. 

Having raised money in this way, he had next to consider the peace 
of the country. His first difficulty was with his brother John, of whose 

treacherous character he was perfectly aware. The best 
ment of course would probably have been to have taken him with 

him to Palestine ; but it was decided to leave him in Europe, 
but bound on oath not to revisit England for three years, and to apjDeal 
to his gratitude by such a liberal provision as should leave him nothing 
to ask for. Accordingly, besides giving him the county of Mortain, he 
received grants in England amounting to nearly one-third of the kingdom, 
and comprising the castles of Marlborough, Luggershall, and Lancaster ; 
the honours without the castles of Wallingford, Tickhill, and Nottingham ; 
and the shires of Derby, Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Dorset, with 
all their revenues. In the general management of the country Eichard 
trusted to the good sense and tact of his mother Eleanor. The actual 
administration, after several changes occasioned by the sudden death of 
William of Mandeville, he virtually placed in the hands of William Long- 
champ, the chancellor; and on December 11th, 1190, he quitted England. 



U91 



Richard I. 159 



As was usual when people were filled with crusading zeal, the Jews 
suflered from persecution. In England the Jews were regarded 
technically as the king's special dependants, and, being taxed Persecution 
b}'' him at will, were a great source of wealth to him. Most o^ the Jews, 
of their riches were acquired by money-lending ; and as, owing to the 
canonical prohibition of usury and to the uncertainty of the times, a 
high rate of interest was charged, and also in an agricultural community 
the value of being able to borrow capital was not understood so well as 
by a commercial people, they were extremely unpopular. Special 
quarters were assigned to them in most towns, which were walled in and 
the gates locked at night ; they were compelled to wear a particular 
dress, and any favourable opportunity to attack them was seized by their 
debtors. A disturbance of this kind broke out in Westminster on 
Eicliard's coronation day, and during the autumn and winter riots against 
the Jews attended with bloodshed occurred at York, Norwich, Stamford, 
St. Edmunds, and other towns. At York the unhapi^y Jews were allowed 
to take refuge in the castle, where they were regularly besieged ; and, 
despairing of life, the men killed the women and children and, having set 
fire to the castle, flung themselves into the flames. Altogether not less 
than five hundred perished at York alone, and one of the first duties of 
the chancellor was to punish the rioters. 

William Longchamp, who had acted as Eichard's own chancellor for 
many years, and who was thoroughly devoted to his master, was a lame 
man, of insignificant appearance and lowly birth. He was, wiiiiam 
however, a thorough man of business, industrious, energetic, Longchamp. 
and inventive ; but he knew nothing of England and the English, his 
manners were far from conciliatory, and before he had been long in 
office he contrived to make himself thoroughly unpopular. This gave 
John an admirable opening for mischief. Against Eleanor's advice, 
Richard had foolishly excused him from his oath of absence, and when, 
in 1191, Eleanor was obliged to leave England, John returned 
home, acted as king in his own counties, appointed a regular staft' of 
officials, and apparently took it for granted that he had seen the last of 
his brother. His attitude encouraged Hugh of Durham and others to 
revolt ; and as William of Longchamp had no personal friends and many 
enemies, the whole kingdom was soon in a condition of smouldering 
insurrection. Hearing, on his journey, of Longchamp's difficulties, 
Richard sent to England Walter of Coutances, the bland and waiter of 
inoffensive archbishop of Rouen and old official of Henry ii., Coutances. 
with orders to do the best he could. Walter reached England in April 
1191, and found things for the moment quiet. A new trouble, however, 



1(30 Earlier Angevin Kings 1191 

soon arose through the conduct of William Longchamp to Geoffrey, the 
illegitimate son of Henry 11., whose election as archbishop of York had 
been secured by Eichard. Like John, Geoffrey had been put under a 
vow of absence, but had also been released, and arrived in England in 
Auo-ust 1191. Longchamp refused to believe in his release, and had him 
seized in a church at Dover ; and the archbishop was dragged through 
the streets to the castle by his hands and feet, clinging to his pastoral 
cross and excommunicating his t6rmentors as he went. Such a scene 
recalled all the difficulties that had arisen from the quarrel with Becket. 
John, of course, made common cause with Geoffrey ; and then Walter of 
Coutances, thinking it time to produce his commission, took the reins of 
government into his hands, William of Longchamp left the country, 
and the new arrangements, made by Richard's authority, were cheerfully 
acquiesced in. 

Meanwhile, Richard had made himself a European reputation by his 
exploits in the East. He had joined the French king at Vezelai in the 
Richard's summer of 1190, and then, leaving Philip to go by land, had 
Journey. made his way to Marseilles, where he took ship. He 
reached Sicily in September, and became the guest of Tancred, the 
de facto king of Sicily, who was himself a Norman. In Sicily he stayed 
till the following March, when he was joined for four days by his 
mother Eleanor, who brought with her Berengaria of Navarre, to whom 
he was at once betrothed ; and then, setting sail, he was driven to 
Cyprus, which he took from its ruler, Isaac Comnenus, as a punishment 
for the massacre of some English sailors who had been wrecked on that 
island. There he married Berengaria; and in June 1191 he reached 
Acre. 

The strong fortress of Acre is situated on a j)romontory, which forms 
the northern side of the bay of Acre, of which Mount Carmel forms the 
Siege of southern. It was in the hands of the Turks, and had been 
^^^^- besieged by a Christian army, under Guy of Lusignan, since 

August 1189. The siege, however, had made little progress. Frederick 
Barbarossa had set out in 1190, but met an inglorious ending by being 
drowned in a little river in Asia Minor in July the same year. In con- 
sequence of this, only a small fragment of the German contingent ever 
reached Syria. Philip Augustus reached Acre in April 1191. The 
leaders, Richard, Philip, and Guy, however, showed little harmony or 
vigour. The camp was ill-arranged and undrained, and, as a matter of 
course, disease broke out, of which Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury 
and Ranulf Glanville had both died before Richard's arrival. Mean- 
while, Saladin had gathered a large force for the relief of Acre, and had 



1192 



Richard I. 161 



hemmed in the Christians on the land side, so that it was difficult to say 
who were the besieged and who the besiegers. 

Things were in this hopeless state when King Richard arrived ; and 
his acknowledged military skill put new heart into the besiegers. The 
military engines were plied with fresh vigour and more capture of 
intelligence. Richard, with his crossbow, fought in the ^'^^^• 
front ranks, and within a month, in spite of a serious illness which for 
some days incapacitated him, a breach was made and the town stormed 
with terrible slaughter. The sacrifice of life, however, had been 
appalling. In one cemetery, it is said that no less than 124,000 corpses 
were buried within the year, and it was reckoned that by disease and the 
sword the capture cost the lives of 300,000 men. Acre being taken, an 
attack on Jerusalem was the next project of the crusaders. Advance on 
but the difficulties of keeping together such a motley host as Jerusalem, 
the crusading army was quite beyond Richard's diplomacy, while his 
very success at Acre awakened the jealousy of other princes. The great 
bone of contention was the crown of Jerusalem. Sibyl had died child- 
less, and Richard favoured the claims of her husband, Guy ofLusignan. 
Philip preferred those of Conrad of Montferrat, marquess of Tyre. 
However, in August 1191, Philip pleaded illness and went home, so that 
the chief command remained in Richard's hands. Under his guidance 
the army turned south and beat off a great Saracen host at the battle of 
Arsuf, where the steadiness of the footmen, and especially of the cross- 
bowmen, showed to the cavaliers of Europe the value of infantry. All 
Richard's efforts, however, were in vain. Twice he led his troops within 
twelve miles of Jerusalem, but each time, recognising the folly of be- 
sieging such a fortress with Saladin's unbroken army in the field, he felt 
compelled to retreat. At length Richard saw that the task on which he 
was engaged was hopeless with his materials. The news of John's pro- 
ceedings in England warned him that he ought to be absent no longer, 
and in September 1192 he concluded a treaty with Saladin, by which 
Joppa and its district were secured for the Christians, with the right of 
free access to the Holy Sepulchre, and with full liberty to carry on 
commerce over the whole land. In leaving Jerusalem, Richard presented 
to Guy of Lusignan the island of Cyprus. 

This done, Richard left the task of bringing back the English 
Crusaders to Hubert Walter, and himself set sail for Marseilles in 
October 1192. Unfortunately, his squadron was dispersed Richard's 
by a storm ; and when Richard himself was within three Return, 
days' sail of MarseilleSj he learned that Raymond of Toulouse meant to 
seize him on landing. Contrary winds not only made it impossible to 



] (52 Earlier Angevin King^ 1192 

pass through the Straits of Gibraltar, but even drove the king to Corfu. 
Thence he ao-ain set out in a small pirate craft, but was -vrrecked near 
Rat^usa, and his only chance was to make his way through the empire in 
disguise. By some mismanagement he arrived at V ienna, where resided 
his personal enemy, Leopold, duke of Austria. By this time his presence 
was well known ; and, being recognised by emissaries of the duke, he 

. . ^^ was arrested and thrown into prison. Overjoyed at his 

Imprisoned, luck, Leopold wrote in triumph to Philip Augustus, and 
the French king passed the good tidings on to John. 

John instantly spread a report that Richard was dead, demanded that 

all the castles of England should be handed over to himself, and did 

T u . homacfe to Philip Augustus for Richard's Continental 

John s => ^ ® 

Treachery, dominions. Eleanor, however, refused to be taken in by 
the rumour, and made common cause with Geoffrey of York and Hugh 
of Durham. Presently Richard's true fate was ascertained, and com- 
munication was opened with him. 

Early in 1193 Leopold transferred his captive to the hands of the 
Emperor Henry vi. at Speyer. On his way to Speyer, Richard met two 
abbots who had been sent out from England to meet 
for his Re- liiui, and negotiations were at once began for his release. 
The terms demanded by the emperor were hard. £100,000 
of English money were to be paid as a ransom ; Isaac of Cyprus was to 
be liberated ; and Eleanor of Brittany was to be betrothed to a son of 
Leopold of Austria. The money, however, was cheerfully paid, both by 
the laity and the clergy ; but it took much ingenuity to raise so large a 
sum, and eventually four distinct taxes were imposed by a great council : 
(1) An aid for the king-'s ransom, at the rate of twenty shillings per 
knight's fee ; (2) an income and property tax of one-fourth of the income 
and movable property of every man in the kingdom, lay or cleric ; (3) 
a one-fourth part of the wool of the Cistercians and of the Gilbertines 
(see page 129) ; and (4) a carucate of two shillings on the hide, a caru- 
cate which was taken for the purpose as equivalent to one hundred 
acres. In January 1194 Richard was released, and at once returned to 
Arrival in England. Before leaving Henry, he agreed to do him 
England, homage for the titular kingdom of Burgundy ; and to remove 
any doubt as to his rank, he was careful to wear his crown in England, 
with some of the solemnities of a new coronation. Richard landed in 
England on March 13th, just in time to take part in capturing Nottingham, 
the last stronghold of his brother John. He remained in England till 
May 12th, when, his presence being urgently needed in France, he again 
sailed for the Continent, and never was able to return. 



1194 Richard I. 163 

During his second absence the government of the country was intrusted 
to the justiciar, Hubert Walter, now archbishop of Canterbury, till 1197, 
and then to Geoffrey Fitzpeter ; and these two old servants Hubert 
of Henry took care to manage everything according to the Walter, 
practice of their former master. Fortunately, they had no more trouble 
with John. Warned by past experience, Richard was careful to return 
to his brother none of the property that had been forfeited by the 
justices. Henceforth he had to content himself with money only, and 
John himself was wise enough to recognise that his true interest lay in 
keeping on good terms with his masterful elder brother. 

Besides the ordinary routine of business, the chief care of the justices 
had to be devoted to raising money. During the last years of his life, 
Richard was engaged in a constant struggle with Philip Difficulties 
Augustus, who represented the natural tendency of the ^^^^ France. 
French kings to encroach on the territories of their vassals. To check 
this, Richard trusted first to creating a great alliance of the neighbouring 
states against Philip, for which purpose, in 1197, he used his influence 
as king of Burgundy to secure the election of his nephew Otto, son of his 
sister Matilda and Henry the Lion of Saxony, as successor to the 
Emperor Henry vi. ; and, in the last resort, to a magnificent castle, the 
Chateau Gaillard, which he built near Les Andelys, on the chateau 
Seine, as a defence for the Norman frontier. This great GaiHard. 
masterpiece of engineering skill of the time was designed by Richard 
himself. It completely commanded the river, and he believed it capable 
of checking any advance into Normandy till a relieving force could be 
collected from England. 

The administration of Hubert Walter is marked by several incidents 
of constitutional importance, most of which were merely developments of 
the methods of Henry 11. In 1194, in issuing a commis- 
sion to the itinerant justices, besides intrusting to them tional 

• ■ Prosfrcss 

an immense list of multifarious business, all connected, 
more or less, with the exchequer, he directed that all their inquiries 
were to be conducted by taking the evidence of sworn recognitors, 
appointed as follows : — Four knights were to be chosen out of the whole 
shire. These were to choose two from every hundred, and these two 
named ten others to act with them as ' legal men.' This practice is im- 
portant, not only in connection with the jury, but also with the practice 
of election. In 1194, and also by the method of recognition, a survey of 
the whole land was carried out with a view to the new method of taxa- 
tion by carucate, which had the efi'ect of superseding the ancient Dooms- 
day survey ; and again, ' the lawful men of the shire ' acted, along with 



164 Earlier Angevin Kings 1194 

commissioners, in assessing the amount due from each estate, a further 
step in connecting taxation and representation. 

Other expedients for taxation had important social effects. Tourna- 
ments had hitherto been discouraged in England : they were now licensed 
by Richard's orders, but every knight who took part in one 

ments. j^ad to pay for an individual licence to do so according to 
his rank. The ready grant of charters, moreover, had an immense effect 
on the development of the towns, in the history of which almost an 
epoch is caused by the charters of Eichard. The intimate connection 
between England and the Continent, and the good order kept at home 

Charters to ^Y Henry II., had both been favourable to the development 

Towns. Qf town life, and the English trading classes had rapidly 
restored the losses of Stephen's reign. In consequence, the process of 
bargaining for privileges, which was noticed under Henry i., was 
renewed. The citizens of London paid 100 marks to have sheriffs of 
their own choosing. The burghers of Cambridge paid 300 marks of 
silver and one mark of gold to have their town at a ferm or fixed rent, 
and to be free from the meddling of the sheriff of the shire. Shrewsbury 
did the like. The weavers of Oxford paid two marks to have a guild of 
their own. Thomas of York gave a coursing dog to be alderman of the 
guild of merchants. Besides these payments, which are recorded in the 
pipe roll, and which are typical of hundreds of the kind, numbers of 
charters were granted. These, for the most part, followed the lines of 
those granted to some neighbouring town. The burghers of Bedford 
copied their charter from Oxford ; those of Preston, that of Newcastle. 
Most striking of all, the citizens of London took advantage of the 
squabble between William Longchamp and John, to bargain for the right 
to have a communa, apparently a corporation after the Continental 
fashion ; and henceforward their chief officer was styled the lord mayor, 
and the town governed by him and tAvelve aldermen, one from each of 
the city wards. 

In assessing taxes, however, the new officers of London, who be- 
longed to the merchant class, were thought to be unfair to the poorer 
"William citizens. The grievances of the latter were taken up by 

Fitz-Osbert. wini^m Fitz-Osbert, a member of the burgher class, who 
had been a Crusader, and who was marked as an eccentric character 
by his habit of wearing a beard. As William was a born agitator, 
and apparently a capital speaker, the disturbance grew so serious that 
Hubert Walter was forced to interfere. His proceedings were charac- 
terised by some rashness and much brutality. When William took 
refuge in a church, the archbishop ordered it to be set on fire, and when 



1199 Richard I. 165 

William rushed out he was seized, and, wounded as he was, stripped, 
dragged through the city at a horse's tail, and hanged with eight of his 
comrades. The affair of William Fitz-Osbert is typical of what went on in 
most corporate towns, where the jealousy between the governing class and 
the general body of the citizens, represented respectively by the merchant 
guild and by the inferior craft guilds, in which the weavers, arrow- 
smiths, and other artificers banded themselves, was always an important 
feature of medioeval town politics. Hubert's action, though successful 
for the moment, met with so much disapproval that he was obliged to 
resign, but took office again at Richard's special request. In 1198, how- 
ever, a new trouble arose, and both Richard and his justiciar met a 
serious rebuff. Richard, finding that he wanted not only money but 
men to withstand Philip's constant attacks, sent a demand for three 
hundred knights, to be paid by his English vassals. However, when 
Hubert proposed at a great council that he and the other crown vassals 
should agree to the king's request, Hugh of Avalon, the Hugh of 
most saintly and respected bishop of the English church, Avalon. 
demurred, and, stating his opinion that English military tenants were 
only bound to do service in England, refused his consent. The bishop 
of Salisbury followed Hugh's lead ; and though their objection struck 
at the principle of scutage for foreign wars, as well as at personal service, 
the scheme had to be given up. This successful resistance to a scheme 
of taxation marks a further advance in constitutional progress. 

After this failure, Hubert Walter became still further discredited, and 
had to hand over his office to Geoffrey Fitzpeter, another Geoffrey 
official trained in the school of Henry ii. The administra- ^^tzpeter. 
tion of Geoffrey, however, was suddenly cut short by the wholly un- 
expected death of Richard himself. In the spring of 1199 he seemed to 
be coming to the end of his difficulties with Philip. His league against 
the French king had at length been formed ; and his Chateau Gaillard, 
or Saucy Castle, was bidding defiance to any French attack along the 
line of the Seine, when Richard was informed that a treasure had been 
found on an estate in Limousin. Rumour exag-gerated the value of the 
prize, and, as money was of great consequence to Richard, he advanced 
his claim to the whole of it as legal right of the duke of Aquitaine. 
His demand was rejected by the viscount of Limousin and by Achard, the 
actual owner of the estate of Chalus, where the treasure had been 
found. The castle was not particularly strong, and was defended by 
only seven knights and eight serving-men ; but one of them, who had 
stood a whole day defending himself with a frying-pan against the 
enemy's bolts on the chance of a shot at King Richard, at length got his 



166 Earlier Angevin Kings 1199 

opportunity, and lodged an arrow in the neck of the king. Bad 
Death of surgery and Richard's impatience brought on mortification, 
Richard. .^^^^ -y^ g^ fg^ (j^ys the king was dead. 

The personality of Eichard the Lion Heart has secured permanent 
fame. His personal share in the administration of English affairs was 
Importance slight and unimportant ; but the advantage gained by 
of his Reign, \\^q country from ten years' continuance of the system of 
Henry 11. was most valuable, and its effects were seen in the combina- 
tions of parties during the next reign. Richard himself had the power 
of attracting the personal love of his intimate friends, though his 
character was not one to secure general respect. In private life he 
was witty and humorous. When the pope claimed as 'his son' 
a bishop Richard's men had captured in battle, he sent in reply the 
bishop's coat of mail, with the request that he would see 'whether 
it were his son's coat or no.' He was also a man of generous im- 
pulses and faithful to his friends, but was wanting in nobility of 
character and in the higher virtues of statesmanship. His bravery was 
unquestioned ; but even in war his cruelty, selfishness, and vanity 
deprive him of much of his apparent claim to respect. 



CHIEF DATES. 

A.D. 

Siege of Acre, 1191 

Richard imprisoned, .... 1192-1194 
Chateau Gaillard built, .... 1197 



CHAPTEE III 

JOHN: 1199-1216 

,. ,,„^ . - rll89, Hadwisa or Avice of Gloucester (divorced) ; 

Born 116/ ; married ,^ ' x i n r a t^ 

11 200, Isabella of Angouleme. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 
Scotland. France. Emperor. 

William the Lion, d. 1214. Philip Augustus, d. 1223. Otto iv., 1208-1218. 
Alexander ii., d. 1249. 

Pope. 
Innocent in., 1198-1216. 

John's ill Character leads to the Loss of France, a Quarrel with the Church, and 
tinally his iniquitous Life and Government cause a union of all Classes to 
extort the Great Charter — A French Prince invited to take the Throne. 

In the early days of his reign, Richard had regarded Arthur, the son of 
Geoffrey, as his heir ; but after Arthur had been handed over by the 
Bretons to Philip, and was being educated at the French 

^ '^ . Question of 

court with Philip's son, he seems to have changed his mind, the Succes- 
and during his last years he certainly regarded John as his 
successor, and on his death-bed he made his followers swear to receive 
his brother as next king. Philip, however, was still in Arthur's favour, 
and at Eichard's death made an effort to secure his succession. 

When his brother died, John was abroad. His first step was to 
secure Normandy ; but while he was doing so, young Arthur, aided 
by his mother Constance and the Bretons, secured Anjou, Action of 
Maine, and Touraine ; and for these counties Arthur John, 
immediately did homage to the French king. Eleanor, however, who 
wished John to succeed, as being more likely than Arthur to keep 
together all the vast dominions of herself and her husband, showed that 
even threescore years and ten had not damped her energy. Summoning 
to her aid Mercadier, the commander of Richard's paid Brabantines, she 
attacked Anjou, and then cleverly secured Aquitaine for John by com- 
pelling Philip to receive her homage for it as duchess in her own right. 

167 



168 Earlier Angevin Kings U99 

Aquitaine and Normandy being thus secure, John was able to leave his 
other Continental dominions for the present and secure his position in 
England. 

Ab-eady he sent over Archbishop Hubert and William Marshall to 
aid Geoffrey Fitzpeter in his difficult task of keeping the peace. In 
England there never seems to have been any question of taking Arthur 
as kino-. A meeting of the most important barons was held at Notting- 
ham, and there, Hubert and the Marshall promising all good things in 
his name, John was elected king, the uncle of full age being 
Jo n e ec e . p^g£gj.j,gj^ according to the old English practice, to the 
nephew, who was a minor. In May, John came over, and after a solemn 
admonition was crowned at Westminster by Archbishop Hubert, who 
carefully stated in his address that John succeeded not by any inherent 
right, but by the unanimous choice of the realm. 

Geoffrey Fitzpeter remained justiciar, William Marshall kept his 
office, and Archbishop Hubert showed how completely the ecclesiastical 
ideas of Archbishop Theobald had passed away by accepting 
the post of chancellor. Geoffrey Fitzpeter was then made 
earl of Essex, in succession to William de Mandeville ; and William 
Marshall, to whom Kichard had given Strongbow's heiress, Eva, was 
made earl of Striguil, though he is better known as earl of Pembroke. 

In June, John was back on the Continent, where he found the tide 
completely turned in his favour. Philip had disgusted Arthur and the 
Arthur Bretons by treating his conquests in Normandy and Maine 

discredited, ^g j^jg Q-^n. The count of Flanders and Otto the emperor 
were preparing to aid John. The troubles of an interdict, which Philip 
had brought on himself by putting away his wife Ingeborga of Den- 
mark, and taking instead Agnes of Meran, were impending. Philip, 
therefore, found peace necessary, and offered favourable terms. John 
was recognised as lawful ruler of all his brother's dominions ; and as a 
pledge of amity, Louis, Philip's eldest son, married John's niece, Blanche, 
the daughter of Blanche of England and Alphonzo of Navarre. To 
fetch the bride, the indefatigable Eleanor at once set out to Spain, and 
on account of the interdict the marriage was celebrated at Rouen. 

The character of John is one not easy to draw. He was handsome, 
well made, and of most insinuating manners ; clever enough when he 
John's chose to exert himself, and neither a bad general nor a bad 

Character, cliplomatlst. He also had been well educated, and was well 
read. All these good qualities, however, only made his complete failure 
the more signal. His ruin was due to his utter indifference to jDrinciple 
of any kind. Neither truth, nor pity, nor duty stood in the way of his 



1199 John 169 

will. His passions required to be gratified at all costs ; being a bad 
man himself, he judged others by his own standard, and was incapable 
of appealing to anything higher. Even these bad traits, however, might 
not have sufficed to ruin him had it not been that on the Continent he 
had to deal with Philip Augustus, an abler man than had sat on the 
throne of France for years ; and in England he had to meet for the first 
time since the Conquest a people who, having realised what good govern- 
ment meant, were determined not to allow the wickedness or weakness of 
the sovereign to be a cause of the reappearance of disorder, John's first 
act of infatuation was to divorce his wife Hadwisa or Avice Divorce of 
of Gloucester, to whom he had been married since 1189. •^^'^e. 
She Avas the granddaughter of Kobert of Gloucester, and therefore John's 
third cousin ; but the marriage had been celebrated under a papal dis- 
pensation. It had, however, from the first been protested against by 
Archbishop Baldwin, and John, probably by a lie, now persuaded 
three Aquitanian bishops to annul it. On this her lands should, of 
course, have been restored to her, as had been done in the case of John's 
mother Eleanor ; but John gave the county of Gloucester only to the 
husband of Avice's elder sister, and kept the rest himself. Avice had a 
crowd of relations who were equally off'ended by the insult to herself, 
and exasperated by the loss of her lands ; so the whole Gloucester con- 
nection was now turned against John. As though this were not enough, 
John then proceeded to marry Isabella of Angouleme, the 
affianced bride of Hugh the Brown, son of the count of La with"sa^ 
Marche, and nephew of Guy of Lusignan. The marriage A^ng^o°fgrne 
was made by the consent of the bride's father, and ap- 
parently of the bride herself ; but the whole family of Lusignan were 
furious. As they were the most powerful and turbulent of the barons 
of Poitou, their wTath w^as no slight matter ; and John immediately 
made things worse by seizing the castle of another member of the family. 
In 1202 the barons of Poitou, with the Lusignans at their head, 
appealed to Philip ; and the French king, having now arranged his 
matrimonial difficulties by taking back his former wife, at ^ , . ^ 

•^ *= ' Quarrel with 

once took up their cause. John was summoned to answer the Barons 

for his conduct before the French court, and, as he did not 
appear, was condemned in default to forfeit all lands held under the 
crown of France. The legality of this sentence was extremely doubtful ; 
but Philip at once summoned the aid of Arthur and invaded Nor- 
mandy, while Arthur laid siege to his grandmother Eleanor, whom the 
Poitevin troubles had drawn from her retirement at Fontevraud, in 
the castle of Mirebeau. Eleanor's danger roused John to momentary 



170 Earlier Angevin Kings 1202 

exertion, and he surprised Arthur just when on the point of success, 
and carried him off prisoner. This success gave John the better of the 
wame • but having imprisoned his nephew first at Falaise and then at 
Rouen, it is certain that he was wicked and foolish enough to compass 

T^ .u f his death, though how or when is not certainly known. 

Arthur. ^g goon as Arthur's death was known, Philip invaded 
Normandy, and the Norman towns fell fast before him. So long, how- 
ever, as Chateau Gaillard held out Rouen was safe, and its siege was the 
Invasion of crisis of the war. The defence was intrusted to Roger de 
Normandy. La^y, and the stand he made gave ample time to John, if 
he had used it well, to bring an overwhelming army to its relief. But 
for some reason or another John's abilities failed him at the crisis. A 
night attack on the besiegers planned by him, but carried out by 
the earl of Pembroke, failed, owing to the boats of the expedition being 
behind time. Then the king sank into aimless despondency, wandered 
hither and thither without object or result, and finally left Normandy 
to its fate. After holding out from August 1203 to March 

Gaillard 1204, Roger de Lacy was compelled to capitulate ; but the 

capture . igj^gj^j^ gf \^[y\\q gained and the difficulties of the besiegers 
amply demonstrated both the judgment and the skill of its founder and 

_ , , architect. A month later Eleanor died, and with her de- 
Death of ' 
Eleanor of parted John's last hold on the loyalty of his Continental 

subjects. After Chateau Gaillard had fallen, Normandy, 

Anjou, Touraine, and Maine soon fell into Philip's hands ; and before the 

Loss of summer of 1204 was out, nothing but the Channel Islands 

Normandy, remained to the English king of the hereditary territories 

of William the Conqueror and Geoffrey of Anjou. 

The loss of Normandy marks a very important epoch in the history 
of the English baronage. Up to this date, many of the greatest of them. 
Influence of swch as the earls of Chester, held lands on both sides of the 
Channel. Now they were forced to choose between the two. 
Generally speaking, one son took the French lands and another the Eng- 
lish ; but, whatever arrangement was made, divided interest became a 
thing of the past. Henceforward, the English barons, though they still 
spoke French, regarded themselves as Englishmen, and looked on Eng- 
lish interests as their own ; and thus the Anglicising of the Normans, 
which had been begun by the wars between Duke Robert and his 
brothers, was carried a step further by the loss of Normandy. Any 
physical distinction between the English and Normans had long been 
lost. William the Conqueror had established a special fine to be levied 
on a hundred when any Norman was murdered within its bounds; 



1204 John 171 

but the author of the Dialogus de Scaccario tells us that under Henry ii. 
this fine was paid in all cases ; ' for, in consequence of marrying and 
giving in marriage, the nations were so mingled that at that day it was 
impossible, speaking generally, to say who was a Norman and who was 
an Englishman.' At the same time, it is a remarkable fact that in spite 
of this movement the use of the French language was spreading. Between 
1154 and 1205 no book written in English survives ; and apparently 
French was the habitual language of conversation, not only at court, but 
among the upper classes generally. 

The last years of the twelfth century, though unfruitful of English 
literature, were fruitful of Latin writing, and especially of history, which 
was written not so much by monks, as in the preceding Historical 
period of literary activity, as by men of the world. As a "Writings, 
contemporary record of events the Acts of Henry II. and Richard /., 
written by Richard Fitz- Nigel, treasurer, bishop of London, and con- 
tinued by Roger of Howden, another officer of the court, is invaluable, 
as the work of men who took an actual part in the events which they 
chronicled ; while far removed from these, but connected in spirit with 
William of Malmesbury, stands William of Newburgh, an Augustinian 
canon of Newburgh, near Coxwold in Yorkshire, who attempted to make 
his history of England from William the Conqueror to John a really 
philosophic work. Besides these we must place Gerald the Welshman, 
the most amusing writer of his day, the chief authority on the conquest 
of Ireland and the contemporary topography of Wales ; and Walter 
Map, the known author of the Trijiings of Courtiers, and reputed writer 
of the satirical Aioocahjpse and Confession of Bishop Goliath, a bitterly 
satirical exposure of the frailties of the clergy. 

By the time of Gerald the Welshman, Oxford had become the resort 

of the ' most learned and renowned clerks in England,' had regular 

faculties, teachers of various grades, and a numerous body _ , 

' & 7 -1 Development 

of scholars. There grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric — the of the 
... T 1 1 1 • • 1 ■,^ Universities, 

trivium — were studied by the juniors ; and geometry, arith- 
metic, music, astronomy — the quadrivium — by the seniors ; while more 
advanced learners still specialised on theology and law. All the students 
were, in the eyes of the law, regarded as clerks, though many were 
not even in minor orders ; and before long the relations between 
the church and the universities became a matter of great importance. 
England, therefore, had reaped and was reaping a great harvest from 
the peace and good government of Henry ii. and of Richard's ministers, 
Hubert Walter and Geoffrey Fitzpeter, when the loss of his Continental 
possessions forced John to take up his residence in his island kingdom. 



;[72 Earlier Angevin Kings 1204 

John's troubles soon began. Since the death of Becket, the struggle 

between church and state had been almost suspended. At his death 

nine sees were vacant, which enabled Henry 11. to pack 

Hub^i'rt'*^ the episcopate with his nominees, with the result that, 

^^^^^''' during the remainder of his reign and those of his sons, the 
ecclesiastical bishops of the type of Theobald or Gilbert Foliot disappeared, 
and were replaced by a set of official bishops of the type of William 
Longchamp and Hubert Walter, among whom St. Hugh of Avalon, 
appointed bishop of Lincoln in 1186, was quite an exception. In 1205 
Hubert Walter died, and John naturally expected to replace him by one 
of his own friends. It happened, however, that the right of electing the 
archbishop of Canterbury had been for some time in dispute. It was 
claimed as their exclusive privilege by the monks of the abbey of 
Christ Church ; but a concurrent voice at least was also demanded by the 
suflFragan bishops of the province of Canterbury. For some time, how- 
ever, the difficulty had been got over by a compromise. In the case of 
Becket the actual election seems to have been made by the monks, and 
the bishops gave their consent, thus affording Gilbert Foliot an oppor- 
tunity for his remonstrance. In no other see did the bishops claim to 
interfere. Usually the election was made by the chapter, and the king 
gave or refused his consent to their choice, as when Henry 11. refused to 
admit Gerald the Welshman as bishop of St. Davids when his name was 
presented by the chapter. 

However, on Hubert's death the junior monks of the cathedral priory of 
Christ Church, thinking to elude the interference both of the king and of 
the bishops, secretly held a meeting, and without even the 
an Arch" ° king's licence to elect chose Reginald their sub-prior, a man 
bishop. Qf jiQ uiark whatever. In pursuance of their plot they hur- 

Reginaidthe ried off Reginald to Rome to ask the pallium from the pope, 

Sub-Prior. , • , . - K^ y 

after makmg him promise not to assume his dignity till he 
had made sure of the pope's goodwill. The vanity, however, of Reginald 
got the better of his discretion, and directly he landed on the Continent 
he assumed the state and with it the slowness of an archbishop-elect. 
News of his proceedings, therefore, reached England, and the bishops 
had time to reach Rome and anticipate Reginald's request by a protest 
Election of ^^''^^^^^ ^^^ election. John, too, was not idle. He sum- 
John de moned a formal meeting of the monks and insisted on 

Grey. . . 

their electing John de Grey, one of his officials, and a man 
of much military and administrative ability. That done, he despatched 
twelve of the monks to Rome, and made them swear to elect no one but 
John de Grey. After carefully hearing the case. Innocent set aside the 



1212 John 173 

claims of the suffragan bishops, but declared both elections to be invalid : 
that of Reginald as secret and without the king's licence ; that of de Grey- 
as premature, having been held before Reginald's was annulled. He 
then persuaded the monks to elect Stephen Langton, an 
Englishman of distinguished learning and irreproachable Stephen 
character, well known to John. He had been rector of 
the university of Paris, had been raised by Innocent to the cardinalate 
and employed by him in the most important business of the papacy. 

In spite, however, of the great suj)eriority of his candidate, Inno- 
cent's action was most high-handed, and John refused to receive Langton. 
Innocent proceeded to consecrate Lang-ton in 1207 ; and, on John's 
further persisting, in 1208 he put the country under an -pj^^ 
interdict. The ecclesiastical weapon had first been em- interdict, 
ployed on a large scale in the eleventh century. It consisted in forbid- 
ding all religious services except baptism and extreme unction. Marriao-es 
could not be celebrated, and the dead were placed without service in 
unconsecrated ground. An exception in favour of the chapels of the 
Templars was the only one allowed. It had been found extremely 
effective in moving j)ublic opinion against recalcitrant kings and lawless 
barons, and had recently been used with great effect against Philip 
Augustus. John, however, cared little about it, and retaliated by seiz- 
ing the property of all the priests and orders that obeyed it ; so, in 1209, 
Innocent went a step further, and excommunicated John himself. John's 
reply was to seize the property of the bishops. With the money thus 
taken from the church, John raised large forces, and took the oppor- 
tunity to settle his outstanding difficulties with the Scots, the Irish, and 
the Welsh. He compelled the king of Scots to do him homage, to per- 
mit him as overlord to arrange the marriages of his son and daughters, 
and to pay him £10,000. In Ireland he reduced the barons to order, 
divided the Pale into counties, ordered English law to be observed, and 
left John de Grey in charge as governor ; and he compelled the submis- 
sion of Llewelyn, prince of Wales. 

Finding John still obdurate, the pope proceeded, in 1211, to issue 
a threat of deposition. This soon brought matters to a crisis. Hitherto 
the laity had looked on in silence, but the threat of deposi- Threat to 
tion brought their smouldering discontent to a head ; and, depose John, 
from this time forward, a distinct movement for his expulsion seems 
to have grown up, of which the most obvious mark was the circulation of 
a prophecy of Peter the Hermit of Wakefield, that within a year John 
would cease to be king. All 1212 Philip was collecting his forces, and, 
though John was doing the same, he became more and more aware that 



174 Earlier Angevin Kmcji^ 1212 

his position was hopeless. It was true that he had a force of 60,000 
men and a fleet strong enough, on paper, to beat ofi" any invasion ; but 
his real difficulty arose from the disaffection of his people. The church 
he had set utterly against him ; the nobles he had disgusted not only by 
systematically calling for scutage and other imposts more frequently and 
of larger amounts than had ever been known before, but also by seizing 
their castles and demanding their children as hostages for their good 
behaviour, and, above all, by the unblushing brutality with which he out- 
rao-ed their family life for the gratification of his lusts. 

It was clear, therefore, to John that unless he could divide his enemies 
he would be lost ; so, in 1213, he made up his mind, at all hazards, to 
secure the pope as his friend. The price the pope demanded 
terms"with was high, but John did not shrink ; and he actually agreed 
the Pope. ^^ \io\^ England as a fief of the papacy, to swear fealty to 
the pope, and to pay a yearly sum of 1000 marks. No act of John's has 
been more severely condemned by posterity than this ; but it is fair to 
remember that the kings of Sicily and Aragon held their territories on 
similar terms without experiencing serious inconvenience, and that in the 
eyes of some of the nobility it may even have appeared an advantage to 
have the pope to appeal to as overlord. At any rate they took the advan- 
tage of their right, and no serious objection seems to have been raised to 
John's action at the time. 

The immediate result of John's submission was an order from the pope 

to Philip to stop his proceedings. The French king, therefore, turned 

his attention to Flanders, and John took the opportunity to 

Jefuse^to^^ despatch an English fleet under his half-brother William 

invade Lougsword, earl of Salisbury, which destroyed the French 

vessels in the harbour of Damme, and removed all fear of 

invasion. Elated by this success, John called on his barons to serve in 

an invasion of France ; but his barons had no real trust either in his 

intentions or his capacity, and excused themselves on the ground that the 

sentence of excommunication had not yet been removed. To get rid of ^ 

this difficulty, John then agreed to give full compensation to those who had 1/ 

been injured during the interdict, and received Langton. Having thus pur-' ' 

chased his release, he again called on his vassals to cross the Channel, and 

himself reached Jersey. The barons, however, again refused to embark ; 

some on the special ground that their term of service had expired ; but 

the northern barons took up the general ground that John had no right 

to demand their services for foreign warfare. Furious at this plea, John 

returned home, but was met by a demand preferred by Langton that the 

off'enders should be tried by their peers ; and his expedition to the north 



1215 John 175 

effected nothing. Meanwhile, the justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, had 
summoned at St. Albans a remarkable assembly, composed both of the 
magnates and of the reeve and four villeins from each manor on the royal 
domain. The special object of their coming was to assess the damage done 
to the clergy, but many other matters were discussed, and eventually 
the justiciar gave orders that the laws of Henry i. should be observed. 
Three weeks later, Langton carried matters a step further by reading to 
the barons assembled at St. Paul's the charter of Henry i. This gave 
just the definiteness to the demands of the barons which had hitherto 
been needed, and it was at once determined to compel John to give some 
such charter as a proof of his intention to rule better for the future. 

Almost directly afterwards Geoffrey Fitz-Peter died. The death of 
this faithful servant, who had on the whole preserved the traditions of 
Henry ii., was felt by John as a relief. 'When he gets to _ , „ 

J "> J & Death of 

hell ' said he, ' let him go and salute Hubert Walter, for, Geoffrey 

. . Fitz-Peter 

by God's Feet, now am I for the first time king and lord of 

England.' Innocent iii. had foiled John's attempt to place a creature of 
his own at Canterbury ; over the justiciarship he had no such control, 
and John gave it to Peter des Koches, a Poitevin, whom he had had 
made bishop of Winchester, and who since his struggle with the church 
had aided and abetted him in all his measures. His appointment re- 
moved all hope that the king's violence might be kept under control, 
and showed the barons that they must trust to themselves alone. 

The next year, 1214, was spent by John mostly on the Continent ; 
but for all that it was the critical year in the history of the struggle. 
A great league had been formed by him with Otto, the emperor, and 
Ferrand, count of Flanders, with a view to crushing Philip ; and, this 
done, England's turn would come next. John himself went to Poitou ; 
but an English force under Salisbury was sent to join Otto and Ferrand 
in an attack upon Philip in Flanders. The allied forces met at 
Bouvines, and Philip won a complete victory, capturing Battle of 
both the count of Flanders and the earl of Salisbury. Few Bouvines. 
battles have had more far-reaching effects, both on Continental and 
English politics. John was forced at once to make a truce with Philip 
for five years, and to return to England to face the storm of opposition. 

He found the barons determined to enforce their rights, which had 
been formulated as the laws of King Edward with the Barons 
other liberties granted by Henry i. To sain time, he demand 

^ ®, . the Laws 

put them off with a promise to answer their demands of King 

at Easter ; and meanwhile he did what he could to sow 

dissension, and to strengthen himself for the struggle. He fortified 



176 Earlier Angevin Kings 1215 

his castles ; brought over a crowd of foreign mercenaries from Poitou 
and Brabant ; appealed for protection to the pope ; made a desperate 
effort to win over Langton and the clergy by granting freedom 
of election to episcopal sees and religious houses ; demanded an 
oath of allegiance from every freeman throughout England, and a 
renewal of fealty from every feudal tenant ; and, finally, put himself 
under the special protection of the church by taking the cross as a 
crusader. 

The barons, however, were too strong for him. With the full consent 
of the archbishop, they mustered their forces at Stamford. The host 
numbered two thousand knights, besides squires and foot- 
prepare for men, and was under the leadership of Eustace de Vesci and 
^^' N icholas de Stute ville, leaders of the northern barons ; Kobert 

Fitz-Walter, who, as grandson of Kichard de Lucy, may be taken to 
represent the official nobility of Henry 11. ; Eoger Bigod of Norfolk {| 
and Henry Bohun of Hereford, representing the old nobility ; and 
William Marshall, Pembroke's son. Thence under the command of 
Fitz-Walter they marched south, and from Brackley sent commissioners 
to the king to set forth their demands. These were reported to John 
by the archbishop and William Marshall ; but John's angry exclama- 
tion, ' They might as well have asked my crown,' showed that he would 
only yield to force. The barons, therefore, marched on. Before long, 
however, it was clear that they had the nation at their back. The 
publication of their demands was received with enthusiasm. The Lon- 
doners welcomed them with open arms. Even John's most faithful 
followers, such as the earl of Pembroke and Kalf of Chester, felt that his 
case was desperate, and, coming to London, threw their influence into 
the national scale. John found himself deserted by all but foreigners 
like Peter des Roches, and mere mercenaries like Folkes de Breaut^, 
and, brought to bay at last, was obliged to agree to the 

1 he Great ' o ^ j & » 

Charter demands of the nation and affix his signature to the Great 
Charter, which he did at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 
June 15th, 1215. The demands of the barons, to which John now gave 
his consent, form the Great Charter. This document contains altogether 
sixty-three clauses, and deals with the church, the baronage, the collec- 
tion of aids and scutages, the administration of justice, purveyance, 
trade, and a variety of other points, some of permanent and others of 
only temporary interest. The most important of John's concessions 
were these : — 

The church of England was 'to be free and have all its rights,' 
especially the newly -granted right of ' freedom of election.' It should 



1215 John 177 

be noted, however, that no attempt was made to define the rights of the 

church ; and with regard to elections, such important matters could not 

be left wholly to the caprice of the cathedral clergy and the ^. p. 

monks. What the king lost the pope gained ; but in practice 

the pope was generally willing to nominate the prelate whom the king 

wished, and this continued to be the case down to the Reformation. 

The feudal dues were fixed. In the charter of Henry i, it had been 

conceded that reliefs should be 'just and lawful.' This had not been 

found sufficiently definite, and the relief was now fixed for _ , , _ 

•^ ' Feudal Dues. 

an earl or baron at ^100 for each whole barony, and for 
knights at 100 shillings for each whole knight's fee of twenty pounds 
a year in value. The estates of minors were for the future to be well 
managed, and the buildings kept in repair. Not more than a fair profit 
was to be made, and when the heir came of age the estate was to be 
handed over to him without a relief. Heiresses and heirs were not to 
be contracted in marriage without notice being given to their relations, 
and widows were not to be married against their will. 

No aids and scutages were to be collected^ ' unless by the common 
consent of the realm,' except ' for redeeming the lord's body from 
captivity, for the making his eldest son a knight, and for Aids and 
the first marriage of his eldest daughter.' Any other aids Scutages. 
and scutages were to be voted by a council, ' to which were to be sum- 
moned the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons by 
sealed letters.' A general summons was also to be issued through all 
sheriSs and bailifis to the other tenants-in-chief, and the letters were to 
state the cause why the meeting was to be held. The result of this con- 
cession was to secure the feudal landowners as a class from the illegal 
exaction of feudal dues. It cannot, however, be taken as forbidding 
arbitrary taxation in general, but only as an important step in that 
direction. The assembly also was a strictly feudal assembly, composed 
entirely of tenants-in-chief, present in their own persons, and was in no 
way representative. It forms, however, an important step in the growth 
of parliament. Another very important provision connected with the 
land was that no tenant by knight service, or by any free tenure, could be 
asked to perform any service to which he was not bound, a wide-reaching 
phrase, which probably points to the vexed question of foreign service. 

As has been noted, the higher courts of the country were developed out 
of the Curia Eegis. This court went with the king or with the justiciar 
(when the king was abroad) wherever he might happen to The Law 
go, which was a great source of hardship to suitors, for, as ^°^^ts- 
the king was incessantly travelling, they might have to journey from 

M 



178 Earlier Angevin Kings 1215 

one end of England to the other before their suit could be heard. To 
remedy this, it was arranged that the Court of Common Pleas should 
always stay at a fixed place. The place ultimately chosen was West- 
minster, where lay one of the king's chief palaces. In time the other 
chief courts, the King's Bench and Exchequer, settled at the same place ; 
and Westminster Hall, built by William Rufus, continued for centuries 
to be the headquarters of English judicature till the erection of the 
New Law Courts in 1882. 

It was also settled that the justices-in-Eyre were to make their 
circuits four times a year, so that suitors should not be kept waiting. 
Justices-in- At these assizes, the judges dealt with criminal prisoners, 
Eyre. ^-ith all cases of recent dispossession of property (novel 

disseisin), with questions arising out of succession to landed property 
(mort (V ancestor), and with matters concerning presentation to livings 
(darrein presentment). Such cases were to be decided by a jury, and all 
fines were to be similarly assessed. 

' No free man,' ran the xxxix. clause, ' is to be taken or imprisoned, or 
deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way molested. 

Habeas no^ will we go upon or send upon him, except by the 

Corpus, legal judgment of his equals, or by the law of the land.' 
This celebrated clause must not be taken as conferring any new 
right ; but simply as restating in the fullest terms what had been in 
theory and usually in practice the right of every Englishmen from the 
earliest recorded days. The difficulty, however, lay not in stating the 
law but in carrying it into effect, and many centuries had to elapse 
before this elementary right was secure for every class. By the law of 
the land was meant the judgment by the ordeal, then on the point of 
being abolished, or trial by battle. Scarcely less important was the xl. : 
' To none will we sell, to none will we deny right or justice.' 

An attempt was made to get rid of the abuses of purveyance, by 

which the kings could require the services of carriages and 
Purveyance, . , . 

carts, and to be supplied with provisions at the market 

rate ; but as the right of pre-emption was preserved, there was still 

plenty of room for abuse. London was to have the same 

rights with regard to aids and scutages as the barons, and 

other towns were to keep their charters. 

Merchants were to come and go freely into the kingdom, and to be 

subject to no exactions. Those of states with which we 

were at war were to be treated by us as we found that our 

merchants were treated by them. 

One of the best features of the Charter was the way in which every 



1215 John 179 

rio-lit granted to a baron was carefully extended to include the case of 
the simple freeman. The stock of the merchant and tradesman, and 
the agricultural implements of the villein, are preserved from undue 
amercement just as much as the land of the lord. His property was to 
go to his heirs as much as that of the landowner ; and, hnally, by a 
most comprehensive enactment, the barons and clergy Mesne- 
agreed that every liberty granted by the king to his tenants Tenants, 
should be observed by them towards their men. 

These provisions and many others, which concerned every class of the 
population, form the substance of the Great Charter, which has ever 
since been regarded by Englishmen as the foundation of their liberties. 
In later times it took the position in popular esteem which had 
hitherto been held by the 'laws of Henry i.' or the 'laws of King 
Edward,' and has been confirmed over and over again. 

To ensure that its provisions should be carried out, a committee of 
twenty-five barons was appointed, including Robert Fitz- carrying 
Walter, Eustace de Vesci, Roger Bigod, Henry Bohun, pibT/^ation 
and the mayor of London ; and a copy of it was sent to °^ Charter, 
every county and to every important church and town in the kingdom, 
some of which copies are still extant. 

No sooner, however, was the Charter agreed to than John set about 
freeing himself from his oath. Flying secretly to the Isle of Wight, he 
hurried ofi" Pandulf, the papal legate, to represent to The Pope 
Innocent the injury done to the interests of the crown, from his^" 
and therefore indirectly to the papacy itself. Pandulf Oath, 
did his work well. The pope granted the necessary dispensation. 
He also threatened to excommunicate the barons for levying war 
on a crusader, and for exacting concessions detrimental to the honour 
of the Holy See ; and, finally, suspended Langton, whose conduct had 
naturally been painted in the blackest colours, from the exercise of 
his episcopal functions. In September, Langton left England to lay the 
case before the pope. 

John on his side was not idle. The granting of the Charter had 
satisfied the wishes of his opponents, and such faithful friends as the 
earls of Pembroke, Chester, and Salisbury were willing to give him 
a further chance. He himself, however, could think of nothing but 
mere revenge. All summer he was collecting troops, and after harvest 
was over he sent a body of foreign mercenaries, under the john 
command of Falkes de Breaute, to harry the estates of the Estaf es of^ 
barons with fire and sword, and himself, spreading devas- *^^ Barons, 
tation as he marched, crossed the border to ravage Scotland, in revenge 



180 Earlier Angevin Kings 1215 

for the young King Alexander's adherence to the side of the popular 

party. 

Dismayed at the ruin of their estates, and apparently unable by their 

own resources to make head against John's trained mercenaries, the 
Crown barons, at the close of 1215, offered the crown to Louis, 
ofTeredto eldest son of Philip Augustus, and husband of Blanche 

Louis of , . 1 • 1 11 1 

France. (see page 168). By him it was accepted m the alleged 
rii'ht of his wife. John's great fleet having been destroyed in a 
storm seven thousand Frenchmen landed in November ; and in 
February another band of Frenchmen sailed up the Thames and joined 
the barons in London. In May, Louis followed, and his arrival oft' 
Sandwich with six hundred and eighty knights was the signal for a 
precipitate retreat of John. Want of resolution in imminent danger 
was one of the most salient features of the king's character ; but in 
this case he may have felt doubtful whether his French mercenaries 
would fight against the son of their king. Ravaging as he went, John 
retreated to Winchester ; and meanwhile Louis made his way to London, 
where he was received with enthusiasm by the barons and 

accepted by citizens. The young prince made a very good impression, 
oners. ^^^^^ ^^^^ popularity by making Simon Langton, a l:)rother 
of the archbishop, his chancellor. The French mercenaries, of whom 
John's army was largely composed, refused to fight against him. 
Alexander of Scotland travelled to Dover to do him homage. William 
of Salisbury and other earls declared for Louis ; and for a time it seemed 
as though John would be completely deserted. 

A reaction, however, set in. Though Louis was received by the open 
country, the castles were all held for John. An attempt to seize Dover, 

John's commanded by Hubert de Burgh, ended in failure, and 

Successes, ^y^sted three months of valuable time. A siege of Windsor 
was equally fruitless ; while a report, which was industriously circu- 
lated, that if Louis were successful his first act would be to rid himself 
of all those barons who had taken arms against their lawful sovereign, 
spread consternation among his followers. For some time John remained 
in the south ; but at the end of September he marched north, ravaging 
as he went, and took the city of Lincoln. Thence he went by way of 
Peterborough to Lynn, where he had placed much of his treasure. 

Disasters at From Lynn he marched back into Lincolnshire, across the 

sands of the Wash ; but in crossing the channel of the 

Welland his baggage was overwhelmed in a whirlpool, caused by the 

violent collision between the w^aters of that river and the incoming 

tide. 



1216 



John 



181 



Prostrate with vexation, John made his way to the abbey of S wines- 
head, and there, according to the story, he endeavoured after his fashion 
to drown his grief in a hearty supper. The result was a fever. With 
difficulty he reached Newark, and there died on October Death of 
19th, 1216, leaving behind him the name of the worst king }°^^- 
who ever reigned in England, and one of the Avorst men who have ever 
disgraced our race. Had he lived he would probably have lost his 
throne : his death at this crisis saved the kingdom for his descendants. 



CHIEF DA TES. 





A.D. 


Loss of Normandy, .... 


1204 


Hubert Walter dies, .... 


1205 


John does homage to the Pope, 


1213 


Battle of Bouvines, .... 


1214 


Great Charter, 


1215 



CHAPTER IV 

HENRY III.: 1216-1272. 
Born 1207 ; married, 1236, Eleanor of Provence. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 
Scotland. France. Emperors. 

William the Lion, d. 1214. Philip Augustus, d. 1223. Otto iv. , d. 1218. 
Alexander ii., d. 1249. Louis viii., d. 1226. Frederick n., d. 1250. 

Alexander ill., d. 1286. Louis ix., d. 1270. 

Philip in., d. 1285. 
Popes. 
Houorius in., d. 1227 ; Innocent iv., 1241, d. 1254 ; Alexander iv., d. 1261. 

The Regency of William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke — His place taken by Hubert 
de Burgh — Henry takes the Rule into his own hands, governs badly, and 
allows himself to fall into the hands of Favourites — Rise of a Baronial Party 
under Simon de Montfort — The Barons' Wars. 

The reaction against Louis, of which some symptoms had appeared 
before John's death, made rapid progress after the removal of the 
Henry's tyrant. The wickedness of John and the enmities which 

advantages, j^jg personal character had created were buried in his tomb, 
while the innocence of his eldest son Henry, now only in his tenth year, 
called for the protection of all good subjects. It took time, however, 
for a new roytil party to be formed, and at first the supporters of the 
king were outnumbered by those of Louis. No time was lost by 
Pembroke in putting Henry's rights on a legal footing, and on 
October 28th he was crowned at Gloucester, and did homage to Gualo, 
the papal legate, as representative of the pope. That done, a council was 
held, in which the magnates, following the practice of the kingdom of 
Jerusalem, elected the earl as rector regis et regni, ruler of the king and 
kingdom, while the king's person was intrusted to Peter des Eoches. To 
First S^^^^ support and to break definitely with the evil traditions 

t^l^Re[^^ °^ ^^ *^^ ^^*^ reign, the royalists then took the judicious step 
of publishing so much of the Charter as met with general 
approval and presented no special difficulty in execution. They omitted, 

182 



1217 Henry III. 183 

however, the clauses about taxation — perhaps as too hampering to the 
government at such a crisis as a civil war — and those dealing with the 
forests and some other matters, all of which were postponed for future 
consideration. 

The conduct of the war next claimed their attention. With the excep- 
tion of Dover Castle, which the bravery of Hubert de Burgh had main- 
tained for the royalists, Louis was supreme in the south- lqujs's 
western shires. Elsewhere also he had many supporters in the Position, 
open country and in the towns ; but the castles of the midlands and the 
north were all in royalist hands — and in those days the possession of 
the castles was the real test of military superiority. The citizens of 
Lincoln, for example, were eagerly in his favour, but the castle was held 
for the royalists, and till it was taken the town could not be left unpro- 
tected. In December, Louis was obliged to pay a visit to France, and 
his departure was the signal for the desertion of the earl of Salisbury 
and William Marshall, Pembroke's son, who threw in their lot with the 
young king. In April he returned, and at once despatched the count of 
Perche to aid Robert Fitz-Walter in the siege of Lincoln, while he him- 
self resumed the attack on Dover. Perche's march was a scene of 
terrible outrage, for Louis' foreigners showed themselves as unscrupu- 
lous plunderers as those of John. To relieve Lincoln, Pern- Battle of 
broke collected a powerful force. Passing round the town, Lincoln, 
he stormed the northern gate, assisted by a sally from the castle, took 
the besiegers in the rear, threw them into confusion in the narrow, 
winding, and steep streets of the town, and completely routed them. 
Perche was killed and Fitz-Walter was taken prisoner. To punish the 
citizens for their disloyalty, the town was then sacked ; and so great 
was the booty that the battle was long remembered as ' Lincoln Fair.' 

The disaster at Lincoln destroyed Louis' military supremacy, and forced 
him to return to London ; but he still had hopes of the arrival of a fleet of 
eighty vessels under Eustace the Monk, with the reinforce- Battle of 
ments collected by the energy of his wife Blanche. By Dover, 
this time, however, the indefatigable Hubert de Burgh had supplied the 
loss of John's fleet by collecting another at Dover. He had only forty 
ships, but with these he boldly sallied out, on August 24th, and, making up 
by skill for his want of numbers, took the ' weather-gauge ' of the French 
by a clever manoeuvre, and, as his men grappled the French vessels, he 
ordered them to throw quicklime in the eyes of their defenders. This 
new method of attack took the Frenchmen by surprise. The rout of their 
fleet was complete ; their leader was killed, and Louis' last hope ruined. 

The victory was a signal for a general advance of the royalists ; and 



184 Earlier Angevin Kings 1217 

Louis saw that nothing was to be gained from continuing the struggle. 

On September 11th, the treaty of Lambeth brought hostilities to a 

close ; and within a few weeks Louis had left the country. The treaty 

^ r of Lambeth is almost as important as the Great Charter 

Treaty oi '■ 

Lambeth, itself. It was based on the principle of a general amnesty 
for the past, and the restitution of all forfeited property. Ten thousand 
marks were paid to Louis, nominally for his expenses, in reality to 
secure his speedy departure ; and shortly afterwards Pembroke and 
Gualo wisely issued a new edition of the Great Charter, and also a 
Charter of the Forests, which included not only the articles relating to 
forest law embodied in the original form of the charter, but other regu- 
lations which i3robably made it almost as popular a document as the 
Great Charter itself. When for the future the confirmation of the 
charters was demanded, the Great Charter and the Charter of the Forests 
are the two meant. 

These events occupied the year 1217. At the close of that year, Gualo, 
who seems to have worked in harmony with Pembroke, and to whom 
some praise is certainly due for his share in these pacificatory 
measures, left the kingdom, and his place was taken by 
Pandulf, an inferior man, who remained till 1221. However, in 1218, 
Langton returned to England, and, till his death in 1229, had the chief 
ecclesiastical power. In 1219 Pembroke died, leaving behind him a 
reputation not only for unflinching loyalty but also for priceless services 
to the country at large. No ' rector ' was appointed in his place, but the 

Hubert de chief power was exercised by Hubert de Burgh, who had 

Burgh. h^en justiciar since 1215. Hubert was the last of the great 
statesmen trained under Henry 11., and his rule from 1219 to 1232 
was a period of great importance. His chief task was to complete 
Pembroke's measures by getting all the castles back again into the 
king's hands, and also of ridding England of such lawless foreigners 
as Falkes de Breaute, whom Pembroke had been obliged to tolerate as 
the price of their military services. 

In achieving his first object, the chief obstacle was the action of 
William of Aumale, who repeated the conduct of his grandfather in 1155, 

William of ^^^ refused to give up his castles. He was abetted by the 

Aumale. g.^^^ ^f Chester, and also by Falkes, and probably had the 
secret support of Peter des Roches, who was jealous of Hubert's 
authority. The years 1220 and 1221 were mainly occupied in dealing with 

Falkes de ^^^"^5 ^^^^^ at length he was reduced to complete submission. 

Breaute. Falkes' turn came next. This rascal, a refugee from Nor- 
mandy, had been John's right-hand man, and as such had been rewarded 



1227 Henry III. 185 

with everything his master had to offer. He had married an heiress, 
had received numerous estates ; he was sheriff of six counties, and had 
the custody of several castles, notably that of Bedford. This he in- 
trusted to his brother William, a man as lawless as himself, who actually 
ventured to imprison one of the king's judges because he had condemned 
him to pay a fine at Dunstable assizes. Hubert immediately marched 
to besiege the castle. 

The siege of Bedford Castle was a most formidable undertaking, and 
typical of the warfare of the time. The defences consisted of an outwork 
or barbican, of an inner wall, and of the keep itself. It was siege of 
amply provisioned and garrisoned, and Falkes expected it Bedford, 
to hold out for twelve months. The attack began in midsummer. 
Hubert erected against it two wooden towers, from the tops of which 
the archers could shoot down on the defenders of the outer works, 
and with their aid the barbican was assaulted and taken. Then seven 
military engines were brought to bear upon the inner wall. That, too, 
was forced, and the cattle and horses of the garrison fell into the hands 
of the besiegers. Finally, under the protection of a machine called a cat, 
the sappers began operations and undermined the huge walls of the keep 
itself. One corner sank, and a vast rent appeared in the walls. The 
garrison then sued for mercy, but Hubert wished to give a lesson to such 
as they. Eighty of the leaders were hanged, the rest driven from the 
country, and the castle itself was razed to the ground. Falkes himself 
then gave up the game and was allowed to relieve the country of his 
presence by a permanent exile. The discomfiture of his friends dis- 
couraged des Roches; and after 1224 he had little influence for some 
years, and, being dismissed from the chancellorship in 1227, left the 
country to take part in the Crusades. 

In 1227, Henry, who was then twenty, declared himself of age to 
govern. His minority, besides the stirring events already mentioned, 
was remarkable for several advances in the unwritten law. 

. . . . , . Henry 

Durmg its continuance there springs into evidence an inner comes of 
circle of advisers, who revived in a somewhat difierent form ^^^' 
the political as distinguished from the judicial powers of the old Curia 
Regis. The appointment of the regent by the common council appears to 
be the beginning of a claim for the nation, as represented by the council, 
to have a voice in the appointment of ministers ; and, lastly, the distinc- 
tion naturally drawn between a boy king, who could in no way be 
responsible for the policy of the government, and the ministers them- 
selves, seems to have been the orio-in of the maxim that ' the king can do 
no wroncr.' 



186 Earlier Angevin Kings 1227 

The character of the new sovereign presents a curious group of 
anomalies. Avoiding altogether the personal wickedness of his father, 
ru t i Henry derived from him the faithlessness and cunning 
Henry III. which had been shown by many of the Angevin race. He 
had, too, his father's capacity for exciting personal enmity ; but lacked 
his ability and capacity for vigorous action. He had no military tenden- 
cies and no special political ideas except gratitude and attachment to the 
papacy, and dislike of the influence of strong men. In private life, how- 
ever, his character was blameless. A fondness for extravagant display 
was his chief fault, and was to some extent redeemed by his fondness for 
architecture, literature, and culture. In personal appearance he was 
slight, and a droop of one eyelid gave an unhappy expression to 
his face. 

Under his personal rule, Hubert continued to act as justiciar for five 
years longer ; but in 1 228 he lost a good supporter by the death of Arch- 
bishop Langton, whose death was at once followed by an 

Papal Taxes. . 

attempt of the pope to raise a regular revenue from England. 
Already he received 1000 marks a year as overlord, and £199, 8s. in Peter's 
Pence, paid in a certain fixed sum for each diocese. These sums, how- 
ever, were inadequate to support the expenditure of the popes. This had 
been enormously increased by the necessities of their temporal posses- 
sions, the mass of business which the energy of Innocent iii. had accumu- 
lated in their hands, and by the constant wars in which his successors, 
Gregory ix. and Innocent iv.,were involved with the Emperor Frederick 11. 
The first taxes raised from the clergy had been collected, nominally at 
least, for the Crusades, on the principle that if the laity of Europe fought 
for the holy cause the clergy of Europe ought at least to provide the 
money ; but the practice once begun, call after call was made, and eventu- 
ally even the pretence of a crusade was dropped. The right of the pope 
to demand such payment was based on the analogy of feudalism, and the 
taxes were supposed to correspond to the aids paid to the temporal lord. 
In England the pope, as overlord, proposed to exact money from both 
Refusal of ^^^^ ^'^^^J ^^^ the clergy, and in 1229 Gregory ix. demanded 
the Laity. .^ tenth of all property for the war against the emperor. 
He was, however, met by such a firm refusal from the former, headed by 
Submission R^nulf of Chester, that he had to give way ; but the clergy 
of the Clergy. ^ygj.e compelled to yield, and eventually had to set aside for 
the pope the tenth of their yearly income and the first year's emoluments 
Annates and ^^ ^^^ benefices. These sums were called annates and first- 
First-fruits. fruits. In addition to these, special gifts were sometimes 
asked ; and under Gregory ix. the demands were so exorbitant that 



1228 Henry III. 187 

the laity began to remonstrate at the impoverishment of the country. 
In 1237, Cardinal Otho came over, and, in spite of the irritation of the 
clergy and people, collected vast sums for the papal treasury ; and, in 
1245, at the council of Lyons, the English complained that 60,000 marks 
a year went into the hands of the pope and the foreign clergy. Besides 
this direct taxation, the pope supplied his needs indirectly by paying 
his servants with English livings, just as the kings had paid their 
justiciars and chancellors by getting them made bishops. 
This system was called provisors, and created great indigna- 
tion on the part of the patrons whose rights were thus invaded. The 
laity were the first to remonstrate. A Yorkshire knight. Sir Robert 
Twenge, had the public spirit to go to Rome and lay his case before 
the pope ; and his remonstrances were so far successful that the pope 
promised henceforth to confine his interference to livings in the gift of 
the clergy. Their case was then taken up by Robert Grossetete, bishop 
of Lincoln, and eventually the pope promised to stop the practice — a 
promise, however, which was ill kept. 

It was during the sordid controversies between the pope and the ancient 
and wealthy ecclesiastical orders of endowed clergy that a change little 
short of a religious revolution was being introduced into Eng- pj jgg ^^ ^^^^ 
land by the arrival of the mendicant friars of the orders of Friars. 
St. Francis and St. Dominic, and their later rivals the Carmelites and the 
Augustinians. The founders of the two former, St. Francis (1182-1226), 
St. Dominic (1170-1221), had been struck by two phases of contemporary 
life with which the church as it then existed seemed power- 
less to deal. Dominic, as a Spaniard, orthodox, rigid, dog- 
matic, mourned the heresy which he saw spreading among the town popu- 
lations of southern France, and believed the only remedy for it was to be 
found in an order of popular preachers : men who should be able to meet 
the heretical ministers on their own ground, and should show by their 
devotion, their poverty, and their learning that Christianity had some- 
thing more to ofi'er than was apparent in the lives of gorgeous ecclesiastics 
wholly immersed in secular business, or fat monks and abbots whose 
highest ideal was to withdraw themselves into the solitude and sanctity 
of their cloister and leave the world to get on as best it could. 

St. Francis, on the other hand, an Italian, the son of a merchant of 
Assisi, was struck, not with the heresy of the upper classes, but with the 
irreligion and misery of the squalid population, whom the 
growth of commerce and the tyranny of the rural nobility 
were accumulating in the towns. He saw that the authorities of these 
were wholly incapable of dealing with the sanitary difficulties inherent to 



1§8 Earlier Angemn Kings 1228 

the rapid growth of population in a limited area, and that the clergy 
were quite inadequate either in numbers or zeal to grapple with a problem 
so rapidly increasing both in magnitude and difficulty. But though 
they approached the subject from different points of view, Francis and 
Dominic were practically in accord as to the methods to be adopted. 
Both placed their reliance on the creation of an order of preaching 
brothers, who were to live on the alms given them by the poor among 
whom they were sent ; both abandoned the monkish idea of a religious 
life of country seclusion ; and both sent their disciples to preach, at any 
rate in the first instance, to the mass of squalid, heterodox, ii-religious 
humanity which weltered in the unutterable filth and the pestilential 
atmosphere of the purlieus of mediaeval towns. But though, in general, 
their objects were the same, a gradually widening distinction existed 
jj^g between the two. The Dominican always made preaching 

Dominicans, against heresy his great object ; the Franciscan took a 
broader view of his duty, and soon the old saying ' nothing that concerns 
humanity is outside my sphere of interest' might be taken as their 
motto. Dominic, as a profound student of theology, was naturally in 
^jjg favour of that study ; but St. Francis, with somewhat of a 

Franciscans, practical tradesman's contempt for literary culture, inter- 
dicted or at any rate discouraged study among his followers, and wished 
them to devote themselves entirely to a life of action. Facts, however, 
were too strong for St. Francis. Before long, his followers found that if 
they were really to aid the diseased, the lepers, and the maimed, they 
must study anatomy and the science of medicine — and in doing so they 
became the first physicists in the world ; that if they would cope with 
the sharp wits of the townspeople they must not neglect their logic ; and 
consequently, if the Dominicans have to boast the great names of Thomas 
Aquinas and Albert the Great, the Franciscans may glory in those of 
Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. 

The Dominicans arrived in England before 1221 ; the Franciscans in 
1 224 ; but the success of the two orders was by no means equal. The 
The Friars English Were not given to heresy, and the black friars found 
in England. j^^Qj-g scope among the Albigenses of Toulouse than on the 
banks of the Thames ; but for the Franciscans there was ample work, 
and in a short time these grey friars became by far the most popular of 
all the orders. Soon every town in England had its convent of grey 
friars, invariably built like a mission chapel of the present day in the 
lowest slums, and from it there issued forth, two and two, a band of 
devoted men eager to help their poor neighbours in every possible way, 
as preachers, doctors, comforters, or friends. The influence of such a 



1232 Henry III. 189 

body was enormous, for the friars held, in the thirteenth century, the 
position held now by the press. Their sermons took the place of the 
leading article ; the arrival of a friar from Oxford or London was the 
event of the day ; his opinions represented the latest news ; and, as he 
was thoroughly democratic in habits and tone, the influence of the friars 
gave an enormous impetus to the spread of popular ideas and the forma- 
tion of public opinion, 

Hubert de Burgh, the great justiciar, fell in 1232. Earl Eanulf, whose 
spirited action in 1229 defeated the papal schemes, was by no means a 
good friend to Hubert de Burgh, Eepresenting as he did yaW of 
the last of the great barons of the Norman Conquest, there Hubert, 
was much in Hubert's policy which galled him ; and, in 1232, he made 
common cause with Peter des Roches, who had come home in 1231, to 
induce Henry to dismiss his minister. Hubert had many enemies. His 
great wealth excited the cupidity of some ; his marriage with a sister of 
the king of Scots aroused the envy of others ; his stern enforcement of law 
and order gained him the hatred of a third section ; and Henry, whose 
habitual dislike of any powerful adviser was beginning to show itself, was 
Avon over by their representations. In 1232, Hubert was suddenly dis- 
missed, and a long series of charges, not unlike those made by Henry ii. 
against Becket, were brought against the fallen minister. Before the 
trial Hubert took sanctuary in a church. Henry had a moat dug round 
it and starved him into surrender. He was then strijDped of most 
of his wealth and placed in honourable confinement. From this he 
escaped, but made no attempt to regain his power, and died in 1234. 
Hubert de Burgh was the last of the line of great justiciars. After his 
fall the importance of the office declined, mainly because the king was of 
full age and, having hardly any continental dominions, was constantly in 
England. The name gradually drops out of sight, and the chancellor 
became the most important of the king's officers. 

After Hubert's fall, Henry took the conduct of afitiirs into his own 
hands, and twenty-six years of bad government followed. This was 
partly due to Henry's own character, but was partly due Henry's 
to changes which were taking place in the country, and <iifficuities. 
which required to be met by corresponding changes in the method of 
government, and these Henry had not the genius to supply. William 
the Conqueror and Henry ii. had found a great source of power in their 
wealth, which arose partly from the large extent of the crown lands, and 
partly from being able to levy aids, and afterwards scutages, practically 
at will. But the extravagance of Richard and John had stripped the 
crown of a large part of its possessions, while, though the clauses about 



190 Earlier Angevin Kings 1232 

aids and scutages had been omitted when the Great Charter had been 
re-published, the king had found it in practice impossible to levy these I 
taxes without the consent of the tenants. The king, therefore, was 
continually pressed for money. One result of this was that he could 
not provide himself with a standing army of foreign mercenaries, which | 
meant that he had to rely for defence against insurrection on the personal 
following of Englishmen whom he could get to support his measures. 
That is to say, he depended for support upon public opinion. Hence- 
forward, a king, like a prime minister of our own day, had to keep together 
a party strong enough to support him ; and the future success of Henry 
and his successors for many years depended on the question, whether or 
not they were able to get the confidence of the nation and i)roduce an 
irresistible king's party. 

Besides the general causes of poverty, special reasons operated in 
Henry's case ; for his weakness and good-nature, combined with an 

utterly false reputation for wealth, made him the con- 
Causes of tinual prey of adventurers of every class, who regarded his 
over y. ]£ing(Jom as a happy hunting-ground for people whose claims 
were unrecognised in their o-svn countries. Indeed, Henry was told to his 
face that England had become like a vineyard whose fence was broken, 
so that all that go by pluck off her grapes. For example, the very first use 
made by Peter des Roches of the fall of Hubert de Burgh was to dismiss 

the English servants of the court and to replace them by 

Bretons and Poitevins, and to lavish upon his countrymen 
and relations all the patronage on which he could lay his hands. One 
of these, his nephew, Peter de Rivallis, was treasurer of the chamber in 
the king's household, dean of Bridgenorth, constable of all the royal 
castles in Shropshire, sherifi" of that county and of Stafi'ordshire for life, 
and, at one time or other, sheriff of York, Berkshire, Gloucester, Somerset, 
Dorset, Devon, Lancashire, Northumberland, Essex, Hampshire, Lincoln- 
shire, Norfolk, Sufiblk, and Kent. 

Such lavish bestowal of favours on foreigners had the natural result 
of rousing English national feeling ; for the barons, though they might 
L d rs of ^P^^^ French, were now thoroughly English at heart. The 
the Opposi- natural leader of the opposition would have been Eanulf of 

Chester, had he not died, in 1232, during the proceedings 
against Hubert. William Marshall the younger was also dead, so the 
Richard ^^^^^^ ^^ leadership devolved upon his younger brother 

Earl of Pern- Richard Marshall, now earl of Pembroke, a man of excellent 

broke. , 

character, a good warrior, far-sighted in politics, and of un- 
impeachable patriotism. Under him the barons declared that, unless 



1242 Henry III. 191 

Henry would dismiss Peter des Roches and his alien counsellors, they 
would elect a new king. In return, Henry denounced Richard as a 
traitor ; and when he demanded to be tried by his peers, Peter con- 
temptuously asserted that ' there are no peers ' in England. On this, the 
bishops also threw in their lot with the barons, and published a sentence 
of excommunication against the men who had turned away the king's 
heart from his natural subjects. Civil war followed, and in October 
1233 the king in person was defeated by the earl Richard at Monmouth. 
The next year, however, the earl was cunningly enticed into Ireland 
and there slain by treachery. Still the bishops, under Archbishop 
Edmund Rich, whom the pope had just nominated, persisted in demand- 
ing a reform, and the archbishoj) declared his readiness to excom- 
municate Henry himself. Before the threats of the church Henry gave 
way ; and, while the earl Richard was on his deathbed in Ireland, Peter 
des Roches and his friends were dismissed and Hubert de Burgh was 
restored to his estates. 

Henry had now an opportunity of making a fresh start, but, no sooner 
had he extricated himself from the evil influence and avarice of Peter des 
Roches and his Poitevins, than he fell into the hands of a Henry's 
fresh body of claimants for his bounty. In 1236, at the age Marriage, 
of twenty-nine, he married Eleanor of Provence, one of the four beauti- 
ful daughters of Raymond Berenger, count of Provence, whose sisters 
married, respectively, Louis ix. of France, Charles of Anjou, afterwards 
king of Naples, and Henry's young brother Richard, afterwards king of 
the Romans. She was a high-spirited and passionate woman, devoted to 
her husband, and setting with him an example of domestic virtue and 
happiness, but, naturally, ignorant of English life, and incapable of giving 
her husband any real assistance in his political difficulties. She brought 
with her her uncles, William of Savoy, bishoj)-elect of Valence, Boniface 
of Savoy, and Peter of Savoy, and a train of needy Provencal ^he Pro- 
dependents, attracted by Henry's undeserved reputation ven^ais. 
for wealth, whom Henry's good-nature soon endowed with as large a 
share of the public money as had previously been engrossed by the 
Poitevins. He sought to make William bishop of Winchester in 
succession to Peter des Roches ; Peter became earl of Richmond ; and 
Boniface, on the death of Archbishop Edmund Rich in 1245, was made 
archbishop of Canterbury. 

Nor were these all. Henry's mother, Isabella of Angouleme, had taken 
advantage of John's death to marry her old lover, Hugh de la Marche, 
and had by him a second family of sons and daughters. In 1242, Henry, 
who was desirous of making a figure on the Continent, was led, all against 



192 Earlier Angevin Kings 1242 

the wishes and advice of his English council, to interfere in a quarrel 
betAveen Hugh and Louis ix. The chief result of this was to give him an 

opportunity of displaying his military incompetence at the 
Tafiiebourg battles of Taillebourg and Saintes, where he was not only 
and Saintes. jgfgj^^g^j^ y^^^^ barely saved from capture by the address of 
his brother Eichard. On his return, however, he was followed by a fresh 
More batch of hungry Poitevins, and some of his half-brothers 

Poitevins. j^^d sisters, including another William of Valence. Of 
these, Guy, the eldest, received large sums of money ; William of 
Valence became earl of Pembroke ; Ailmar, or Ethelmar, was elected 
bishop of Winchester in 1250. The solitary advantage from the expedi- 
tion was that Henry definitely gave up his claim to Poitou, and was 
invested formally with the duchy of Guienne, which practically meant 
the district of Gascony. 

Lastly, Henry was in debt to the pope. On the death of the 

Emperor Frederick 11., in 1250, Innocent iv., who was de- 
Debts to the sirous of getting Naples and Sicily out of the hands of 
°^^' his descendants, made an off'er to Henry of that crown for 

Eicliard, earl of Cornwall. Frederick, however, had married Eichard's 
sister, and the proposal to rob his own nephew Henry of his inheritance 
was rejected as dishonourable. But on that prince's death in 1254, 
Henry accepted the ofifer for his second son Edmund. He was, how- 
ever, in no condition to afford so distant an expedition, even had he had 
the ability to conduct it with success ; but the success of the plan 
required instant action, and the pope, determined to lose no time, 
carried on the war himself, putting down all the expenses to Henry's 
account. To this imposition, Henry, with great weakness, submitted, 
and the consequence was that by the year 1257 Henry's debt to the 
pope amounted to £135,000. 

Bankruptcy, therefore, was impending ; and neither at home nor 
abroad had Henry any record of achievements to set against this enormous 
Bankruptcy expenditure. In England, Henry had been acting as his own 
imminent. chief minister. Since 1244 he had had neither treasurer, 
chancellor, nor justiciar, but had himself carried on the duties of these 
officials through the hands of their clerks ; but his abilities were quite 
inadequate for such a system, and the whole machinery of government 
fell into hopeless confusion. Want of money was as usual at the bottom 
of his difficulties, and a number of his own servants were convicted 
of highway robbery, to which they had been driven by the arrears 
into which their salaries had fallen. The king was constantly wrangling 
Avith the chapters about the election of bishoprics ; his foreign favourites 



1255 Henry III. 193 

and the seneschals of his castle were continually adding to the ill-feeling 
by their rapacity and insolence ; and it really seemed as though the days 
of King Stephen were rapidly coming back. 

Such a state of affairs naturally roused and spread discontent ; but it 
was difficult for the barons to act without a leader, and since the death 
of Archbishop Edmund in 1240, no one of the first im- want of 
portance had taken his place. All the sons of the great ^ Leader. 
William Marshall were dead. Hubert de Burgh died in 1234 ; and the 
king's younger brother Richard, earl of Cornwall, whose English 
sympathies and real ability had pointed him out as a possible leader, had, 
since his marriage with Sancia, the queen's sister, allowed himself to 
drop out of sight, and even, to some extent, to sympathise with the 
foreigners. Robert Grossetete, too, died in 1253 ; while Archbishop 
Boniface usually resided abroad, and, being a foreigner himself, his sym- 
pathies were all the other way. Grumble, however, the barons did ; 
and as the king's necessities compelled him constantly to call meetings of 
the great council — to which the name parliament, an Italian _ ,. 

^ -^ ' _ Parliament. 

word, first used of a meeting held in Italy by Frederick Bar- 
barossa in 1155, was now gradually being given^ — they had many oppor- 
tunities for remonstrance. For instance, in 1244 the earls, barons, and 
bishops had demanded control over the appointment of ministers. In 
1248 they implored him to reappoint the treasurer, chancellor, and 
justiciar; and the same request was repeated in 1255. Of course the 
demand was refused ; but such a demand showed that the opposition 
had realised the right way to influence the king's policy, and were 
slowly feeling their way towards making ministers responsible to the 
nation. Besides demanding a voice in the appointment of ministers, 
the opposition made every grant of money an excuse for a fresh 
demand for the confirmation of the Charters. Henry, however, had an 
extraordinary elasticity of conscience in regard even to the most solemn 
oaths, and though in 1253 he was made to say ' So help me, God, all 
these will I faithfully keep inviolate as I am a man, a Christian, a 
knight, a crowned and anointed king,' yet in 1255 the old quarrel 
was raging as before, and the Charters, as usual, were re-confirmed and 
published. 

At length the barons found a leader against the foreigners in the 
person of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester. Oddly gimon de 
enough, Simon was himself a foreigner. He was the Montfort. 
youngest son of another Simon de Montfort, who had led the crusade 
against the Albigenses. Simon, the elder, was by his mother the 
nephew and co-heir of the earl of Leicester, who died in the preceding 



194 Earlier Angevin Kings 1255 

reign. The strained relations between France and England did not 
encourage Simon to press his claim, and the lands of the earldom were 
placed in the custody of Ranulf, earl of Chester. Ranulf, however, 
was childless, and in view of his death an arrangement was made by 
which Aniaury, the eldest son of Simon, resigned his claims to his 
younger brother, who was then recognised by Henry as earl of Leicester. 
The young earl was a man of strong body and active habits, accomplished 
as the times went, and had inherited the fervent piety that had distin- 
guished his father ; and his worth is best proved by the fact that he was 
on terms of intimate friendship with all the best men of his time. In the 
earlier part of his career, however, he showed little promise of being the 
leader of a national movement. Himself a foreigner, and, comparatively 
speaking, an upstart, he had little claim on English sympathies, and it 
was many years before his good qualities won general recognition. 

In 1238 Simon married Eleanor, the king's sister, and widow of the 
younger William Marshall ; but this alliance did little to improve his 
position, and brought him into conflict with the king and with Richard, the 
king's brother, who looked on the marriage as a disparagement to his sister. 
From 1240 to 1242 Simon took part in a crusade. He then lived quietly 
at home till 1248, when he was made seneschal of Gascony. Simon was a 
stern man, who could ill brook the turbulence of the Gascon nobles, and his 
attempts at repressing them gained him the same unpopularity among 
them that had been the lot of Richard i. in his early days (see page 154). 
Their main reason for preferring the rule of Henry to that of Louis was 
that the former was farther off, and they bitterly resented the law and 
order of which the new seneschal made himself the representative. 
Accordingly they complained to Henry. The king weakly took their 
side, or, at any rate, ceased to support Simon ; and in 1253 he vacated 
his post and for some time lived abroad. 

In 1257, however, Simon was back in England quarrelling with William 
of Valence, and from that moment began to take a prominent part in the 
-. , , opposition to Henry's ill rule. The time was favourable for 

Simon leads '^ '- ^ '' 

the Opposi- effective movement. A widespread feeling of dissatisfac- 
tion permeated all ranks. Henry's younger brother Richard, 
the wealthy earl of Cornwall, had just gone to Germany, where he had 
been elected king of the Romans. Henry was desperately in debt, the pope 
was pressing for immediate payment, and when the parliament known as 
the Mad Parliament met at London in April 1258 he was compelled to 
put himself into the hands of his barons. Accordingly it was arranged 
that a committee of twenty-four, chosen half from the royal council and 
half by the barons, was to enforce all needful reforms, and especially 



1263 Henry III. 195 

to name a justiciar, chancellor, and treasurer. The king's chief 
nominees were his nephew, Henry of Cornwall, son of the king of the 
Romans, and his three half-brothers, the Lusignans ; those of the barons 
the earls of Gloucester, Leicester, Hereford, and Norfolk. Of these the 
earl of Gloucester, Richard of Clare, was by birth, property, and 
descent the natural head of the English barons. His grandfather had 
taken a leading part in extorting the Charter ; his own vigorous 
character brought him to the front, and his influence among the baronage 
was decidedly higher than that of Simon. After sitting a month in 
London, parliament adjourned, and after a short recess resumed 
their sitting at Oxford. There the barons, who on the pretence 
of the Welsh war had assembled in military array, demanded that all 
royal castles should be placed in the hands of Englishmen, and that 
heiresses should be married to natives ; and they also complained of 
the illegal exaction of feudal services, delays of justice, and of the abuse 
of purveyance. 

The first order of the twenty-four, obviously carried over the heads of 
the foreign members, was that all royal castles should at once be replaced 
in the kino's hands, and to this the foreigners, headed by _ 

'=' ' . . Expulsion 

Henry's half-brothers, refused to submit. Leaving the of the 
court, the aliens threw themselves into Winchester Castle 
and stood a siege. Their resistance, however, was vain, and before the 
end of July they had all fled . the kingdom, carrying with them only 
6000 marks. Their departure removed one great obstacle to reform, and 
afforded Henry a new chance of regaining his popularity. 

With his consent, therefore, a new form of government was set up by 
the provisions of Oxford. The twenty-four agreed that the king should 
for the future be advised by a permanent council of fifteen, provisions 
elected indirectly by the original twenty-four. These were °^ Oxford, 
to exercise a general supervision over the government, and three times 
a year they were to confer with another body of twelve chosen for the 
purpose by the barons. Stringent oaths were imposed on the new officers, 
and it was arranged that sheriff's and other state officials should hold 
office for a year only, and should give in their accounts at the close of the 
year. Sheriff's were for the future to be elected. The leading members 
of the fifteen were the earls of Gloucester, Leicester, and Norfolk, and 
of the twelve, the earl of Hereford, John Balliol (founder of Balliol 
College), and Hugh le Despenser. The provisional government worked 
much as arranged from 1258 to 1263, the permanent council of fifteen 
having their three conferences a year with the elected twelve, and 
between them arranging for the carrying out of the needful reforms. 



196 Earlier Angevin Kings 1263 

The chief interruption was caused by the jealousy between the earls 
of Gloucester and Leicester. The subject is obscure ; but it is generally 
believed that the earl of Gloucester, looking at things from 
^ eK:es e ^^^ merely baronial point of view, was satisfied with the 
Gloucester, g^p^isioj^ Qf the foreigners, and that Earl Simon, taking a 
more comprehensive and liberal line, wished to carry out such reforms as 
would make tyranny impossible for the future, whether the tyrants were 
sovereigns, alien interlopers, or native nobility. In February 1259, a 
resolution was carried by which the fifteen and the twelve bound them- 
selves and their heirs to observe towards their dependents the same 
rules which the king had promised to observe towards his vassals, and 
this is thought to be a victory of Earl Simon over the strictly baronial 
party. However, in 1262 Eichard, earl of Gloucester, died, and his son 
Gilbert, the new earl, a lad of nineteen, threw himself into the arms of 
Leicester. Meanwhile the relations between the court and the govern- 
ment had been growing extremely strained. The provisions were 
naturally hateful to Henry, and two successive popes had 
between the given him bulls absolving him from his oath to observe 
King and the them. Such a state of aftairs was certain to end in an 

Council. 

appeal to force, but as a last resort the whole question of 
validity of the provisions was submitted to Louis ix. Louis' upright- 
ness was unquestionable, but he was hardly likely to be a competent 
judge in such a case, and his decision, given in what was called the 
' Mise of Amiens,' was that Henry might appoint his own council and 
employ foreigners, but that he must not violate any 'royal charter, 
privilege, statute, or praiseworthy custom.' This gave satisfaction to 
nobody. 

Arbitration having failed, war followed. It is not easy to draw a 
geographical line between the two parties. Generally speaking, the north, 
Position of with Devon and Cornwall and the marches of Wales, i.e. 
Parties. ^|^g poorer districts, were for Henry ; the midlands were 
divided ; the south, Cinque Ports, and London, i.e. the wealthy parts 
of the country, were warmly for Simon de Montfort. Almost every- 
where it was noted that the middle classes were on his side. Above all, 
Simon had the hearty support of the friars. 

In the war, the chief part was taken by ' the Lord Edward,' eldest son 
of Henry, now a young man of twenty-four years of age. Edward had 
' The Lord plenty of natural ability, and had already enjoyed a con- 
Edward.' siderable experience both of politics and fighting. Shortly 
after his marriage to Eleanor of Castile in 1254, Henry had put him in 
possession of the earldom of Chester, henceforward an appanage of the 



1264 Henry III. 197 

crown, and also of Ireland, Gascony, the Channel Islands, and the king's 
lands in Wales — in short, of all the most troublesome parts of the royal 
territory. As earl of Chester, the lad had plenty of opportunities of 
winning his spurs in fighting with Llewelyn, prince of Wales, in his 
fastnesses of what are now the counties of Anglesea, Carnarvon, and 
Merionethshire ; in keeping order among the lords marcher, who held the 
rest of modern Wales pretty much as independent chiefs ; and in 
endeavouring to keep up some semblance of government among the 
Gascons. Here he had had plenty of work ; but as it had kept him away 
from the court, he was in no way mixed up with his father's errors, and 
when the troubles of 1258 broke out he seems to have approached the 
questions raised without prejudice. His aid seems to have been expected 
by those who wished to enlarge the scope of the provisions, and for 
some time he threw his influence on the side of Simon and against the 
elder Gloucester, and by so doing offended the king. Several things 
tended, however, to change his views. In 1263 the young earl of 
Gloucester refused to do homage to him as heir. The same year the 
Londoners offered a gross insult to his mother, to whom Edward was 
devotedly attached. And finally, Simon agreed to give his daughter in 
marriage to Edward's old enemy Llewelyn. The outbreak of war, there- 
fore, found him on the king's side, along with his uncle Kichard, king 
of the Komans, and his brother-in-law the Earl Warrenne. 

The decisive battle was fought at Lewes on May 14, 1264. Edward's 
men were drawn up in front of the castle on the north side of the town, 
Eichard had the centre, and Henry was posted in front of Battle of 
the priory on the south, when they were attacked by Lewes. 
Simon at the head of an army which consisted largely of Londoners. 
Simon's sons were opposed to the king, Gloucester to Eichard, while the 
Londoners confronted Edward. Delighted at the opportunity of taking 
vengeance on those who had insulted his mother, Edward charged the 
citizens with fury and put them to the rout ; but while he was engaged 
in a murderous pursuit, Simon's other troops had routed the royalists, 
captured the king, and compelled Eichard to take refuge in a windmill. 
This defeat Avas decisive ; and the next day Henry, by the ' Mise of 
Lewes,' agreed to reconfirm the provisions, to employ only Mise of 
English councillors, to grant an amnesty to Leicester and Lewes. 
Gloucester, and to give up his son Edward and his nephew Henry as 
hostages for the good behaviour of the lords marcher. Other matters 
were to be submitted to further arbitration. For the moment, therefore, 
Simon was supreme, and he used his power to summon the famous 
parliament of 1265. 



198 Earlier Angevin Kings 1264 

For many years the great council or parliament had been becoming 
more and more a representative institution. The change from the 
Growth of witenagemot to the great council, coupled with the expansion 
Parliament, ^f ^j^g small body of king's thanes into the large class of 
tenants-in-chief, had in theory at any rate added enormously to its 
numbers, though in practice, except on very great occasions, the number 
of attending members remained small. The right, however, to come was 
never abandoned, and in Magna Carta the clauses which arranged for 
the calling of an assembly to vote scutages and extra aids had provided 
that while a special writ was to be sent to each of the archbishops, 
bishops, earls, and greater barons, a general writ addressed to the 
sheriff was to summon the attendance of the lesser barons and tenants- 
in-chief. Under Henry in. the great council, in consequence of the 
king's repeated demands for money, became more and more a taxing 
body, and the necessity of carrying with it the approval of the lesser 
tenants became very important, especially as there is evidence that the 
relative consequence of the general body of the landed proprietors as 
distinct from the great barons was on the increase. Through acting as 
jurors, and on various elective bodies connected with taxation, the knights 
too had acquired valuable political experience and an accurate knowledge 
of the needs and wealth of their fellow-countrymen, and had become 
accustomed to the idea of elective representation. So early as 1213 
John had called together four discreet knights of each shire ' to confer 
with him about the affairs of the kingdom,' but the precedent was not 
followed till 1254, when Queen Eleanor and Earl Eichard of Cornwall, 
Knights of during the king's absence in Gascony, caused to be 
the Shire, summoned to "Westminster two knights from each shire 
chosen by the county, ' for the purpose of saying what aid they were 
willing to pay.' In 1261 three knights were summoned, and in 1264 
four. The towns, however, were still left without direct representation, 
for John's summons of the reeve and four men from each township or 
demesne mentioned in 1213 was not imitated afterwards. 

The parliament summoned to meet in January 1265 was not in the 
true sense of the word a parliament at all. It was a representative 
Earl Simon's ^^^^^^^^ ^^ *^® Supporters of the baronial party. Of some 
' Pariia- fifty greater barons only five earls and eighteen barons were 

summoned. The clergy, however, were well represented, 
showing how completely Simon's policy was supported by the church. 
Each sheriff was also directed to send two discreet knights from his 
shire ; and writs were afterwards sent to those cities and boroughs 
on which Simon could rely to send two members each. Irregular, 



1265 Henry III. 199 

however, as this assembly was, it marks a distinct epoch in the history 
of parliament, and the right of the towns and cities to separate 
representation once acknowledged was never wholly forgotten. 

The assembly thus constituted met in January 1265, and concluded 
the arrangements made by the Mise of Lewes. Simon's rule, however, 
was already showing signs of exhaustion. Able as he was, 

-^ ^ ^ ' Divisions in 

the great earl was not a man with whom any colleague the Baronial 
could work long. He never was able wholly to free himself ^^ ^' 
from a charge of self-seeking, and the violence and brutality of his sons 
did no good to his cause. Besides, he had now to contend far more 
against young Edward than against his father, and Edward had already 
begun to show his capacity, not only for forming a national party, but 
also for well-directed intrigue. The first unmistakable sign of the 
break-up of the baronial party was a quarrel between Simon and the 
young earl of Gloucester, in which Gloucester, after hinting that Simon 
was himself an alien, withdrew to the marches and made common cause 
with the Mortimers and others who had all along been at war with 
Simon's ally Llewelyn. 

The next blow was the escape of Edward, by the connivance of 
Thomas of Clare, the brother of Gloucester, in whose custody he had 
been placed. Edward at once made terms with the earl of Escape of 
Gloucester, astutely separated his cause from that of Earl Edward. 
Simon, and, defending himself against a charge of supporting a mere 
reactionary policy, swore that, if victorious, he would keep good law, 
abolish evil customs, expel all aliens, and rule England through the 
English, a policy to which he steadily adhered. The news of Edward's 
alliance with Gloucester completed the break-up of the baronial party. 
A powerful army gathered round them, while Simon was deserted except 
by his own sons and his immediate followers. Thus reduced in 
numbers, Edward's good generalship prevented Simon from uniting his 
forces with those of his son, and the Montforts were thus defeated in 
detail. The younger Simon's army was ruined at Kenilworth ; the earl 
himself was hemmed in, defeated, and killed at Evesham. Battle of 
The battle, though one sided, reflected credit upon Edward's Evesham, 
skill, and showed that he had profited by the mishap at Lewes. 

Forgetting the lesson taught by the great William Marshall that an 
armistice is the best way of restoring tranquillity, Edward in the triumph 
of victory allowed himself to forget moderation, and in a ^he ' Dis- 
parliament held at Westminster the victorious royalists inherited.' 
confiscated all the lands of their opponents. The natural result was to 
prolong the struggle, and to make the 'disinherited' fight with the 



200 Earlier Angemn Kings 1272 

resolution of despair at Kenilworth, the Isle of Axholme, and Ely. 

Eventually, however, wiser counsels prevailed, and by the Dictum of 

Kenilworth Edward agreed to allow the rebels to retain their lands on 

payment of a fine amounting to five years of their revenue. Equally 

liberal terms were granted to Llewelyn, and peace was fully restored. 

Happily Edward was a very difl'erent man from his father, and had 

learned a great deal from the crisis through which he had just passed. It is 

due to him that what was of permanent value in Earl Simon's 

Ssuits"o^f the policy was preserved. From that time forward we hear no 

Barons' more of a swarm of foreign favourites. The barons' war, too, 

War. ® . ' 

marks the end of the pope's interference as overlord ; and, 

lastly, a parliament representing the whole nation to which the king's 

ministers should be responsible became more and more the ideal at 

which the statesmen of England aimed. The new policy w^as fully 

inaugurated at a parliament held at Marlborough in 1267, when the 

provisions of 1258 were passed as a statute, and thus became part of the 

law of the land. 

Under this healing policy the country soon settled down, and indeed 

the last years of Henry iii. seem to have been years of unusual 

Edward's prosperity. So quiet were the times that in 1268 

Crusade. Edward took the Cross, and in 1270 ventured to leave the 

country for an expedition to the East. He first sailed to Tunis, where 

he arrived shortly after the death of Louis ix., and then by way of 

Sicily and Cyprus to Acre, which was still unconquered by the Moslems, 

and, being the centre of the trade betw^een the East and the West, was a 

place of great commercial importance. There he stayed some months, 

but was unable to efi'ect much of military importance, and the chief 

Death of event of his visit was his narrow escape from death by a 

Henry. poisoned dagger with which he was stabbed by an ' assassin.' 

From Acre he returned to Sicily in 1272, and was there when the news 

of the death of the old king recalled him to England. 



CHIEF DA TES. 

A.D. 

Battle of Lincoln, 1216 

Knights of the shire first summoned. 1254 

Parliament of Oxford, .... 1258 

Battle of Lewes, 1264 

Leicester's convention includes members 

for cities and boroughs, 1265 

Battle of Evesham, 1265 



Book IV 
THE LATER ANGEVIN KINGS 

SOMETIMES CALLED 

PLANTAGENETS 



201 



VIIL— THE LATER ANGEVIN KINGS, 
SOMETIMES CALLED PLANTAGENETS, 1272-1399. 

Henry III., 1216-1272. 



Edward I,,— (1) Eleanor of 



1272-1307. 



Castile ; 
(2) Margaret 
of France. 



Margaret, 

m. Alexander III. 

of Scotland. 



Edmund, 

Earl of 

Lancaster. 



(1) Edward II., ^ 
1307-1327. 



Isabella of 
France. 



I 
Edward III.,=Pliilippa of 



1327-1377. 



Hainault. 



(2) Edmund, 
Earl of Kent, 
executed 1330. 



Thomas, 

Earl of 

Lancaster, 

d. 1322. 



Joan, m. 

(1) Sir T. Holland ; 

(2) The Black Prince. 



Henry, 

Earl of 

Lancaster, 

d. 1345. 



Henry, 
Duke of 

Lancaster, 
d. 1362. 



Blanche = John of Gaunt. 



Edward, — Joan of 



Black 
Prince, 
d. 1376. 



Kent. 



Richard II. 
1377-1399. 



Lionel, 
Duke of 
Clarence. 



Philippa : 



John of = Blanche, Edmund, 
Gaunt, heiress of Duke of 
d. 1399. Lancaster. York. 



Edmund Mortimer, 
d. 1380. 



Roger, Earl of March, 
declared heir of 
Richard ii. in 1385, 
but killed in Ireland 
1398, 



Thomas, 

Duke of 

Gloucester, 

d. 1397. 



Henry iv., 
1399-1413. 



202 



IX.— THE KINGS OF SCOTLAND BETWEEN 1165 AND 1406. 

Henry, Earl of Huntingdon, 
son of David i. 



William the Lion, 1165-1214. David, Earl of Huntingdon. 

I \ 

Alexander II., 1214-1249. | | 

I Margaret. Isabella. 

Alexander III., 1249-1286. | | 

I Devorguilla^JohnBalliol. Eobert Bruce,i 

j I d. 1295. 

Margaret = Eric, King of | | | 

Norway. Margaret. John Balliol,i Eobert, 

I 1292-1296. d. 1305. 

I I I 

Margaret, Maid of John Comyn, Edward Balliol. Robert I., 

Norway, 1286-1290. murdered. 1306-1329. 



David Bruce, m. Joan, Margaret = Walter the 



sister of Edward ii., 
1329-1370. 



Steward or 
Stuart. 



Robert II., 1370-1390. 
Robert HI., 1390-1406. 



X.— THE KINGS OF FRANCE BETWEEN 1270 AND 1422, 
AND CLAIM OF EDWARD III. TO THE FRENCH CROWN. 

Philip III., 1270-1285. 



Philip IV. (the Fair), 1285-1314. Charles of Valois. 



Louis X., Philip V., Charles IV., Isabella, Philip VI., 

1314-1316. 1316-1322. 1322-1328. m. Edward ii. 1328-1350. 

I I 

Edward III. John II., 

1350-1364. 

I 



John I., d. 1316. Joan, Queen of Navarre. Charles V., 1364-1380. 

I I 

Charles the Bad. Charles VI., 1380-1422. 

1 Competitors for the crown in 1292. 



203 



CHAPTEE I 

EDWAKD I. : 1272-1307 



Born 1239 ; married^ 



1254, Eleanor of Castile— died 1290. 
1299, Margaret of France. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 



Scotland. France. Poipe. 

Alexauderiii., d, 1286. Philip iv. Boniface viii. 

Age of Legislative Activity — Final Conquest of Wales — A Scottish Dynastic diffi- 
culty leads to its Annexation — Complete and Model Parliament — The 
Confirmation of the Charters — Scottish Revolt. 

Henry hi, died on November 16tli, 1272, and on the 20th the oath of 
fealty to Edward was taken by the great men under the direction of the 
archbishop of York and of the chancellor, Walter de Merton, the founder 
of Merton College, Oxford. As Edward was abroad, his coronation did 
not take place till his return ; but his reign was reckoned Recognition 
by the lawyers to date from the taking of the oath of ^^ King, 
fealty, and not, as in the case of former kings, from the coronation. 
This change helped to confirm the growing idea that the English king- 
ship was hereditary and not elective, which is tersely embodied in the 
French saying, 'ie roi est mort, vive le roi.' The change, however, was not 
fully accepted till the time of Edward iv., since which no interval has been 
recognised between the death of one king and the accession of his successor. 
The character of the new king was well known in the country. Few 
kings had had such an excellent training for rule, and his case is one 
which tends to confirm the view that the best sovereigns character of 
are usually those who have had the longest experience as ^^'^^^^ i- 
subjects. He was now thirty-three years of age ; had outlived the violence 
of his youth, and had acquired the remarkable power of self-restraint, 
which forms such a striking feature during his later years. Wherever 
he had been brought into contact with afiairs, in Wales, in Gascony, 
during the barons' war, or in the East, he had added to his capacity for 
rule, and the greater part of his policy as a king was founded upon 
ideas, the germs of which may be traced to his experiences as a prince. 

205 



206 Later Angevin Kings 1272 

No cleiDartinent of English political life seems to have been uninteresting 
to him ; and whether he is found dealing with the development of 
Parliamentary institutions, the organisation of the law courts, the affairs 
of Wales, Scotland, or Gascony, or the multifarious aspects in which 
' our affairs in foreign countries ' presented themselves in his time, he 
always exhibits the same thoroughness of mind, the same careful atten- 
tion to details, and, we may add, the same whole-souled determination 
to secure his own rights and those of his country to the utmost extent 
sanctioned by the strict letter of the law. 

A suspicion of able men had been one of the most fatal characteristics 
of Henry iii. ; no such pettiness appears in the mind of his son, and in 
Edward's consequence Edward was always well served, — at any rate 
Ministers, j^y ^|^g statesmen with whom he came into personal contact. 
For aid in general politics Edward trusted most to his brother Edmund 
of Lancaster, his cousin Edmund of Cornwall, son of his uncle Richard, 
and his sister's son John of Brittany. His best generals were Henry de 
Lacy, earl of Lincoln, and the Earl Warrenne, His administrators and 
lawyers : Eobert Burnell, bishop of Bath and Wells, his chancellor, John 
Kirkby, bishop of Ely, his treasurer, Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham, 
and Walter Langton, bishop of Lichfield, the adviser of his later years. 

By leisurely steps the new king retraced his steps to England, and 

spent some time in Italy, France, and Guienne, before he crossed the 

Edward in Channel. In Italy he paid a visit to his friend, pope 

Italy. Gregory x., whose acquaintance he had made in Palestine, 

and passed through Padua and Milan, where his reputation secured him 

a magnificent reception. He then crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis 

Pass, and traversed the duchy of Burgundy on his way to the court of 

Phdip III. At Chalon he and his followers received a challenge to 

joust with a number of French knights, headed by the count of Chalon ; 

and Edward, nothing loath to engage in a martial adventure, accepted 

the offer. The tournament, however, turned out to be a serious affair. 

Battle of The French knights fought not to disarm or to unhorse but 

Chalon. ^^ j^jjj^ ^^^ ^^^ after a desperate struggle and the loss of 

many lives did Edv/ard.come off victorious in what was long remembered 

as 'the Little Battle of Chalon.' 

With Philip III., his cousin, Edward had much diplomatic work. 
The capture by Philip Augustus of John's chief French possessions had 

,. ,. left the position of the remainder extremely ambiguous, 
Negotiations ^ j a ^ 

about and Henry iii. and Louis ix. had vainly endeavoured to 

discover a permanent solution of the difficulties involved. 

By the treaty of Paris in 1259, Henry in. renounced all right over 



1274 Edward I. 207 

Normandy, Anjou, and Poitou, in return for certain territories in the 
south of France. This treaty, however, had never been fully carried out, 
and accordingly, in doing homage as duke of Aquitaine, Edward distinctly 
said that he did so ' for all the lands that he ought to hold,' and left his 
lawyers to fight out the question what this really meant. The matter 
was not finally settled till 1279, when, on the occasion of Edward and 
his wife Eleanor taking over Eleanor's county of Ponthieu, Philip gave 
up most of the territory in dispute, and Edward renounced all further 
claims. So long as Philip continued under the influence of his mother 
Margaret, Edward's aunt, the two kings remained on friendly terms ; 
but some friction arose later, when Philip's chief adviser was Edward's 
enemy, Charles of Anjou. However, in 1285 Charles died, and for 
some years afterwards peace was maintained. During these years, 
Edward added much to his European reputation by the considerable 
part which he phiyed in the negotiations between the king of France, 
the kings of Aragon and Castile, and the emperor, matters, however, 
which had not much direct bearing on English history. 

After leaving France, Edward visited Guienne, where he set on foot 
the policy he followed during the rest of his reign. He saw that to 
balance the turbulence of the great lords and the inde- visit to 
pendence of old cities, that had bid defiance to Richard i. Guienne. 
and Simon de Montfort, his best course was to encourage the growth of 
the mercantile interest, the prosperity of whose trade in wine was bound 
up with the English connection. For this purpose he gave every 
encouragement to trade, and also, as a check on the barons and on 
the old towns, founded a number of new towns or ' bastides,' which 
attracted a middle-class population, and served as rallying points for the 
forces of law and order. So successful was his policy that, whereas 
Guienne had formerly been one of the most turbulent parts of his 
dominions, for the future its internal government presented less diffi- 
culty, while its commerce was one of the most profitable spheres of 
English activity. 

Before crossing the Channel, Edward did another piece of good work 
for his subjects. Since the growth of the wool trade, which had followed 
the great development of pasturage by the Cistercian and 
Gilbertine orders, the relations between the king of England Treaty 
and the counts of Flanders had been of immense importance. '^J*^ ^^^ 

«^ Flemings. 

From the thirteenth century and onwards till the revolt of 
the Netherlands against the tyranny of Philip ii., the Flemish towns 
were almost the only places where the cloth manufacture was carried 
on upon an extensive scale ; and the prosperity of the English wool 



0Q8 Later Angevin Kings 1274 

merchants depended on having free intercourse with their customers, the 
manufacturers. For some years this trade had been interrupted by a 
difficulty that had arisen with the ruling countess ; but Edward entered 
into a friendly treaty with the young count, and the alliance so made 
continued to be one of the chief factors in English foreign politics till 
the close of the sixteenth century. 

In August 1274 Edward landed in England, and the thirty-three 

years M'hich followed will compare with the reign of any other English 

sovereign, both for activity and permanence of result. In 

fo^Yred many respects Edward's policy recalls that of Henry 11. 

^^*^ ^^ What Henry had begun Edward carried on, and brought 

Henry II. •' *= ? o 

up to the condition suited for the change of times. Both 
had the same personal energy and regard for order ; but between the 
conditions under which each worked there was much interesting con- 
trast. Whereas Henry was constantly diverted from English affairs by 
the necessity for long absences on the Continent, Edward was, on the 
whole, able to give full attention to home affairs ; and whereas Henry 
had had to force his reforms through almost single-handed against the 
resistance of the old nobility, Edward was able for the most part to 
carry his nobles with him. These things were in Edward's favour ; but, 
on the other hand, he was more troubled than Henry about money 
matters, for Edward found the debts of his father yet unpaid, and the 
crown lands diminished and impoverished ; and as his own policy, in spite 
of his personal frugality, made retrenchment impossible, he was through- 
out his whole reign a prey to constant anxiety on this score. One 
result, however, of his financial difficulties was to impress on Edward 
the lesson he had early learned that the best way to open the pockets of 
his subjects was to take them into his confidence, and try to carry them 
with him in his policy, the working of which is seen in his frequent 
and representative parliaments and the whole relations between the 
court and the country. It is hardly too much to say that while his 
predecessors had looked on parliament as a nuisance, or at best as a 
way of raising money, Edward, so to speak, took it into his confidence, 
and so gained its cordial co-operation in the work of government. 
Edward's internal administration is marked by a series of great statutes, 
dealing with every conceivable subject of legislation ; his external policy 
was actuated by a desire to see the whole of the British Isles united 
under one sceptre. The former occupy the whole reign ; the latter only 
developed itself as opportunity arose. 

The thirteenth century was great in law-making. The growth of the 
legal school of Bologna had created in every court of Europe a body of 



1279 Edward I. 209 

lawyers, whose minds, trained in the exact definitions of the Koman law, 
looked with dislike on the ill-defined customs of feudalism ; and in try- 
ing to reduce English law to more of a system, Edward was only taking 
his share in a movement which was carried forward, followed by 
Frederick the emperor and Louis ix,, both his uncles by marriage, and 
by his brother-in-law Alfonso of Castile. Kings, however, are usually 
themselves the directors rather than the workers in legal reform ; and 
the chief credit of the work by our ' English Justinian,' as Edward is 
sometimes called, must probably be given to Robert Burnell. Among 

the long list of their legislative enactments, selection is , ... 

° ,,„,,. , Legislation. 

absolutely necessary ; but the followmg are the most re- 
markable for permanent results : — statute of mortmain^ or de religiosis, 
the statute of Winchester ; the second and third statutes of West- 
minster, better known as those of de donis and quia emptores respectively, 
and the articidi sujjer cartas. 

First, the statute of mortmain. Mortmain means dead hand, and 
was a metaphorical phrase of Roman law. It implied that land so held 
was in a hand that, like that of a dead man, never relaxed statute of 
its 'grasp ; and was applied to property in the hands of Mortmain, 
corporations, religious or otherwise, which never died, which were often 
incapable of performing efficiently the duties of feudal ownership, and 
also were never subject to reliefs, or to the profits arising from wardship 
or marriage. Obviously, when land passed into mortmain, the rights of 
the immediate lord, and ultimately of the king, suffered. The chief 
ofi'ender was, of course, the church, to which bequests were constantly 
made as the price of masses for the dead. The enormous growth of the 
Cistercians and of the military orders had attracted attention to a 
grievance of which complaints had been made ever since the time of 
Bede ; and of late years landowners had adopted an ingenious method 
of defrauding the revenue and the rights of the lord by handing over 
their estates to some religious order, and receiving them back again to 
hold on easy terms. Consequently, both the king and the tenants-in- 
chief were interested in putting a stop to the practice ; and when in 
1279 a church council under Archbishop Peckham ventured to excom- 
municate all persons who did not obey Magna Carta, and all persons 
who did interfere with the ecclesiastical courts, Edward and his nobles 
made common cause and passed the statute de viris religiosis, com- 
monly known as the statute of mortmain, which enacted that ' no reli- 
gious or other person whatsoever shall buy, on pain of forfeiture, sell, or 
under cover of gift, or any other title, or by any device or ingenuity, 
dare to acquire lands or tenements for himself, by which they may in 

o 



210 Later Angevin Kings 1279 

any way come to be in mortmain.'' In case this were done, the for- 
feiture was to be in the first instance to the next lord, but if he failed 
to exercise his right, it passed on to his superior, and, finally, to the 
kino-. Even this machinery failed to fulfil its purpose completely, and 
subsequent legislation was eventually necessary. 

Not very dissimilar to the statute of mortmain was the statute of 

« • Westminster, better known as quia emritores. It dealt 

yuia ' _ 

emptores. -^yi^}^ ^he question of alienation of land in general, as that of 
mortmain had done with the alienation to religious persons. Its need 
arose thus : If B, a holder of land from a superior lord. A, wanted to part 
with a portion of his land, and sold it to a third person, C, the old 
practice had been that the new holder, C, became the subtenant of B. 
Consequently, the owner of a holding might strip himself of so much of 
his property as to be unable to properly perform his services to his 
superior lord and pay his feudal dues ; and consequently in this case, 
too, it was the interest not only of the king, but also of all tenants-in- 
chief, to put a limit to the practice. Accordingly, the parliament of 
1290 enacted that, ' Whereas, by this practice, tenants-in-chief frequently 
lost escheats, marriages, and custody of land and tenements created out 
of their own fiefs,' in the case of such alienation the holding so carved out 
must be held direct from the superior lord. The law, therefore, put a 
stop to the practice of sub-infeudation, and so was popular with the 
overlords as a class. Its real advantages, however, rested with the 
king, for, on the one hand, feudalism was deprived of the vitality that 
comes from the constant creation of fresh holdings, and on the other, by 
enormously increasing the number of tenants-in-chief the social distinc- 
tion conveyed in the term became lost, and a further step was taken 
towards destroying the significance of feudalism as anything more than a 
method of land tenure. 

Another statute affecting land was the second statute of Westminster, one 
. clause of which is specially famous,, that generally quoted as de 

condition- donis conditionalibus. This statute enabled holders of land to 

3.1 ihus 

grant estates subject to certain conditions, and if these were 
unfulfilled, to reclaim the property. According to the old practice, if an 
estate were granted to a man and his heirs, he might, as soon as an heir 
was born, part with it again as if his was the sole interest in it. By the 
new act he had only a life tenancy, and, in spite of anything he could do, 
the estate must, at his death, pass to his heir. Even if he committed 
treason, the life interest only could be forfeited. Estates held by such a 
tenure were said to be entailed, from tailU, cut off from the whole ; 
and the practice, as enabling a man to perpetuate the retention of property 



1285 Edivard I. 211 

in his own family, became so popular that such estates became the rule 
rather than the exception. 

In carrying these statutes, Edward had the goodwill of the nobles ; 
but he had not been without warning that wary walking was needed to 
avoid touching their susceptibilities. When in 1275 he sent _ 
round a commission of quo warranto to inquire by what warranto 
rights the lands of each were held, the Earl Warrenne bluntly i"^^y- 
told his visitors that his ancestors 'won their lands by the sword, and 
with the sword he was ready to hold them against all usurpers.' Warned 
by this outsjDoken remonstrance, Edward wisely dropped further inquiry, 
and was cautious to make his land legislation appear as favourable to the 
interests of men like the Earl Warrenne as to himself. 

The statute of Winchester dealt with the defence of the country, and 
was founded on the Assize of Arms, issued by Henry ii. in 11 81. It must 
be considered, also, in relation to various writs oi distraint of Distraint of 
knighthood, of which the first was issued in 1278. The Knighthood, 
object of these writs was twofold : (1) to secure money, and (2) to increase 
the class of knights or gentry, whom Edward appears to have valued as 
a counterpoise to the great nobles, and whose importance is noticed on 
page 198. In 1278 it was ordered that all tenants of land to the value of 
^'20 a year, ' whether they held it from the king or from any one else,' 
who ' ought to be knights and are not,' were either to be knighted or to 
give good and sufficient security. In 1282 all persons possessing an 
estate of o£30 a year were ordered to provide themselves with a horse and 
armour. Such writs were constantly issued by Edward, with the 
double effect of keeping up the supply of cavalry and of filling his purse. 

The statute of Winchester dealt with the arms of those who had less 
than ^20 of land, and constituted a summary of the existing law upon 
the subject. Like many of the legal documents of the time, statute of 
it is written in French, and was issued in 1285. Every vvinchester. 
man between fifteen and sixty was to have arms according to his rank, 
'according to the ancient assize.' If he have ^15 of land and forty 
marks of goods, a hauberk, a helme of iron, a sword and a knife and a 
horse ; if JIO and twenty marks of goods, a hauberk, a helme of iron, a 
sword, and a knife ; if £5, the hauberk changes to a doublet ; if only 
£2, a sword, a bow and arrows, and a knife, and so on ; and these 
weapons were to be regularly inspected twice every year. 

Besides the above statutes dealing with land and the defence of 
the country, there was also passed a large mass of legislation General 
relating to the peace of the country, and touching such Legislation, 
various matters as the keeping of watch and ward, the arrest of criminals, 



212 Later Angevin Kings 1285 

and the judicial processes of the law courts. By the statute of Win- 
chester it was enacted that if those who committed robberies and murders 
were not brought to justice, the hundred, in which the deed was done, 
should be answerable for compensation, a change said to be necessary, 
because jurors would not convict the men of their own neighbourhood. 
By the same statute it was ordered that the gates of every town were to 
be closed and watched from sunrise to sunset ; that all strangers were 
to be arrested ; and that all hosts were to be held responsible for the 
conduct of their guests. To make the highroads safer, a clear space 
was to be made for two hundred feet at each side. Finally, to carry 
out this statute, certain new officers were appointed under the name of 
conservators of the peace, but known later under the familiar title of 
justices of the peace. By the second statute of Westminster an improve- 
ment was made in civil legislation. The various special commissions 
Granted to the justices-in-eyre were consolidated, and this enabled them, 
Court of nnder the name of justices in nisi i^rius, to try nearly all 
nisi prius. ^ivil cases.^ In 1301 a further simplification was made by 
enabling the justices in nisi prius to hold sessions of gaol delivery, 
i.e. to try all criminals whom they found in gaol, an arrangement 
which, with some modifications, is practically that now in use. 

Edward also introduced changes into the working of the central courts. 
The duties of the courts of king's bench, common pleas, and exchequer 
were more carefully defined, and judges permanently as- 
tion^of the signed to each. The court of chancery Avas formally con- 
Central stituted, and in 1300, by the articuli super cartas, it was 
arranged that the courts of chancery and king's bench were 
still to follow the king's person, but that the exchequer court was to re- 
main at Westminster, as the court of common pleas had done since the 
granting of Magna Carta. These extensive dealings with judicial and 
legislative matters mark the reign of Edward i. as an epoch in the 
history of English law, and it is a maxim that all statutes or decisions 
which date from Edward are ' good law ' at the present day, unless 
they have been specially set aside. 

Another event of this reign was the expulsion of the Jews from 
Expulsion of England. This was due partly to old standing causes (see 
the Jews. p^ge 159)^ partly to new. The necessities of Henry iii. 
had compelled him to have constant recourse to Jewish moneylenders, 
and his debts had descended to his son. The part thus played by the 

1 The name nisi 2^rius comes from the form of the document instituting a 
civil suit which ordered it to be tried at Westminster nisi prius, etc., i.e. 
unless the judges came into the county before, which they always did. 



1290 JSdtvard I. 213 

Jews in supplying the king caused them to be specially hated by the 
baronage, who saw that the king's power of borrowing made him more 
independent, and who constantly found themselves taxed to pay the 
king's debts to the Jews ; moreover, borrowing had begun to have its 
usual effect in an agricultural country. Estates were heavily mortgaged. 
The task of paying the interest, amounting to thirty or forty per cent, 
left the landholders little to pay their taxes or keep their families, and 
the Jews came to be thoroughly detested by all classes of the community. 
Forced sales and evictions of course followed. Spurred on by public 
opinion, Edward forbade the Jews to hold real property, compelled 
them to obey the law which ordered them to wear a special dress, and 
finally prohibited usury altogether. Deprived of their ordinary liveli- 
hood, the Jews then took to clipping the coinage. Hundreds were 
hanged, but without checking the evil. Old charges were then trumped 
up ; Archbishop Peckham ordered all synagogues to be closed ; and 
finally, in 1290, Edward delighted his subjects by ordering all the Jews 
to leave the country. So popular was this action, that the laity readily 
granted Edward a gift of one-fifteenth, and the clergy one-tenth, of all 
movable property. The economical importance of the change was, 
however, more apparent than real. The place of the Jewish capitalists 
was largely taken by foreigners, especially by the Lombards, whose 
name is still preserved in Lombard Street ; and kings still found the 
means to anticipate their revenue, and spendthifts to borrow money on 
their lands. Though a few are found in England during most of the 
intervening periods, it was not till the time of the Commonwealth that 
Jews were again permitted to live openly in England. 

We now pass on to Edward's dealings with Wales and Scotland. 
Since the days of William Eufus (see page 105), that part of Great 
Britain which is now denominated Wales had consisted of g^g^g ^f 
two parts, an ever-diminishing district ruled by the Prince Wales, 
of Wales, and an ever-increasing district ruled by Norman lords, generally 
termed the lords marcher. By the time of Henry iii,, the former had 
come to include little more than Anglesea and the two modern counties 
of Carnarvon and Merioneth, with some rights over what are now Car- 
marthen and Cardigan ; the latter was divided into four main districts : 
that of ' the four cantreds ' of plain country between the Dee and the 
Conway, which were ruled by the earl of Chester ; the middle march of 
the Upper Severn under the Mortimers ; the lordship of Glamorgan, 
which was an appendage of the earldom of Gloucester ; and the earldom 
of Pembroke ; but it also contained a vast number of petty holdings 
more or less dependent on the greater. 



214 Later Angevin Kings 1246 

Durino- the long struggle which had led to this state of affairs, the 
necessities of self-defence had compelled the Welsh to sink their 
differences and oppose an unbroken front to their foes, and the conse- 
Ll w 1 n ab q^ence was a sort of national revival, of which Llewelyn ab 
lorwerth. lorwerth, lord of Gwynedd, who died in 1240, was the leader. 
The next prince was unimportant, but in 1246 there succeeded another 
Llewelyn— Llewelyn ab Gruffydd, or Griffith— who adopted the policy of 
his grandfather, and took advantage of the barons' wars to ally himself 
with Simon de Montfort, and to take a prominent part in the struggles. 
He earned his reward in 1269, when Edward found it advisable to buy 
off the Welsh prince by the surrender of the ' four cantreds ' at the treaty 
of Shrewsbury. Elated by his success, Llewelyn dreamed of further dis- 
tinction, and had the temerity to hope that he might continue to make a 
profit out of English disorder, even under such a king as Edward i. 
Here he was mistaken, and when in 1277 Edward detected him intriguing 
with the sons of Simon de Montfort, and arranging to marry Simon's 
daughter Eleanor, he at once took vigorous measures. Chance threw the 
young lady into his hands, so he placed her in charge of Queen Eleanor, 
and himself led an army against Llewelyn, assisted by that prince's 
younger brother David. The Welshman's plan was to hold out in the 
strong country of Snowdon, while he drew his supplies from Anglesea ; 
but Edward defeated this by closing every avenue into South Wales, 
and bringing a fleet from the Cinque Ports to guard the Menai Straits. 
Starvation soon brought Llewelyn to reason, and on the approach of 
winter he emerged from his fastnesses and made a full submission, gave 
up all his lands except the district of Snowdon, even agreeing to hold 
Anglesea for life, and did homage to the king. Edward treated his 
fallen foe with generosity ; excused some of the more onerous conditions 
of peace, and in 1278 allowed Llewelyn to marry Eleanor de Montfort. 

The power of Llewelyn being thus destroyed, Edward proceeded to 

carry out a scheme of Welsh reconstruction that had been suggested to 

^ . him during his early experiences as earl of Chester. He 

Re-organisa- ? 

tion of proposed, in short, to break down the tribal system of the 

Welsh by- dividing the principality into shires, English 

fashion, to get rid of such barbarous Welsh laws as punished murder with 

a mere fine, and permitted the horrid practice of wrecking, and generally 

speaking to anglicise the whole country. In carrying out this policy, 

however, he forgot two things— (1) that the Welsh were so attached 

to their old customs as to prefer bad Welsh laws to English good ones ; 

and (2) that his agents were not so high-minded as himself, and were 

always liable to make reform more hateful than necessary by their 



53|lr^= 



52 p- 




WALES 

& THE 

SEVEPvX VALLEY. 

SHOWING THE CHIEF FORTRESSES 



216 Later Angevin Kings 1282 

personal misdeeds. Accordingly his projected changes roused the 
utmost hostility, and in 1282 a new rebellion broke out. 

The leader in this was David, Edward's ally in 1277, who had been 
rewarded by a rich domain in the Vale of Clwyd. In March he suddenly 

David's attacked Hawarden Castle and massacred the garrison. On 

Rebellion, jjearing of bis brother's movements, Llewelyn crossed the 
Conway to his assistance, and ravaged the four cantreds to the walls of 
Chester. Determined this time to avoid being blockaded in the Snowdon 
district, Llewelyn on the approach of winter made his way south to join 
another rising on the Wye ; but on December 11th he was killed in a 
chance encounter with a single knight. His brother David held out till 
the summer, but was then reduced to capitulate. Furious at his double 
treachery, first to Llewelyn and then to himself, Edward caused him to 
be tried by the barons and knights of the shire assembled at Shrewsbury, 
who condemned him to the horrible death concealed under the legal 
formula of ' hanged, drawn, and quartered.' 

Edward was now free to carry out his Welsh policy. Llewelyn's 
district was divided into the three shires of Anglesea, Carnarvon, and 
Merioneth. The southern parts of the principality of Llewelyn became 
Final Settle- the shu'es of Cardigan and Carmarthen. Of the four cantreds 
North°^ part was made into the county of Flint, part annexed to 

Wales, Cheshire, and the rest carved out into new lordships marcher, 

of which the lordship of Denbigh, assigned to the earl of Lincoln, was 
perhaps the most important. The lands, however, of the marchers were 
left untouched, and the distinction between the principality and the 
marches was preserved down to the time of Henry viii. English law 
took the place of Welsh, and the new county courts replaced the rude 
judicature of the AVelsh princes. More than all, Edward endeavoured to 
introduce the elements of commercial life by the foundation of towns, 
which he filled with English settlers, who contrived even to the time of 
Elizabeth to preserve their English speech even in districts which were 
otherwise exclusively Welsh ; while he bridled the mountaineers by a 
ring of castles, of which Conway, Ehuddlan, Harlech, and Aberystwith 
are examples, and secured the command of the JNIenai Straits by the 
twin fortresses of Carnarvon and Beaumaris. 

In dealing with Scotland, Edward was less successful, mainly because 
his resources, adequate enough to deal with such a small territory as 
Relations Llewelyn's, were insufficient to cope with national resistance 
England and ^^^ ^ larger scale. Ever since Richard i. had cancelled 
Scotland. ^\^q treaty of Falaise the relations between the English 
kings and the kings of Scots, who, be it remembered, stood in the 



1290 Edward I. 217 

fourfold position of king of the Scots and Picts, lord of Strathclyde or 
Galloway, and earl of Lothian, had been vague and undefined in 
theory, but in practice they had been made tolerable by the excellent 
personal relationships between them. Alexander ii. (1214-1249) had 
married Joan, the sister, and his successor Alexander iii. (1249-1286) 
married Margaret the daughter of Henry iii. 

Alexander iii.'s children were all delicate, and when he died in 1286 
his only living descendant was Margaret, the Maid of Norway, daughter 
of his child Margaret, the wife of Eric of Norway. In 1284 Margaret of 
she had been declared heir to the Scottish throne. At the Norway, 
death of her grandfather Margaret was three years old, and as the death 
of all Edward's elder sons had left his younger son Edward of Carnarvon, 
born in 1284, as his heir-apparent, a marriage between the two seemed 
to be the natural way of solving the problem of the relations between the 
kingdoms. After some negotiation, therefore, a treaty was made at 
Brigham in 1290, by which it was arranged that Margaret should marry 
Edward, but that the integrity and independence of the Scottish king- 
dom should be fully secured. An adverse stroke of fortune, however, 
prevented this hopeful plan from being carried out. An autumn 
voyage proved too severe a tax on the deHcate constitution of the frail 
Maid of Norway, and she died at the Orkneys. Her death opened up 
two questions of great difficulty : (1) was the kingdom of Scotland to be 

preserved intact ? (2), if so, who was to be king 1 No less _ 
1 , . . . ^ • f> 1 1 Competitors 

than thirteen competitors put m a claim for at least a share for the 

of the spoil, but of these the three most important were John 

Balliol, grandson of the eldest daughter of David, earl of Huntingdon, 

brother of William the Lion ; Robert Bruce, the son of David's second 

daughter ; and John Hastings, lord of Abergavenny, the grandson of the 

third. The contention of each had a certain element of plausibility. 

Balliol claimed the crown on the ground that he was the direct descendant 

in the eldest line ; Bruce, that though he stood in the second line he was 

a degree nearer to David than Balliol ; while Hastings contended that 

the daughters of David ought to be regarded as co-heiresses, in which case 

a third j)art of the kingdom ought to be allotted to each. No one of the 

three could be regarded as particularly Scottish in feeling ; all had taken 

their place in English politics, and Bruce had for a time acted as chief 

justice of the King's Bench. 

To arrive at some settlement which would stave off the impending 

calamity of a civil war, the Scots submitted the case to the Edward's 

decision of Edward, who had established a European reputa- Arbitration. 

tion for the fairness of his decisions in several other complicated cases of 



218 Later Angevin Kings 1290 

arbitration. Before acting, however, Edward claimed to be recognised as 
superior lord of Scotland, and after a month's investigation of the historical 
basis of his demand, his rights were fully admitted by all three competitors. 
The question was then submitted to the judgment of eighty Scots, half 
named by Balliol and half by Bruce, and of twenty-four Englishmen 
appointed by Edward himself. Their investigations were most elaborate, 
and the decision was not pronounced till 1292. Then, through the mouth 
of Burnell, Edward made his award, rejected the claims of both Bruce 
and Hastings, and gave the kingdom, whole and undivided, to John 
Balliol — a decision whose correctness no one can question, and whose 
disinterestedness in setting aside the tempting opportunity of weakening 
the northern kingdom by adoi)ting Hastings' suggestion places it above 
suspicion. It was at once accepted by all parties, and Balliol, after doing 
homage, was crowned. 

Had matters stood here, Edward would have gained a great success in 
definitely settling the relations between the two kingdoms, and have 
Question of '^dded to his rejDutation for upright dealing ; but unluckily 
Appeals. ^]^g coronation of Balliol proved a turning-point for the 
worse in the history of the two kingdoms. The fault was not altogether 
Edward's. As we have repeatedly seen, the vassals of the various great 
feudatories of the French king claimed and exercised a right of appeal to 
the king's court at Paris, and the lawyers held that by similar analogy 
there should be an appeal from the Scottish courts to that of Edward as 
overlord. In the first year of King John's reign four aggrieved Scottish 
suitors, of whom the most important was Macduff, the son of the earl of 
Fife, appealed to Edward to reverse the decision of the Scottish law-courts. 
According to the usual French form, with which Edward as duke of 
Aquitaine was only too well acquainted, Balliol was called on to defend 
his decision, which he was at liberty to do either in person or by deputy. 
However, in Macduff's case, Balliol appeared in person and denied 
Edward's right to hear the appeal, and on his return home the case was 
taken up by his nobles, who, apparently distrusting BaUiol's intentions, 
appointed a committee of twelve to manage the afiairs of the kingdom, 
prepared for armed resistance, and entered into negotiations with the 
king of France. 

Meanwhile, a difficulty had arisen in France in which the parts of 
Edward and Balliol were reversed. It chanced that a Norman sailor had 
Trouble I'een slain in a casual dispute with an Englishman. In 

with France, revenge the Normans seized an English ship, dragged out 
of it a passenger, and hanged him at the mast-head with a dog at his 
feet. As the passenger happened to be a merchant from Bayonne, this 



1295 Edward L 219 

brought in the Gascons, and for some time the blood feud arrayed against 
one another the Normans and the English and the Gascons. Eventually, 
in 1293, after much promiscuous fighting, a pitched battle was fought in 
the harbour of St. Mahe, in Brittany, between a fleet of Normans, 
Flemings, and French, and of English, Gascons, and Irish. The result was 
the total discomfiture of the French, the caj)ture of their ships, and the 
loss, it was said, of fifteen thousand lives. Exasperated at this disaster, 
Philip IV., commonly called the Fair, who had succeeded his father in 
1 285, called on Edward, as duke of Aquitaine, to answer in the French 
court for the conduct of his Gascon subjects. Edward neglected to 
appear, on which the French king declared his duchy to be forfeited. 
Anxious to accommodate matters without war, which in the then state of 
Scottish aff'airs would be specially inconvenient, Edward sent his brother 
Edmund, the earl of Lancaster, to negotiate ; but the earl allowed himself 
to be gulled by Philip into handing over the Gascon castles as a matter of 
form, and when after six weeks Edward demanded repossession, the wily 
Frenchman refused to budge, cancelled the terms of agreement, poured an 
army over the border, and entered into an offensive and defensive alliance 
with the Scottish nobility. Edward's hands were now full. For four 
years England and France were at war ; Scotland was seething with dis- 
content ; and in 1295 no less than three revolts broke out simultaneously 
in south and north "Wales, the chief of which was headed by Madoc, an 
illegitimate son of the last Llewelyn. 

It was in these circumstances that Edward took the wise step of making 
a formal appeal to the patriotism of all classes of his English subjects by 
calling a complete and model parliament. In this assembly Model Parlia- 
were represented each of what were beginning to be known r"ent of 1295. 
as the three estates of the realm, the clergy, the nobility, and the com- 
monalty. For the clergy, separate writs were sent to the archbishops, the 
abbots, to the masters of Sempringham and of the Temple, and to the prio 
of the Knights Hospitallers ; and the archbishops and bishops were also '}jre- 
monished and each directed to bring with him the prior of his cathedral, his 
archdeacons, one proctor for the cathedral chapter and two for the parish 
clergy of each diocese. The number of bishops summoned was twenty, 
and of abbots sixty-seven. A day later writs were sent to seven earls 
and forty-one barons ; and two days afterwards the sherifi' of each county 
was directed to send two knights, elected by his county, and two citizens 
and burgesses from each city or borough within his shire. Thirty years 
had elapsed since the citizens and burgesses had been called to Simon de 
Montfort's convention in 1265. Since then it had been no uncommon 
thing to summon knights and burgesses to parliament, but the exact 



220 Later Angevin Kings 1295 

constitution of the assembly was by no means definitely settled, and a mere 

parliament of barons was thought as competent as a regular gathering of 

representatives of the people. This is, therefore, the first real parliament 

in which they had ever taken part ; but since 1295 all full parliaments have 

included the whole of the lay members mentioned above. The clergy, 

however, preferred to make their money grants in the two convocations of' 

the provinces of York and Canterbury, so that though the premunientes 

clause was long retained in the bishops' writs, the archdeacons and 

proctors rarely if ever came, while the abbots were abolished at the 

Reformation. The meeting of the Model Parliament of 1295 was a 

memorable day for England, and marks the beginning of a new era of 

parliamentary government. 

The liberality of the Model Parliament completely justified Edward's 

trust in the generosity of his people. The clergy granted one-tenth of 

their goods, the earls, barons, and knights of the shire voted 
First Cam- e> j 5 j o 

paign in one-eleveutli, and the citizens and burgesses one-seventh. 
"VYit^li the money so raised, Edward was able to act vigorously. 
Already the least serious danger, that of Wales, had been removed, for, 
as before, Edward's tactics of blockading the insurgents in the barren 
wilderness of Snowdon had been successful against Madoc. Edmund 
of Lancaster was sent out to Gascony ; Edward in person took the field 
against the Scots. Accompanied by Earl Warrenne and the bishop of 
Durham, and taking with him the sacred banner of St. John of Beverley, 
that had already waved defiance to the Scots at the battle of the Standard, 
and after receiving at Newcastle a message from Balliol formally renouncing 
his allegiance, the English king crossed the border and captured Berwick 
in March. In April, Earl Warrenne with the vanguard inflicted a crush- 
Battle of iiig defeat on the Scots, who had been foolish enough to 
Dunbar. abandon a strong position on the Lammermuir hills and 
descend into the plain near Dunbar, in hopes of overwhelming the English. 
The result of this defeat was decisive. Roxburgh, Jedburgh, Dunbar, 
Edinburgh, and Stirling opened their gates. Balliol surrendered ; but as 
he had already renounced his allegiance he was not reinstated, and after 
a short sojourn in the Tower of London w\as permitted to retire to 
his French estates, where he died in obscurity. After receiving Balliol's 
submission, Edward marched north as far as Elgin to show his power, 
and then, after receiving the homage of the leading Scots, and appointing 
Earl Warrenne and other English officials to represent him, he returned 
to England, well contented with his new and unexpected conquest. 

Edward's next step was to organise a great alliance against France. 
Ednumd of Lancaster had died at Bayonne, but his place had been filled by 



1297 Edicard I. 221 

the earl of Lincoln, and Edward designed a double attack on Philip — one 

from Gascony, led by Lincoln, the other from the north-east, led by 

himself and the count of Flanders. Unexpected difficulties, 

IP 111 Alliance 

however, arose. Pressed, as usual, for money, he had not against 

been scrupulous in his means of getting it, but had seized 

the wool of the merchants, tallaged ^ the towns and the tenants on the 

royal estates. A feeling of irritation was natural, especially as much 

money had been spent on subsidising foreign allies who had done very 

little by way of return. 

However, if the expedition were to start, supplies must be obtained, 
and the king summoned a parliament, exactly modelled on that of 1295, 
to meet at Bury St. Edmund's, in November 1296. When clergy refuse 
it met, the barons and knights granted a one-twelfth and the ^° pay Taxes, 
citizens and burgesses a one-eighth. The clergy, however, under Archbishop 
Winchelsea, refused to contribute, on the ground that since the last parlia- 
ment a bull, dericis laicos, had been issued by Pope Boniface viii., in 
wliich the clergy had been forbidden to pay any state tax whatsoever out 
of the revenues of their churches. As the clergy persisted in this refusal, 
Edward did what John had once threatened to do, and what Richard 
had actually done in 1198, viz., denied the clergy the right to sue in the 
king's courts, which, in effect, amounted to a sentence of outlawry, and 
enabled them to be robbed and plundered with impunity. 

While waiting the effect of this measure Edward summoned a meetino- 
of the earls and barons ; and, in February 1297, laid before them his plan 
for the expeditions to Flanders and Gascony. But here a 
new difficulty met him. One by one the barons began to stable and 
excuse themselves, and in particular Roger Bigod, earl of ^hln refuse 
Norfolk, the constable, and Humphrey de Bohun, earl of *° ^^^'^ ^ 

' ' 1 J J separate 

Hereford, the marshal, who were asked to take charge of Expedition 
the Gascon expedition, raised the point of law that they 
were bound by the duties of their respective offices only to attend the 
king's person. 'By God, sir earl,' said Edward, addressing Hereford, 
' thou shalt either go or hang.' ' By that same oath, king,' was the 
marshal's reply, ' I will neither go nor hang.' It was soon evident that 
the recalcitrant earls had popular feeling on their side. The meeting at 
once broke up ; the two earls retii'ed to their estates followed by no less 
than fifteen hundred picked knights, and prepared, if necessary, to appeal 
to arms. Driven to extremity by this, Edward took extraordinary 
measures to provide himself with funds, seized the wool of the merchants 

1 A tallage is a feudal tax levied on towns and lauds in demesne. 



222 



Later Angevin Kings 



1297 



Edward 
promises to 
confirm the 
Charters. 



and requisitioned provisions from the counties, giving tallies in acknow- 
ledgment for both. 

Meanwhile the clergy were in despair. Lent was fast slipping away, 

and Edward had threatened that unless they gave way before Easter he 

would confiscate the whole of their lands. A new convoca- 

ofthT^^^^ " tion was summoned by Winchelsea for the 26th of March,' 

Clergy. ^^^ ^^ ^j^^^ j^^ receded from his former position and advised 

his fellow-clergy to make the best terms they could. Weary of the long 

contest, the clergy one by one gave way, some making the king a gift, 

others leaving money where the royal officers could find it, and others 

paying for protection. Winchelsea himself was still obstinate, and in 

consequence Edward seized the lands of his see. 

In spite, however, of his double difficulty, Edward did not abandon 
his intended expeditions ; but issued orders for a military levy who held 
lands over ^20 a year to meet at London on July 7th. Again 
the marshal and constable refused to go ; but Edward, by 
promising to confirm the Great Charter and the Charter of 
the Forest, contrived to induce the leading men of the levy 
to agree to a wholly unconstitutional grant of an eighth of the mov- 
ables of the barons and knights, and one-fifth from the cities and 
boroughs. At the same time the archbishop made his peace, and agreed 
to call a convocation on August 10th to see about making a regular 
grant. 

The two earls, however, and their followers continued firm, and sent 
Edward a petition on the part, not only of themselves and the barons, 
The Earls' re- ^^^ ^1^0 on that of the clergy and of ' the whole community 
monstrance, ^f \^q land,' in which they boldly declared that whether 
their tenures bound them or not, they were utterly ruined by tallages 
and other forms of exaction, particularly by a new customs duty (the 
maltote) laid on wool, which amounted to the fifth part of their income ; 
demanded that the Great Charter and the' Charter of the Forests 
should be confirmed ; and suggested that Edward would do better to 
stay at home until he had better security from the Flemings, and Scotland 
less likely to break into insurrection. 

This outspoken document reached Edward in September, when he was 
on the point of sailing for Flanders, and he simply answered that he 
could not consider it without his council, and that some members were in 
London and others had crossed to Flanders. On the 22nd he sailed 
away, leaving his son Edward, then a lad of thirteen, the regent, and his 
counsellors to do the best they could. No sooner w\^s the king gone, 
than the two earls appeared in London and peremptorily forbade the 



1297 Edward I. 223 

officers of the exchequer to collect the aid of one-eighth. The counsellors 
were at their wits' end. Resistance was out of the question, and parlia- 
ment was somewhat irregularly summoned to receive the „ ^ 

r. 1 /-NT rrn 1 Confirmation 

Confirmation of the Charters. Ihese documents, however, of the 

from which all reference to taxation had long been omitted, 
did not cover the case in point, so the earls insisted on the addition of 
several new clauses, to the efi'ect, (1) that the king would not take as a 
right all such aids and tasks as have been given him heretofore by his 
peoj)le's freewill, and ' would not take such manner of aids, tasks, or 
prizes but by the common assent of the realm, and for the common profit 
thereof, saving the ancient aids and prizes due and accustomed ' ; (2) 
that the maltote on wool should be given up, and that neither the king 
nor his heirs would take any such thing or any other without the 
common consent and goodwill of the commonalty of the realm ; saving to 
us and to our heirs the custom of wool, skins, and leather, granted before 
by the commonalty aforesaid. 

The custom referred to in the last clause was the Ancient or Great 
Custom agreed to in the parliament of Westminster, 1275, as a commuta- 
tion of the king's immemorial right to take a portion of all r^^^ Great 
goods coming into or going out of the kingdom. In this Custom, 
form the Confirmation of the Charters w^as sent to the king, and received 
his assent, which was again given as a further security in 1298, 1299, 
and 1301. At the time of the first Confirmation of the Charters, an 
unauthorised abstract was published, known as the De tallagio 7ion 
concecleyidoj which repeated Edward's grant but without the modifying 
word ' such.' In after times this came to be regarded as a statute, and 
was alluded to as such in the preamble to the Petition of Right 
of 1628. It is not easy to overestimate the constitu- 
tional importance of this struggle and its successful issue, of the'pon'^-^ 
Hitherto the right of the people to a voice in taxation had fi'^"^^**°"s- 
been little more than a usage ; even the concessions made to the tenants- 
in-chief in 1215 had been dropped in the following year. It now became 
a matter of written right, from which followed the natural development 
of our parliamentary government. It was not creditable to Edward that 
he should have asked and obtained from the pope a dispensation from his 
assent, which, fortunately, he did not venture to put into practice. The 
Flemish expedition, for which Edward had provided with so much 
difficulty, produced no great results. His Continental allies r. 

f French 

proved, as usual, selfish and inefficient, and the war was Quarrel 

soon confined to Gascony, wdiere the earl of Lincoln still 

held Bayonne. The disputes between the two sovereigns were at length 



224 Later Angevin Kings 1297 

healed by the good offices of Pope Boniface viii., who had conceived the 
idea of saving bloodshed by making the papal court into a court of arbitra- 
tion for the settlement of national disputes. Neither Philip nor Edward, 
however, would admit Boniface's interference in his official capacity, but 
they accepted his good offices as a man, and eventually the whole of his 
Gascon possessions were restored to the English king. A good under- 
standing for the future was secured by a double marriage : Edward, who 
had been a widower since 1290, marrying Margaret, the sister of Philip, 
and his son Edward, aged fifteen, being betrothed to Philip's five-year-old 
daughter Isabella. 

In Scotland, meanwhile, things had been going altogether wrong. Earl 
Warrenne, the guardian, had been non-resident ; and Cressingham, the 
Rebellion of treasurer, and Ormesby, the justiciar, ruled the Scots with a 
Wallace. rod of iron. The natural result was an insurrection, analo- 
gous to that in Wales in 1282, but difiering from it in the fact that it was 
led neither by a member of the reigning house nor by the nobility, but 
was a genuine outbreak of general discontent. Various leaders appeared 
in various parts, but eventually the movement concentrated round William 
Wallace or Waleys, i.e. the Welshman, and Sir Andrew MiuTay. In the 
suimner of 1297, Warrenne returned at the head of a large 
Cambus- army, but in September allowed himself to be defeated at 
kenneth. Cambuskenneth, near Stirling. At that place the Forth 
was crossed by a long bridge, so narrow that only two armed men, 
presumably horsemen, are said to have been able to pass abreast, and 
reacliing the northern bank of the river at a point where a range of low 
hills comes close to the water. Behind these hills Wallace and Murray 
concealed their soldiers, and when five thousand English soldiers under 
Cressingham had crossed the bridge, they were suddenly overwhelmed by 
a rush of Scots from the high ground. Cressingham himself perished, 
and few if any of his men made their escape. The news of the victory 
caused the rebellion to spread like wild-fire. The English had to fly for 
their lives, and a provisional government was set up under William 
Wallace and Andrew Murray, ' the generals of the army of the kingdom 
of Scotland ' and guardians for King John. 

During the whole of this year Edward himself was in Flanders, almost 
as much troubled to keep the peace between his Flemish, English, and 
Welsh soldiers as to fight the French, but in 1298 an ojDpor- 
Second ^ime truce gave him an opportunity to return to England, 

hf Scotland. ^"^^ ^^^ marched north to crush Wallace. The task was not 
easy, as the lowlands had been so ravaged that feeding the 
army was all but impossible, and a retreat was inevitable when Edward 



1303 Edward L 225 

learned that Wallace lay in Falkirk wood ready to fall on his rear. The 
news revived the drooping energies of his soldiers, and a rapid march 
brought them in view of the Scots on July 22nd, 1298. Battle of 
Being deficient in cavalry, then the ofiensive part of an Falkirk, 
army, Wallace took post behind a morass, drew ujd his spearmen in four 
circles defended by palisades, linked them together by a line of archers, 
and placed his scanty troop of cavalry in the rear. Edward, however, 
showed himself equal to the occasion. Sending his cavalry to right and 
left of the morass, he put the Scottish horsemen to flight, and drove the 
archers into the squares, and then bringing up his own archers and 
military engines he plied the Scots with missiles till well-directed charges 
of cavalry were able to break their ranks. The defeat of Falkirk was 
fatal to Wallace's power, and after less than a year's prominence he dis- 
appears from the scene, and seems to have spent the next feAv years 
l^artly in hiding, partly in France. 

Though Wallace left the field, his place was taken by others ; and 
between 1298 and 1303 the chief burden fell on John Comyn, sister's 
son to Balliol, and the bishop of St. Andrews, and by their comyn's 
efforts the independence of Scotland north of the Forth was Rebellion, 
mamtained. Their chief exploit was the victory of Koslin in 1302. 
During those years French affairs still detained Edward; but in 1302 the 
Flemings defeated Philip in the famous battle of Courtrai ; Philip himself 
was further absorbed in a quarrel with Boniface ; and in 1303 Edward was 
again able to give his personal attention to Scotland. The result showed 
how much the Scottish resistance had been indebted to the French troubles. 
Almost without fighting, he marched his army across the Forth, and made 
his way to Aberdeen and Banff. This display of power frightened Comyn 
into submission. During the winter he negotiated for himself and his 
friends, and was permitted to make his peace : the same indulgence being- 
offered to Wallace ' if he thought proper.' Wallace, however, made no 
sign, and Edward, fearful lest his continuance at large might lead to 
further troubles, made it known that his favour might be won by 
the apprehension of the outlaw. The hint had its effect. Wallace was 
was seized by the sherifl' of Dumbarton, Sir John Menteith, and was 
carried to London. There he is said to have pleaded that Execution 
what he had done was not treason, as he had never sworn °^ 'Wallace, 
allegiance to Edward. He was condemned to be hanged by the neck for 
the robberies, murders, and felonies of which he had been guilty. His 
head was placed on London Bridge, and his quarters distributed to 
Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling, and Perth. Wallace had played for a great 
stake and lost ; but his death made him the hero of Scottish independence ; 

p 



226 Later Angevin Kings 1303 

and legend, song and fiction have tended to exalt his rejDutation somewhat 
unfairly at the exj^ense of other Scottish jjatriots. 

Resistance being now apparently at an end, Edward produced his 
scheme for the government of Scotland. The administration of Scottish 
Or anisation '^^'<^^^ "^^'^^^ placed under his nephew John of Brittany as 
of Scotland, lord-lieutenant and guardian. Two justices each wer6 
allotted to four cu'cuits into which the land was divided. The Scottish 
laws were to be revised and those that were barbarous or contrary 
to the will of God abolished. Lastly, some representatives for Scot- 
land were to be i^resent in the English parliament. This scheme, 
if fairly carried out, was not l)ad ; but a national feeling had begun 
to rise among the Scots, and a new pretender soon appeared to take 
Robert advantage of it. This was Robert Bruce, gi'andson of 
Bruce. fj^e claimant. Though his father played an ambiguous 
part, this young man, now about twenty-five, had hitherto been on 
Edward's side, and was consulted by him about the management 
of the kingdom ; but in 1306 he determined to try for the crown 

Murder of l^iii^self. In an interview held at Dumfries in 1306 

Corny n. Bruce, in a fit of anger, stabbed Comyn, and whether his 
determination to try for the crown dates from before or after the murder 
it is impossible to say. At any rate he raised his standard in Galloway ; 
and, being soon joined by a small following, was crowned at Scone in 
March. At first the matter did not seem very serious, for Bruce could 
not hold his own in the open field ; but Scotland diflered from Wales in 
this, that whereas in Wales the district of Snowdon could easily 1)C 
blockaded, in Scotland the lowlands were fringed by a backgTound of 
inaccessible moors, mountains, and islands to which retreat was always 
open, and in which pursuit was in vain. Consequently an outlaw could 
bide his time, and while striking sufficient blows to keep up his reputa- 
tion and encourage resistance could always keep himself out of harm's 
way. This was Bruce's game, and circumstances ultimately enabled him 
to play it with success. 

Chief of these was the death of the veteran Edward. Over fifty 
years of active life and anxiety had begun to break down the iron 

Death of Constitution of the king. In the autumn of 1306, when 

Edward. |jg ^^.g^ heard of Bruce's rising, he had had to make the 
journey to Carlisle in a horse litter ; and though in 1307 he thought 
himself so far better that he was able to mount his charger, the eflbrt 
was too much for his strength, and after two short marches he died at 
Burgh -on-the Sands on July 7th, 1307. 

Edward was twice married, first to Eleanor of Castile, Avho died in 



1307 



Edward I. 



227 



1290. By her he had four sons and nine daughters. Of the sons one 
only, Edward, the youngest, survived his father. Of the daughters, 
one married Earl Gilbert of Gloucester ; another married Edward's 
HumjDhrey, earl of Hereford. By his second wife Margaret family, 
he left two sons, Thomas, earl of Norfolk, and Edmund, earl of Kent. 
Most of his other daughters married abroad. 



CHIEF DA TES. 

Statute of Mortmain (de religiosis), . 

Final Conquest of Wales 

Second Statute of Westminster (de donis), 

Statute of Winchester 

Third Statute of Westminster (quia emptores 

Scottish award, 

First complete and model Parliament, 

Battle of Dunbar, 

Battle of Camhuskenneth, .... 
Confirmation of the Charters, , 

Battle of Falkirk 

Bruce's rebellion begins, .... 



A.D. 

1279 
1282 
1285 
1285 
1290 
1292 
1295 
1296 
1297 
1297 
1298 
1306 



I 



CHAPTEK II 

EDWARD II.: 1307-1327 
Born 1284; married Isabella of France, 1308 ; died 1327. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 
Scotland. France. 

Robert i., 1306-1329. Philip iv., 1285-1309 (see page 246). 

Piers Gaveston— The Lords Ordainers — Gaveston's Death — Brace's Scottish suc- 
cesses — Bannockburn — The Despeusers — Lancasters Defeat at Borough- 
bridge, and Death — General combination against the Despensers, headed by 
the Queen and Mortimer, leads to Edward's Dethronement, 

Edward, Prince of Wales, who succeeded his father at the age of 
twenty-three, was one of the worst of the English kings. His father 
Character of Edward and his grandftither Henry were both cast in 
Edward II. .^ diflerent mould ; but the younger Edward inherited 
neither the statesmanlike ability of the one nor the piety of the other. 
He grew up utterly frivolous and unprincipled ; and though he was 
handsome, accomplished, and endowed with the power of winning the 
attachment of his intimate associates, his reign was a complete failure. 

The most obvious cause of this was his addiction to favourites. The 
word ' favourite ' is one which needs to be used with discrimination. Its 
Meaning of most obvious signification is that of some one in whom the 
sovereign delights, and on whom he lavishes gifts and 
favours ; but it is also used less correctly of any person who has si^ecial 
influence over the king's policy, though such influence may be the proj)er 
reward of distinguished ability. Favourites of the first class were hateful 
to the general body of tlie people, because the wealth lavished on them 
impoverished the crown, and consequently had to be made good by 
increased taxation ; those of the second were specially disliked by the 
nobility. In England, it was the claim of the great nobles to be the 
hereditary advisers of the crown, and as such to have access at all times 
to the king's person, and, therefore, they regarded with jealousy any one, 
whether he were an upstart or one of themselves, who secured a para- 
mount influence in the king's deliberations. For centuries this feeling 

228 



1307 Edward II. 229 

was one of the permanent factors of English politics, and somewhat 
curiously it seems to have been accepted as right and proper even by the 
general body of the people. If the king were strong he was able to pro- 
tect his servants ; if he were weak, he and they fell together ; but the 
hatred between the titled nobility and the untitled ministers of the king 
always existed. It appears in the cases of Flambard and Becket, and 
such a man as Wolsey, for example, knew that his enemies were always 
on the watch to attack him the instant the king's favour was withdrawn. 
The rallying-point of the nobility against ' the favourite ' was almost 
invariably in England a younger member of the royal family. Even 
Simon de Montfort, being brother-in-law of Henry iii.. The opposi- 
can hardly be regarded as an exception to the rule. The ^^°"' 
cause of this was in some measure the difficulty of jDroviding for the 
princes of the blood. Henry ii. had endeavoured without much success 
to carve portions for his younger sons out of his continental possessions. 
Richard was childless. John's sons were children. Henry iii. made his 
only brother, Richard, earl of Cornwall, a position which carried with it 
the enormous wealth which accrued from the Cornish tin mines. On his 
second son, Edmund Crouchback or Crossback, Henry, after failing to make 
him king of Sicily, bestowed the earldoms of Lancaster, Leicester, and 
Derby, the two latter the forfeited holdings of Earl Simon and Earl 
Ferrers. Edmund was succeeded by his son Thomas, who married the 
heiress of Edward's faithful friend the earl of Lincoln and Salisbury, 
and so expected the eventual succession to two more earldoms, Lincoln 
and Salisbury. Thomas, generally known as Thomas of Lancaster, was a 
man of great force of character and violent temper, but in no sense a real 
statesman. Of the other great earldoms of the country, those of Norfolk 
and Kent had been given to Edward i.'s little sons, Thomas and 
Edmund : those of Cornwall and Chester w^ere in the hands of the kino- : 
Gloucester, in those of Gilbert, the king's nephew ; Hereford, in those of 
Edward's brother-in-law, Humphrey de Bohun ; ^ and Pembroke, in those 
of Aymer de Valence, the king's half-cousin. Such a concentration of 

1 THE BOHUNS. 

Humphrey de Bohun, friend of Simon de Montfort, died 1275. 

Humphrey de Bohun, of the Confirmatio Chartarum, died 1298. 

Humphrey de Bohun, m. Elizabeth, daughter of Edward i.; 
I killed at Boroughbridge, 1322. 

Humphrey de Bohun. 



I I 

Eleanor, m. Tliomas Mary, m. Henry of 

of Gloucester. Bolingbroke (Henry iv.). 



230 Lakr Angevin Kings 1307 

property in a few hands was totally foreign to the ideas of such a king as 
William the Conqueror, for it resulted in any quarrel between the king 
and his relatives taking the form of civil war. 

This moment, when the influence represented by the great earldoms 
was specially concentrated and powerful, Edward chose to advance a 

Piers favourite, whose name has become typical of such characters 

Gaveston. f^j. ^\ ^{^^q^ This was Piers Gaveston, a Gascon, who had 
been the king's playfellow as a boy, and had gained such an influence 
over him that Edward seemed incapable of existing happily without him. 
His character, perhaps unfairly, has been assumed to be more than 
ordinarily dejDraved ; but it is certain that Edward considered him a 
most improper companion for his son, banished him from the court, 
and made it one of his last requests to his son that he would free himself 
from his influence. On the contrary, no sooner was his father dead than 
Edward recalled Piers, made him earl of Cornwall, a proceeding so 
unpopular that few would address him by the title ; married him to his 
niece, Margaret of Gloucester ; dismissed at his bidding Walter Langton, 
the trusted treasurer of his father ; presented him with vast sums of money, 
especially with £32,000, reserved by his father for a crusade ; made him 
regent when he went over to France to marry the beautiful Isabella ; 
permitted him to carry the Crown at the coronation, and to take pre- 
cedence of the ancient nobles of the realm. Had Gaveston been a man 
distinguished for modesty and tact, such favours would have ensured his 
unpopularity ; but, in fact, he was utterly devoid of any capacity for 
conciliation, made new enemies by his insolent ostentation, and exas- 
perated the jealous nobles by inventing for them offensive nicknames, 
which by the folly of his royal patron became public property. Thomas 
of Lancaster he called ' the Hog ' ; Warwick, ' the Black Dog of 
Arden ' ; Pembroke was 'Joseph the Jew ' ; his brother-in-law Gloucester 
was ' the Cuckoo,' and so on. 

The natural result of such folly was that at the very first great 
His dismissal council held by Edward in April 1308, the prelates, earls, 

eman ed. ,^^^ barons unanimously demanded his banishment ; and 
Edward had to give way. His 'popularity — if he ever had any — was 
absolutely gone. He had shown not the slightest capacity for carrying 
on the ordinary business of state, and what time he could spare from 
the most frivolous amusements he devoted to plotting the return of his 
favourite, whom he had made governor of Ireland. In 1309 a Parlia- 
ment met, and the list of complaints presented proves conclusively in 
how short a time the Course of such a monarch could affect the whole 
routine'of government. Edward was ready to promise amendment, 



1312 Edward II. 231 

especially as the pope had at his request released Gaveston from his oath 
to remain out of England ; and his one wish was to win the consent of 
the nobility to the favourite's return. For the moment he succeeded ; 
hut Gaveston made fresh enemies, and in 1310 a great council, held at 
Westminster, fell back on the precedent of 1258, took the government 
out of Edward's hands, and placed it in those of a body of The Lords 
twenty - one lords ordainers, including archbishop Win- Ordamers. 
chelsea, the earls of Pembroke, Lancaster, Hereford, Warwick, and 
Gloucester, with directions to regulate the king's household, and to 
reform the abuses of the realm. 

To escape from their surveillance Edward hurried to the Scottish 
border, taking Gaveston with him, and remained there for a year. In 
his absence the ordainers had a free hand, of which they took full 
advantage to draw up a lengthy scheme of reform, of which the most 
important items were the perpetual banishment of Gaveston, 

. Gaveston 

the appointment for the future of all state officers by the again 
counsel and consent of the baronage, the holding of a par- '^"^'^^e . 
liament at least once a year, and a complete reform of the administration. 
To this Edward, after humbly entreating mercy for ' his brother Piers,' 
was compelled to assent in 1311 ; but in 1312 the infatuated king again 
recalled Gaveston, and restored his forfeited estates. On this Arch- 
bishop Winchelsea put the favourite under the ban of the Church ; 
while Lancaster, Pembroke, Warwick, and Hereford raised their forces 
and besieged Gaveston in Scarborough Castle, where Edward had placed 
him for safety. Here Gaveston was forced to capitulate, and was then 
sent to Wallingford under the safe-conduct of the earl of Pembroke, to 
await the assembling of parliament. Warwick and Lancaster, however, 
were in no mood to wait, and when Gaveston had reached Deddington 
in Oxfordshire, he was seized by ' the Black Dog of Arden,' and hurried 
off to Warwick Castle, where he found Lancaster, Hereford, and Arundel 
awaiting his arrival. A discussion took place as to his fate ; but the 
words of the proverb, ' If you let the fox go, you will have Gaveston 
to hunt him again ' decided his destiny ; and Lancaster and executed. 
Hereford saw his head struck off on Blacklow Hill, on the road to 
Kenilworth. 

Such a murder of a political opponent had hitherto been almost un- 
known in England, and it marks the beginning of a series of butcheries 
which can hardly be said to have closed till the accession of 

TT /^ , , T . 1 1 T . , Demoralisa- 

Henry VII. Contrasted with the thirteenth century, those tionofthe 
of the fourteenth and fifteenth appear to indicate a distinct ^°""^''y- 
deterioration in the aims and ideals of the great men of the time. 



232 Later Angevin Kings 1312 

Whether it was due to the hardening influence of the protracted wars 
with Scotland and France, or to the adoption of chivalry with its thin 
veneer of courtesy and breeding, ill serving to conceal licentiousness, 
class feeling, and real heartlessness, or to the decay of personal religion, 
it is certain that such a degradation was at work among the uiDper 
classes of society. The change seems to be connected with and pretty 
The French much coincident with the adoption of the French language, 
Language. manners, and culture by the English. This movement gained 
strength under Henry in., from whose reign dates the first state paper 
in French ; under Edward i., that language was adopted in the Law 
Courts, and by the time of Edward ii. it is generally believed to have 
been the language of society. Its adoption must not be associated 
either witli, the Norman Conquest or with the French possessions of 
Henry ii. It is more analogous to the adoption of French as the usual 
language of the uj)per classes in Eussia at the present time. The 
language spoken, too, was not the old Norman French of the Conquest, 
but the dialect of Paris and the Isle of France, which was now becoming 
the standard French language. Beneath it, however, the real English, 
which for a long time had been eclipsed as a literary language by Latin, 
was beginning to assert itself; and the very period when French was 
most widely spoken in this country was also that which saw the fore- 
runners of Wyclif and Chaucer. 

Edward was powerless to revenge the death of his friend, so again 
turned his attention to Scotland, where Bruce had been making rapid 
Successes of progress. The English hold on Scotland dejDended on 
Bruce. retaining possession of the great castles of southern Scot- 

land, of which the chief were Roxburgh, Linlithgow, Perth, Edinburgh, 
and Stirling. In the course of five years — from 1307 to 1312 — Bruce 
had overcome all opposition in the field, whether from the English 
soldiers or discontented Scots ; and by 1312 he seems to have had the 
population on his side almost to a man. In 1311 his progress was 
interrupted by the invasion of Edward and Gaveston ; but as soon as 
they were gone, Bruce encouraged his soldiers by an invasion of Eng- 
land, in which the northern counties were ruthlessly ravaged, and then 
began a systematic attack on the castles. In January 1312 he took 
Perth by assault ; on March 7th Roxburgh surrendered ; on the 14th 
his sister's son Randolph and a band of thirty men scaled the precipitous 
rock which is crowned by Edinburgh castle, and took that great strong- 
hold by surprise. About the same time Linlithgow castle was taken by 
the address of a countryman named Binnock or Binnie, Avho concealed 
some soldiers in a load of hay, and then stopj)ed his waggon in the gate- 



1314 Edward 11. 233 

way, so that the portcullis could not l)e lowered. Other successes fol^ 
lowed, and at length Stirling alone held out ; and so beset were the 
garrison that the governor. Sir Philip Mowbray, agreed to surrender on 
June 24th, 1314, unless before that date he were relieved. 

Edward, therefore, had ample time to relieve the town, and indeed 
Bruce was highly incensed when he heard what favourable Expedition 
terms had been oflFered to the garrison. However, he *° Scotland, 
foolishly left matters till the last moment, and only fixed the 11th of 
June as the day for a general rendezvous at Berwick. On that day a 
vast array of horsemen, many clad in full armour, and many thousand 
archers, the value of whom was beginning to be fully recognised, 
assembled ; and the numbers might have been even greater had not 
Lancaster kept sullenly aloof. The gallant force made its way un- 
opposed through the Lowlands ; but did not come within sight of Stir- 
ling till the very day before the jDromised surrender. Arrived near 
Stirling, the English found that Bruce was waiting to fight, and that the 
ground he held was terribly strong ; but there was no time left to 
wait or to manoeuvre, and at all risks a battle had to be fought there 
and then. 

Bruce had drawn up his men on some rising ground behind the little 
stream of the Bannockburn in such a way as to command all the roads 
which approached Stirling from the south-west. His right The Scottish 
was covered by a marsh, through which the stream passes, and Position, 
between his left wing and the Forth lay a piece of low, wet land, broken 
by pools of water, and made still stronger by concealed pits, which 
Bruce had caused to be dug wherever the ground was firm. The strength 
of the position was shown on the evening the English arrived, for Ran- 
dolph, earl of Moray, easily defeated an attempt to throw reinforcements 
into Stirling ; and Bruce roused the enthusiasm of his followers to the 
highest pitch by killing an English knight, Henry de Bohun, in single 
combat. 

For the fight Bruce drew up his infontry in four divisions, all armed 

with long spears. Each division was circular in form, and the spears of 

the men of the front ranks stuck out in front like the spines 

The Battle 
of a hedgehog, making it almost impenetrable for cavalry, of Bannock- 

His horsemen Bruce kept in reserve. None of the English 

leaders, Edward himself, Humphrey of Hereford, or Gilbert of Gloucester, 

seem to have had any experience of high command ; and, compared to 

the efficiency and readiness of Bruce, the English army was all confusion. 

At Falkirk, Edward i. had won the battle by first dispersing the Scottish 

cavalry and then bringing up his archers against the spearmen, who 



234 



Later Angevin Kings 



13U 



could offer little resistance against missile weapons ; but at Bannockbum 
the archers were allowed to advance in a long line some way in front of 
the men-at-arms, while the Scottish cavalry was still unbroken. Of this 
mistake Bruce took instant advantage, and, bringing his horsemen 
round the marsh, hurled them on the flank of the English bowmen. 
Taken thus at a disadvantage, the whole line of archers were cut to 
j)ieces, and the Scottish horse had time to regain their old position before 
the English men-at-arms came ujd. This success decided the battle, for 
Edward's mail-clad cavalry could do nothing against the forests of levelled 




spears that met its attack, and its headlong valour simply served to 
swell the slaughter. Presently, from behind the Scottish ranks, what 
appeared to be a fresh army was seen to be advancing, though in reality 
it was nothing more than a sham army of camp-followers, and the acci- 
Defeatofthe dent or ruse completed the confusion of the English lines, 
nghsh. Taking advantage of their disorder, Bruce ordered a general 
advance. Gloucester perished on the field ; Hereford and Edward both 
took refuge in flight ; and a terrible slaughter of the now despairing 
fugitives, and the surrender of Stirling, closed a day as disgraceful to 
the English leaders as it was creditable to all ranks of the Scots. 



1319 Edward 11. 235 

This victory comj)leted the work of the Scottish independence, and for the 
remainder of the war the Scots were the aggressors. Already, Bruce had 
found time for the conquest of the Isle of Man. In 1315 his The Scotch 
brother David crossed the sea to Ireland, and endeavoured ^" Ireland, 
to emulate his brother by winning the crown of that island. His arrival 
was the signal for a partial rising of the natives ; but the chiefs of 
Connaught and Munster remained true to the English crown. Next 
year he was joined by the king of Scots ; but an attack on Dublin failed. 
Robert soon returned ; and Edward Bruce, after being victorious in eigh- 
teen battles, was defeated and killed at Fagher, near Dundalk, in 1318. 
Beyond adding another to the list of sanguinary wars which desolated 
that unfortunate country, the expedition had no permanent effect on the 
condition of Ireland. 

While Bruce had been away, Eandolph, Douglas, and Bishoj) Sinclair 
had well filled his place, and on his return he proceeded to besiege and 
take Berwick ; and the eastern road into England beino- thus 

1 • 1 o 1111 Scottish 

clear, every harvest tnne saw the Scots over the border and invasions of 
ravaging far and wide. On one occasion Scarborough, "^ ^" ' 
Northallerton, Boroughbridge, and Skipton were all burnt, and the whole 
country to the northwards harried with fire and sword. In 1319 they were 
again in Yorkshire, and the clergy, wishing to emulate the achievements 
of 1338, led out their flocks to withstand the invaders. Over such an 
army Randolph won an easy victory. Encountering them at Battle of 
Myton-on-Swale, he fired some stacks so that the wind blew Myton. 
the smoke into the eyes of the peasant host, and then charging with all his 
power he put them to the rout and slew so many of the white-surpliced 
clergy that the fight was named the Chapter of Myton. So terrible were 
the ravages of the Scots that no less than eighty-four villages were 
excused payment of taxes on the ground of their utter ruin • j^^jj, Qf ^j^g 
and it is a certain fact that Northumberland farms, which North, 
had been in a flourishing condition down to 1314, were so devastated by 
the increasing warfare of the border that they never recovered their 
prosperity till after the accession of James i, of England. 

To add to this misfortune of the kingdom, the years 1315 and 1316 
were years of famine. In England famines were extremely rare, owing 
partly to the gTeat diversity of the soil and climate, so that if some 
districts did badly others were better off, partly to the high standard of 
living to which the agricultural classes adhered, which ^he great 
gave a large margin between their ordinary fare and starva- famine, 
tion. However, in these years incessant rain through the summer pre- 
vented the corn from ripening. In 1315 south Wales and Devonshire 



236 Later Angevin Kings 1319 

and Cornwall escaped, but in 1316 the rain was universal. Consequently 
the mass of the people were put to sore straits to find food, many died, 
and even the royal table was with difficulty supplied with bread. Matters 
were made worse by the action of the great lords, who were driven to 
dismiss their retainers and servants ; and these poor fellows, unaccustomed 
to work, and indeed without the means of getting a livelihood, betook 
themselves to robbery and pillage. So serious was the mortality that a 
permanent rise of wages to the extent of twenty per cent, was caused by 
the scarcity of labour. Cattle disease also broke out and caused great 
losses all over the country. 

The disgrace of Bannockburn, the inroads of the Scots, the disasters of 
famine and pestilence completed the discredit of Edward's administration ; 
Thomas of while his cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, saw in the disasters 
Lancaster, ^f j^jg country nothing but an excellent opportunity for push- 
ing his own fortune. Since Gaveston's death his importance had been 
steadily growing. In 1311 the death of his father-in-law, the earl of 
Lincoln, gave him the two earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury. Arch- 
bishop Winchelsea died in 1313, and was replaced by the feeble Reynolds. 
Bannockburn removed the brave and high-minded earl of Gloucester, the 
noblest character among the English barons. Warwick died in 1315. 
Lancaster's chief friends were Humphrey of Hereford and the two Eoger 
Mortimers, of whom the elder, the lord of Chirk, was the nephew of the 
younger, Roger Mortimer of Wigmore ; and in the council he was practi- 
cally supreme. Against Lancaster's influence Edward tried to strengthen 
himself by the fi'iendship of the earl of Pembroke, who had never forgiven 
Lancaster for his share in taking Gaveston from his charge, and by that 
The ^f t^^® Hugh Despensers, fether and son. Hugh Despenser 

Despensers. ^]^g elder was the son of another Hugh, the friend of Simon 
de Montfort. He was a man of considerable ability, but grasping after 
wealth and tactless. His son Hugh, who had originally been placed 
near the king by Lancaster's influence, rapidly took the place in 
Edward's aff'ections formerly filled l)v Gaveston. Edward gi^atified 
his new favourite by marrying him to his niece, one of the co-heiresses 
of the earl of Gloucester, which brought him into rivalry with Here- 
ford, as lord of Brecon, and his fellow-marcher, Roger of Wigmore. 
Their rapidly accumulated wealth also added to their unpopularity. 
No less than sixty-three English manors were in their hands; and 
though by birth they ranked with the ancient families of the realm, 
they were almost as much hated as Gaveston, or as the foreigners of 1258. 
For some time, however, neither party was strong enough to crush the 
other ; but the country was kept in constant agitation liy wars on the 



Edward 11. 237 

Welsh march, by tournaments which served as excuses for armed 
assemblies of barons, by struggles for supremacy in the council, and 
by rumours that one party or another was intriguing with the 
Scots. 

At length matters came to a head in a full parliament, which met at 
Westminster in July 1321, where a formal attack was made on the 
Despensers. The earl of Hereford appeared as chief jDrose- , 

cutor, and the favourites were accused of having prevented dismissal 
the magnates of the realm from having access to the king 
and of having removed ministers appointed by them, of having stirred up 
civil war, and generally of perverting and hindering justice. On this 
charge the barons condemned both Despensers to forfeit their property 
or to go into exile, and not return without the permission of the pre- 
lates, earls, and barons duly summoned in Parliament. 

Two months afterwards a reaction took place. Lady Badlesmere re- 
fused to admit Queen Isabella, who asked for a night's lodging in her 
castle of Leeds in Kent. Badlesmere was himself a foe of ^he Queen 
Lancaster ; and when Edward ajDpealed for aid to punish the ^suited, 
insult, Lancaster allowed him to get together a considerable force, of 
which Edward cleverly took advantage to attack the earl of Hereford. 
So much unexpected energy did the king display, that Lancaster was 
quite taken by surprise, and allowed the king to force the passage of 
the Severn, to crush the Mortimers, to capture the towns of Hereford and 
Gloucester, and to recall the Despensers in triumph. Hearing of these 
disasters, Lancaster, who had advanced into the Midlands, turned and fled 
north, probably hoping to join the Scots, with whom he had been engaged 
in a traitorous correspondence, and on his road was joined by Hereford and 

other fugitives from the west. On March 16 he reached 

® . . Battle of 

Boroughbridge on the Ure, but found the bridge held by Sir Borough - 

Andrew Harclay, governor of Carlisle. A des23erate attenij)t ^^ ^ 

was made to force the passage, but the archers on the northern bank 

commanded both the bridge and a neighbouring ford. Hereford was 

killed by a Welshman, who concealed himself among the supports 

of the bridge and stabbed him from below ; and Lancaster, in utter 

despair, took sanctuary in a church. Thence he was dragged by 

Edward's men, who had closed upon his rear. Mounted on a wretched 

horse, he was taken in triumph to Pontefract, and there his Execution of 

head was struck off with every -circumstance of contumely Lancaster. 

and insult. Lord Badlesmere and twenty-eight others were hanged ; 

the Mortimers and a number of others were imprisoned ; and it seemed 

for the moment as though a clean sweej) had Ijeen made of the baronial 



238 Later Angevin Kings 1321 

party. Strangely enough, in spite of the known bad character of 
Lancaster, his evil life, his cruelty, selfishness, and contempt for human 
life, his showy popular qualities and his opposition to the still more 
detested Edward ultimately gained him the reputation of a saint — a fact 
which impressively shows the degradation through which the country was 
being dragged. 

The fall of the Lancastrian party, however, w^as not in itself a blow to 
political progress such as a triumph of John over the barons of the 
Charter would have been. It is clear that Lancaster's 
tional im- i^^^ of ^^1© was not that of the king and nation working 
Lanca"er^ together, as had been the wish of Edward i., but rather 
of a baronial oligarchy controlling the king's policy by 
electing his council and officers, but not taking the people into their 
confidence. Even the Despensers had more conception of a national policy 
than their opponents ; and the acts of the parliament of York, called in 
May 1322, two months after the battle of Boroughbridge, are of distinct 
constitutional importance. In it the Ordinances were formally repealed, 
on the ground that they had been drawn up and published by men chosen 
only by the lords ; and the fundamental doctrine of the English constitu- 
tion was formulated, that ' matters which are to be established for the 
estate of our lord the king and of his heirs, and for the estate of the realm 
and of the peo]3le, shall be treated, accorded, and established in parlia- 
ments by our lord the king, and by the consent of the prelates, earls, and 
barons, and the commonality of the realm, according as hath been hereto- 
fore accustomed.' At the same time, as at Marlborough in 1267, the 
most valuable parts of the Ordinances were carefully re-enacted. When 
parliament was dissolved, Edward made a futile attempt to regain popular- 
ity by an invasion of Scotland ; but the expedition was a complete foilure. 
The Scots were too Avary to fight ; the country had suflered too much to 
Escape at iTi^intain an army ; and when Edward recrossed the border 
Byland. the Scots entered England at his heels, all but took him 
prisoner at Byland Abbey, and routed him on the slopes of the 
Hambletons in October.. Lancaster's treachery proved infectious ; even 
Harclay, the victor of Boroughbridge, who had been made earl of Carlisle, 
was seduced from his allegiance, and, his crime being detected, he was 
degraded from his earldom and knighthood and ignominiously hanged 
within a year of his victory. With such a king, and with such leaders, 
the continuance of the war was impossible, and in 1323 a truce for 
thirteen years was made with the Scots. 

Unwarned by their previous disaster, the Despensers, with almost 
inconceivable folly, again excited disgust, the elder by his greediness, the 



1327 Edward 11. 239 

younger by the arrogance of his behaviour. The whole framework of 
government seemed about to dissolve : the law was unexecuted ; the taxes 
were unpaid; the royal officials were detested; the clergy yo\\ ofth 
were neutral or disaffected : everything denoted a further Despensers. 
revolution. Only a leader was wanting, and this was supplied in 1324 
by the escape from the Tower of Koger Mortimer of Wigmore. Next 
year Edward found it necessary to send his queen to France to negotiate 
with her brother about the homage due from Gascony and ^p^e Oueen 
Ponthieu. While there she was joined by Eoger Mortimer, ^" France. 
who soon alienated all her affection from her husband, and engaged her in 
a plot against the Despensers, of which the leading spirit was Mortimer's 
friend, Adam Orleton, bishop of Hereford. Of this plot Paris became the 
headquarters. Edward, duke of Aquitaine, now a lad of fourteen, who 
was sent over to do homage on behalf of his father, became a mere tool in 
his mother's hands. Compelled by her brother to leave Paris on the 
ground of her scandalous connection with Mortimer, Isabella 
removed to Hainault, where she secured a refuge and an of°tlfe'Queen 
army by negotiating a marriage between young Edward and ^."*^ yiov- 
Philippa, the daughter of the reigning count. At length, 
in September 1325, all was ready, and the conspirators landed at Orwell 
in Suffolk. 

Meanwhile, Edward had found himself incapable of securing the means 
of defence, and his fleets and his armies alike dispersed for want of pay. 
The Despensers brought nothing but additional unpopularity ; incapacity 
and when the queen landed, earls, bishops, barons, and °^ Edward, 
townsmen crowded to join her, while her husband was all but deserted. 
Such rapid success naturally increased the ambition of the conspirators, 
and an expedition originally directed against the Des^Densers develojDed 
into one for the deposition of Edward himself. Not knowing where to 
take refuge in England, the king played into the hands of his enemies 
by an abortive attempt to escape to Ireland. He then wandered aim- 
lessly about in Wales and the marches, accompanied by the younger 
Bespenser, and ultimately fell into the hands of his enemies in 
November. 

On Edward's flight to Ireland becoming known, young Edward was 
proclaimed guardian of the realm, and a parliament was summoned to 
meet in January 1327. Before it assembled, however, sum- ^ 

•^ ' ' Execution 

mary revenge was taken on the most unpopular of the king's of the 

• ^^csiDcnscrs 

mmiediate followers. On October 15, BishojD StajDleton, the 

treasurer, was murdered by the Londoners ; on October 16, the elder 

Bespenser was captured and hanged at Bristol; on November 17, the 



240 Later Angevin Kings 1327 

earl of Arundel was beheaded at Hereford by order of Mortimer ; and on 

November 24, at the same place, the younger Despenser was hanged on 

a gallows fifty feet high. 

The king's fate, however, requii'ed some deliberation ; but when 

parliament met, Bishop Orleton's terse question, ' whether they would 

have father or son for king,' disclosed an ahuost unanimous feeling 

Deposition against the elder Edward. Articles were drawn up in which 

of the King, ^j^g king-'s incompetence, his addiction to evil counsellors, his 

loss of Scotland, his violation of his coronation oath to do justice to all, 

and the utter hopelessness of expecting his amendment, were stated as 

obvious causes for his deposition. A request, however, was sent to 

Edward demanding his assent to his son's election. To this Edward was 

forced to consent. The homage and fealties sworn to him were then 

formally withdrawn, the high steward broke his staff, and the reign 

was thus declared to be at an end. 

The ex-king was then handed over to the custody of Sir John 

Maltravers, his bitter enemy. By him he was carried successively to 

Murder of ^^^ castles of Corfe, Bristol, and Berkeley, and subjected to 

Edward II. j^q grossest indignities. So long, however, as he lived none 

of the conspirators could feel safe, and he was put to death on September 

21, 1327. His corpse was then exjDosed to view, and was then 

quietly buried in the abbey church at Gloucester. The plea that he 

died a natural death deceived no one ; but for some time reports were 

current that the corpse exposed was not that of the king's, and that he 

was really living in concealment. Edward does not seem to have been 

especially bad or incompetent — not so bad, for instance, as John, or so 

incompetent as Henry iii. ; but he did not realise that the first duty of a 

mediaeval king was ' to scorn delights and live laborious days,' and his 

disasters are to be traced chiefly to this radical defect. 

The reign of Edward 11. was remarkable for the fall of the Knights 

Templars. This order was founded in 1118, and was an attempt to 

^ , , , combine the duties of a Christian soldier with the vows 
Order of the . ^ ^■ 

Templars of monastic chastity, poverty, and obedience. During the 
fighting in Palestine it had, with their fellow-order the 
Knights Hospitallers, done yeoman service ; but after the fall of Acre in 
1291 its original mission might be regarded as ended. Ofiers of territory 
had been made to both orders. Kichard i. had ofi'ered Cyprus to the 
Templars, Rhodes had been occupied by the Hospitallers ; but while 
the latter turned Rhodes into a fortress and made it, for two centuries, 
the bulwark of the Grecian archipelago against the inroads of the 
Mahommedans, the Templars gave up all connection with the east, and 



1327 



Edward 11. 



541 



so abandoned all pretence of fulfilling the object of their existence. 
Naturally, such conduct drew upon them the condemnation of public 
opinion, and a body which was at once rich, landed and idle, and had 
at command a body of 40,000 picked cavalry, could not expect to be 
viewed with indifi'erence. In addition to this, rumours were in circulation 
that life in the East, and their long contact with the Mohammedan 
world, had impaired both the orthodoxy and the manners of the knights. 
These accusations obtained the widest credence in France, where the 
order was particularly strong, and were taken up by Philip the Fair. 
As Pope Clement v. was a mere creature of Philip, the hostility of the 
French king was fatal to the order. After an investigation, the value of 
which is much decreased by the use of torture to extort confessions, a 
council held at Vienne in 1311 suppressed the order, and the bulk of 
its property was assigned to the Hospitallers, whose operations at 
Rhodes had recently gained them considerable popularity. 



CHIEF DATES. 



The Lords Ordainers, . 
Gaveston's death, 
Battle of Bannockburn, 
Battle of Boroughbridge, 
Execution of Lancaster, 



A.D. 
1310 
1312 
1314 
1322 
1322 



CHAPTEK III 

ED w AKD III.: 1327-1377 
Born 1312; married, 1328, Philippa of Hainault. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS 

Scotla7id. France. Castile. 

Robert i., d. 1329. Charles iv., d. 1328. Pedro the Cruel, 1350, d. 1368. 

David II., d. 1370. Philip vi., d. 1350. 

Robert ii., d. 1390. John, d. 1364. 

Charles v., d. 1380. 
Emperor. 
Louis IV., 1313-1347. 

Fall of Mortimer — Scottish Affairs bring on War with France, which led to 
important Constitutional Developments — Battles of Sluys and Crecy — 
Siege of Calais— The Black Death, and its effects on the Manorial System 
— Battle of Poitiers and Treaty of Bretigny — Spanish Expedition leads to 
a disastrous renewal of the War — Growtli of a strong feeling against tlie Pope 
and the Clergy — John of Gaunt and Wyclif — The Reforms of the Good 
Parliament. 

The deposition of Edward ii. had been effected by the coalition of 
tliree parties : a court party, represented by Isabella and the king's 
Condition half-brothers, the earls of Norfolk and Kent ; the Lords 
of Parties. Marcher, headed, by Mortimer; and the Lancastrians or 
Northerners, led by Earl Thomas's younger brother Henry ; and in 
nominating a standing council of fourteen to manage the State during 
the new king's minority, the claims of each Avere fully taken into con- 
sideration. Henry of Lancaster, who, on the reversal of his brother's 
attainder became earl of Lancaster, Leicester, Lincoln, and Derby, was 
its president ; and other leading members were the earls of Norfolk and 
Kent, Bishop Orleton, the treasurer and confidant of Mortimer and 
the queen, and John Stratford, the rising administrator and friend of 
Lancaster, who had drafted the articles of accusation against the late 
king. Mortimer contented himself with the reality of influence, and 
devoted himself to amassing enormous w^ealth. 

242 



1328 Eclioard III. 243 

The immediate attention of the new government had to be given to 
Scotland. In 1323, a truce for thirteen years had been signed ; but the 
confusion into which English aftairs had fallen suggested to Scottish 
Bruce the opportuneness of the moment for securing a Affairs, 
complete recognition of his independence ; and in 1327 he broke the 
truce, and sent an army under Douglas into the northern counties. The 
tactics of the Scots made them the most formidable of raiders. Their 
soldiers were all mounted. Each carried on his saddle a bag of oatmeal 
and an iron j^late on which he cooked it, mixed with water from the 
nearest stream. For meat they trusted to plunder, and invasion of 
having flayed the captured beasts, they fastened their skins England, 
by the legs to four posts, filled them with water, and, having lighted a 
fire beneath, boiled the flesh. Such an army was too rapid in its motions 
to be easily followed ; but after a long chase Edward found them 
encamped on the banks of the Wear, near Stanhope. Their position was 
too strong to be assaulted with success : a proposal that the English 
should be allowed to cross without opposition and fight on fair ground 
was scornfully rejected by Douglas ; and, after some manoeu\Ting, the 
Scots broke up their cam^) and recrossed the Border. Such an inglorious 
campaign gave little encouragement to either party to continue the war. 
Bruce was now an old man, and was anxious to secure a peaceful reign 
for his little son David ; the northern barons were tired of having their 
estates subjected to continual pillage ; and, accordingly, in 
1328, a treaty was made at Northampton, by which in Northamp- 
return for ^20,000 the English king renounced the claim to 
overlordship made by his grandfather, and gave his sister Jane to be 
brought up as David's affianced wife. The next year Kobert Bruce died, 
and was succeeded by David, who, at his coronation, was anointed with 
oil, thus asserting that he reigned as an independent monarch, and not 
merely as the vassal of England, 

Prudent as the peace of Northampton undoubtedly was, it proved 
exceedingly unpopular in the south of England, where the ravages of 
war had not been felt. One of the chief accusations against the late 
king had been the loss of Scotland ; and the appropriation by Mortimer 
and Isabella of the £20,000 seemed to be the culmination of the dis- 
grace. For some time the council had been anything but harmonious ; 
and in 1328, Lancaster, disgusted with a position which gave him the 
appearance of responsibility without any of the reality of power, formed 
a plan to get rid of Mortimer, who had recently been piots against 
created earl of March. The scheme, however, was pre- Mortimer, 
mature : the earls of Norfolk and Kent, who for a moment joined 



244 Later Angevin Kings 1328 

Lancaster, deserted him, and the earl was compelled to make terms. 
Mortimer then turned on the unfortunate earl of Kent, accused him 
of plotting to restore Edward ii., of whose continued existence he 
had been persuaded by Mortimer's agents, and in March 1330 hurried 
him to execution. This wicked act roused the horror of the whole 
country : Lancaster felt tliat he would be himself the next victim, and 
he at once took effective measures to secure the assistance of Edward 
for the overthrow of his mother's paramour. The young king had 
been married in 1328, and was already the father of a son, after- 
wards the Black Prince, when in 1330 Lancaster opened his eyes to the 
extraordinary insolence of Mortimer. Then measures were promptly 
taken. In spite of all Mortimer's precautions he was arrested in Not- 
Mortimer tinglmm Castle, and, having been taken to London, was 
hanged. hanged on the elms at Tyburn. Isabella herself was 
stripped of her ill-gotten wealth, restricted to a pension of £3000 a year, 
and condemned to perpetual residence at the manor of Rising, where she 
lived till 1358. 

With the fall of Mortimer, the real reign of Edward iii. may be said 
to begin. The young king was, and continued to be all his life, primarily 
Character of ^ soldier. His morality was founded on the code of honour 
Edward III. enjoined by the laws of chivalry, and he represented in his 
own person the strength and the weakness of that institution. Honour- 
able in dealing with all who came within the social pale of the knightly 
order, he had little sympathy for the trader or the peasant. Scrupulously 
courteous, he was little affected by the laws of Christian morality. A 
mirror of knightly accomplishments, he was vain, selfish, and pitiless. 
He regarded England chiefly as the source of his supplies of men and 
money, and persisted in pursuing his warlike schemes long after his 
subjects had become tired of them. At the same time his reign, 
though mainly associated with his wars, was very important from a con- 
stitutional point of view, as his constant demands for money compelled 
negotiations with parliament, and the consequence was a steady progress 
towards constitutional government. 

In the early years of his reign, Edward gave his chief confidence to 

John Stratford, who became archbishop of Canterbury in 1333, and 

^ , who, with his brother Robert, engrossed the chief adminis- 

Stratfords. . , . ^ , ' ^ ^ , „ 

trative busmess of the next ten years. Both were men oi 

industry, honesty, and considerable ability ; but none of the officials of 

Edward's reign were marked by any pre-eminence in statesmanship, a 

circumstance which makes Edward's personal power more conspicuous 

than it would otherwise have been. 



1341 Edward III. 245 

In 1332 a new difficulty arose in Scotland. A number of Encrlish 
barons, who held lands at both sides of the border, had lost their Scottish 
estates by the sej)aration of the two kingdoms. These Edward 
made common cause with Edward Balliol, son of John, the Baiiioi. 
late king, and, the border being closed against them by the orders of the 
government, took ship at Ravenspur, on the Huniber, and landed an 
army on the coast of Fife. There, by a wonderful stroke of fortune, they 
defeated a Scottish army with enormous loss in the night battle of 
Dupplin Moor ; and Balliol was crowned at Scone within a few weeks of 
his landing. His fall was equally rapid. Five weeks later he was 
badly defeated, and returned to England a helpless and solitary fugitive. 
Edward had discountenanced this expedition ; but as its events seemed 
to show the weakness of Scotland, he imitated the bad example of Bruce 
in similar circumstances, and determined to take advantage of David's 
minority to renew his claim to homage. Accordingly he recognised 
Edward Balliol's pretensions, and sent him with an army to undertake 
the siege of Berwick, where he himself arrived in 1333. To save the 
town, a relieving force of Scots under Archibald Douglas attacked 
Edward on Halidon Hill, a piece of rising ground two miles Battle of 
north of the town. Standing on the defensive, the English ^^^^^^o" ^»IJ- 
archers repelled every effort of the Scottish horsemen to make their way 
up the slope. The obstinacy of the Scots only added to the slaughter ; 
and eventually Douglas himself fell, and with him perished the flower of 
the Scottish nobility and a vast number of less distinguished combatants. 
Berwick instantly surrendered. Young David and his queen were 
hurried off to France, and Balliol was again placed on the throne. His 
second reign, however, was little longer than his first. Disgusted to find 
him a mere English puppet, who was willing not only to hold his crown 
as a vassal of England, but even to hand over to the English king that 
part of the lowlands which lies east of a line drawn from Linlithgow 
to Dumfries, i.e. roughly speaking, the old earldom of Lothian (see 
p. 65), the Scots again rose, and, though Balliol maintained Failure of 
his ground while English support was forthcoming, the ^^ ^° ' 
English were no sooner engaixed in the French war than he began to 
lose ground. In 1339 he was forced to evacuate the country by David's 
brother-in-law, Robert the Steward ; and, in 1341, David ventured to 
return to Scotland. The only permanent result of Balliol's temporary 
success was the acquisition of Berwick by England, 

The French war grew out of Edward's attack on Scotland. An 
alliance with France against England had been from the first the policy 
of the Scottish patriots ; and this policy, which brought untold misery 



246 Later Angevin Kings 1314 

on all three countries, now showed its baleful eltects. The Scots called 
on Philip vi. for aid, and in spite of the remonstrances of the pope, 
Causes of the he took advantage of the situation to attack Gascony. 
French War. Edward was naturally furious ; and, unluckily, circumstances 
gave him an opportunity of raising a claim to the French crown, which 
was the cause of almost interminable hostilities, and an utterly un- 
natural feeling of hereditary hatred between the two countries. In 1316 
died John i., the infant son of Louis x., who had succeeded his father, 
Philip the Fair, in 1314, and himself died in the following year. 
Anxious to avoid giving the crown to Louis' daughter Joan, then a 
mere child, the French nobles took advantage of a law of the Salian 
Franks, which disqualified a woman from reigning, and gave the throne 
to Louis' next brother, Philip v. In 1322 he too died, leaving only 
daughters, and the precedent having been established, the crown passed 
to his brother Charles ; and at his death without a son in 1328, to his 
cousin, Philip of Valois, the son of Charles of Valois, brother of Philip 
the Fair.^ In 1328 Edward, as the son of Isabella, had made some 
demur to the accession of Philip vi. ; but as he had done him homage 
for Gascony and Ponthieu in 1329 and 1331, his objection might be 
regarded as withdrawn. 

Edward, however, not only professed to believe that his claim was 
just, but it is indisputable that, at the commencement of the war, he per- 
Causes of the suaded the English parliament that if he succeeded it would 
rench War. -^^ ^^ advantage for the country. Many causes j)robably 
contributed to this end. There was something in the idea that the cost 
of a court might be more easily borne by two countries than by one ; the 
memory of the prosperity of English commerce when both sides of the 
Channel were in the same hands, and annoyance at the ravages com- 
mitted by French pirates would dispose the merchants in its favour ; 

1 Philip hi. d. 1285. 

i 

1 I 

Philip iv., Charles of 

d. 1314. Valois. 



Louis X., Philip v., Charles iv., Isabella, Philip of Valois, 
d. 1316. d. 1322. d. 1328. m. Edward II. succeeded 1328. 

I i I 

daiaghters. daushters. 



John, Joan, Edward hi. 

d. 1316. Queen of Navarre. 

I 
Charles the Bad. 



1338 Edward III. 247 

and an alliance with the Flemish wool merchants, always at variance with 
their count and with their overlord the king of France, would seem a 
valuable security for the wool trade. The country, too, was prosperous ; 
the spirit of chivalry was in the air ; and since the cessation of the 
Crusades in the East, foreign war had become almost the only opening 
for gratifying the love of adventure inherent in the English race. At 
any rate, Edward secured the hearty sympathy of his subjects, which 
Parliament showed by voting for each year from 1336 to Money 
1340 a fifteenth from the knights and barons, a tenth from Grants, 
the towns, and a tenth from the clergy for five years in succession ; by 
raising the wool tax in 1336 to forty shillings per sack ; and in 1338 
giving him no less than half the wool of the realm, amounting to 20,000 
sacks. 

Encouraged by finding parliament so ready to aid him, Edward took 
the title of King of France in 1337 ; and in 1338, ' by the assent of the 
Lords and at the earnest request of the Commons,' he prepared to 
enforce his claim by arms. For an army, Edward relied The English 
neither on the feudal array nor on the militia. He filled ■^'""^y- 
the ranks of his army by hiring soldiers, so that the English force which 
fought the battles of the French war was in reality a volunteer army, 
like that which exists at present, excej)t that the men were hired not for 
a regular term of service, irrespective of peace and war, but for the war 
only. Such an army was far more efficient than any feudal levy or 
array of soldiers furnished by requisition from the counties, of which 
such a diverting description is given in Shakespeare's Henry IV., Part ii. 
The men were picked men, kept in order by the fear of being turned 
adrift in a foreign country, accustomed to act together, and sufficiently 
practised in the rude drill required for efficiency as footmen. Above 
all, they were thoroughly versed in the use of their weapons, and steady 
practice on Sunday afternoons had made every English yeoman a well- 
trained archer. The six-foot yew bow and three-foot arrow, the head of 
which was drawn level with the ear, was an eflfective weapon up to 250 
yards, while the use of sword and buckler was the ordinary accomplishment 
of all who valued a reputation for manly vigour. Soldiers took service 
under some great leader, like Sir Walter Manny, and looked to him for 
the pay and orders which he received from the king, so that the whole 
force was a disciplined and well-organised body. Moreover, in England 
there was comparatively little of the class feeling whichxwas so fatal to 
the harmony of feudal armies. Halidon Hill and Bannockburn had 
conclusively proved that the real strength of an English aWy lay in its 
archers ; and that cavalry, however chivabous, could do little or nothing 



248 Later Angevin Kings 1338 

without their support. Nothing did more than the recognition of this 
fact to cement all classes together. In an English force, noble and 
yeoman fought on foot and side by side. Efl&ciency was, as a rule, made 
the qualification for command ; and miserable as were many of the 
results of the French wars, they gave us the memory of some splendid 
victories, which are the heritage not of the nobility or of the gentry, but 
of Englishmen of every class. 

For allies, Edward followed the obvious policy of confederating the 
smaller states on the French borders. The emperor, Louis of Bavaria, 

Edward's ^^d William of Hainault were his brothers-in-law ; the Flem- 

Aihes. jj^gg^ under the great brewer, James van Artevelde, were to 

him what the Scots were to Philip of France ; and he hoped by a free 
distribution of money to attack the north-eastern frontier of France with 
an overwhelming force ; while Henry, earl of Derby, son of Henry of 
Lancaster, undertook the task of defending Gascony. 

In 1338 Edward sailed to Flanders, and called on his allies to fulfil 
their promises. The response, however, was extremely tardy. Some 
refused to invade France ; others to advance far across the frontier ; and 
Edward, having in vain challenged Philip to a fair battle, and waited his 
onset for a whole day at the village of Flamengiie, was forced to retrace 
his steps, after incurring the enormous debt of £300,000. 

Such a deficit compelled Edward to make a further appeal to the 

patriotism of his subjects. Nor did he ask in vain, for in 1339 the 

barons ofiered him the tenth lamb, the tenth fleece, and the 
Further , , ,. n , i i 

Money tenth slieaf ; and the commons no less than 30,000 sacks 

of wool. These grants, however, were not made without 
equivalent concessions on the king's side. The taxpayers were perfectly 
aware of the strength they derived from the king's necessities, and 
steadily adhered to the i^arliamentary maxim, that redress of grievances 
must always precede supply. The grants, therefore, were made con- 
ditional upon the king's accejDtance of a series of articles of reform. 
These were most important. By one, the king promised that he would 
^^ ,, collect no more unauthorised tallages — a concession which 

Edward s ° 

Conces- completed the restrictions on arbitrary taxation contained 
in the Conjirmatio Chartarum. By a second, redress 
was promised of the grievances of purveyance. A third did away 
with the ancient impost of 'presentment of Englishry,' which prac- 
tically amounted to a fine on the hundred of about £40 for every un- 
punished murder. 

Other causes besides the war helped to increase the power of parlia- 
ment.^ By the statute of York in 1322, the commons had obtained full 



1340 Edward III. 249 

recognition of their right to a share in the deliberations of ParUament. 
In 1331 and 1332 the knights of the shire had deliberated by themselves 
on the question of Edward's quarrel with France, and a pro- 
posed crusade. From this time the separation between the Power^of ^ 
knights and the barons seems to have been usual, and in ^^^^'^'"^"t. 

1341 the knights are recorded to have sat in one body with the repre- 
sentatives of cities and boroughs. This change was most 
important. By birth the knights of the shire were of the same into^wo°" 
class as the lords ; often they were younger sons of baronial ^°"^^^- 
families. As landholders, though their properties were smaller, they 
tended to look at things from the same point of view as the barons ; 
while by sitting with the townsmen they learned to appreciate their 
standpoint, and to act in common with the trading classes. A hundred 
years later the towns had even begun to elect country gentlemen as 
representatives, so that the distinction between town and country became 
almost obliterated. This arrangement, which was almost peculiar to 
England, marked the great difference between the English j)arliament 
and the estates, diets, and cortes of the continent. In these, the three 
divisions between nobles, clergy, and commonalty gave the sovereigns a 
•welcome opportunity of playing off two classes against the third to the 
ruin of all ; whereas in England, the union of the bishops, earls, and 
barons in one house, the union of the knights of the shire, citizens, and 
burgesses in another, and the absence of the inferior clergy, though it 
spoilt the symmetry and even the completeness of the representation, 
effectually deprived English sovereigns of this method of attack. The 

presence of the bishops and abbots in the Upper House also 

Strength 

made the House of Commons to be distinctly the house of of the 
the laity, and consequently the representative of a feeling of 
resentment against the engrossing of offices by the clergy, which had 
already begun to show itself. The community of feeling between the 
barons and the knights of the shire, and the disadvantage under which 
the barons found themselves in being outvoted in their own house by 
the solid phalanx of clerical members, soon led to the lords pushing the 
commons forward into the forefront of the constitutional battle, and to 
their finding their best advantage in bringing forward their stewards for 
election as knights of the shire, and using all their territorial influence 
to secure a majority in the popular chamber. 

The consideration of the terms demanded in 1339 took some time, and 
the grants were not made till April 1340, when, in consequence of the 
king's concessions, both barons and commons made an even more 
liberal contribution than they had originally offered. Philip had l)y this 



250 Later Angevin Kings 1340 

time altered his tactics ; and instead of playing a waiting game within his 
own frontier, had taken measures to prevent Edward from again landing 

Battle of in the Netherlands. With this view he had sent to the 

Sluys. harbour of Sluys, on the coast of Flanders, a fleet of over 
tAvo hundred vessels. Edward had wisely expended part of his money 
on restoring the navy. He was, therefore, able to collect a strong force 
from the southern ports ; and without waiting for the northern con- 
tingent, sailed in June to attack Philip's fleet. He found it drawn 
up in four lines, the shij)S of which were chained together, bow and 
stern, so as to make a floating rampart, on which the men-at-arms could 
fight as on land. Against this Edward devised an ingenious method of 
attack. He arranged his ships in groups of three ; that in the centre 
carrying men-at-arms, those to right and left of it, archers. Then wait- 
ing till the afternoon sun was at his back, he bore down on the French 
lines. His ingenuity was rewarded with a great success. The archers 
soon cleared the decks of the French vessels ; the men-at-arms completed 
the victory by boarding, and soon every ship in the front line was in 
English hands. At this moment the contingent from the northern ports 
came up, and a fresh advance was prepared for. Terrified at the pros- 
pect, the Frenchmen in the second and third lines leapt overboard ; 
but the sixty ships of the fourth line fought well, and a few made 
good their escape under cover of the night. The immediate efi'ects of 
the victory were most important. Every French port was opened to 
Edward, and though, in 1350, he had a severe struggle with a fleet of 
Spanish privateers, the dominion of the seas was secured for England for 
nearly thirty years. 

Flushed with his success, Edward then formed the siege of Tournay. 
But again Philip's tactics foiled him. Tournay was held by a powerful 
garrison. Philip with a large army hovered near, ready to take advan- 
tage of any mistake but resolutely determined not to fight on equal 
terms. The long delay exhausted Edward's supplies, and when winter 
came on he was obliged to raise the siege. 

Furious at his disappointment, Edward foolishly allowed himself to be 

hurried into a quarrel with the Stratfords, who had been his faithful 

_ , servants for ten years. Like every other minister who was 
Quarrel "^ -^ 

with the not a baron, the Stratfords had enemies among the nobility, 
and the archbishop had probably aggravated their hostility 
by courageously setting his face against the growing immorality. There 
was also rising a feeling against the monopoly of office enjoyed by the 
clergy. As the official representative of the old Lancastrian i^arty, Strat- 
ford was also opposed by Orleton and by Burghersh, bishop of Lincoln, a 



1341 Edivard III. 251 

nephew of Lord Badlesmere ; and Edward, angry at the slowness with 
which supplies had been sent, allowed himself to lend a ready ear to 
the accusations of Stratford's enemies. Accordingly, in November, he 
arrived without warning in London, and the very next day turned 
Kobert Stratford out of the chancellorshiii, dismissed a number of other 
officials, and even imprisoned some merchants, among whom was William 
de la Pole. He then made one layman, Robert Bourchier, chancellor, and 
another, Sir Robert Parning, treasurer. 

Meanwhile the archbishop, flying before the storm, had taken refuge 
at Canterbury, and when Edward summoned him to court, he declined to 
place himself in the king's power. In some respects the quarrel recalls 
that between Stephen and Roger of Salisbury ; but the conditions were 
really very different. If Stratford had trusted to his position as a 
churchman he would have leant on a broken reed ; but in trusting to 
the support, not of garrisoned castles, but of the goodwill of the English 
people, he stood on far stronger ground than either Thomas of Canterbury 
or Roger of Salisbury. Stratford maintained that the recent arrests were 
illegal, and declined to meet the king except in full parliament. Edward, 
on his side, accused Stratford of wasting his money, and so of being the 
real cause of the recent failure. In April 1341 parliament met. When 
the archbishop appeared he received orders to present himself before the 
court of exchequer. His answer was a demand to be tried by his peers. 
The case was referred to a committee of twelve lords, who The Rights 
reported that to try a peer except in full parliament and ° ^^^^' 
before his peers was illegal. This decision showed that Stratford had 
the parliament at his back, and Edward wisely gave way. 

Not contented with this victory, for which they were mainly indebted 

to Stratford's courage and character, the lords and commons proceeded 

to extract further concessions as the price of the additional _ 

^ . Further 

gTant. Again Edward was forced to yield, and his con- Concessions 

stitutional concessions embodied three rules of very great 

importance. First, that the accounts of the kingdom should be audited 

by auditors elected in parliament ; second, that the chancellor ^ ^.^. . 
'' r > > Auditing of 

and other great ministers should be appointed by consulta- Accounts, 
tion between the kino; and his lords, and should be sworn Appointment 

*=> ' .of Ministers, 

before parliament to keep the law ; third, that at the begm- 

ning of each parliament ministers were to resign their offices into the 

king's hands, and be compelled to answer complaints brought j^fij^jg^erial 

against them. The first of these gave parliament increased Responsi- 

control over the purse, for it enabled it not only to vote 

taxes but also to inquire how they had been spent : the second and 



252 Later Angevin Kings 1341 

third contained the principles that parliament ought to have a voice in 
the appointment of ministers, and also that ministers, when appointed, are 
responsible to parliament for their management of affairs. These contain 
in the rough the framework of the constitution as we see it working 
at present. Could they have been maintained in practice, the parliament 
of the fourteenth century would have anticipated, by more than three 
centuries, the actual growth of parliamentary government. The ground, 
however, so gained was too advanced to be held. In October, when the 
king had obtained his supplies, he ventured to revoke his concessions, 
and the next parliament raised no opjiosition to his action ; but, short- 
lived as they were, they serve to show how uniform have been the objects 
aimed at by English statesmen, and how strong parliament had become. 

For some years after the abortive expedition of 1340 the French war 
languished. To the credit of successive pojDes, great efforts were made by 

the church to effect a reconciliation between Edward and 
Abortive 

Negotia- Philip on the basis of Edward receiving Gascony in full 
sovereignty in exchange for a renunciation of his claim to the 
crown ; but though they were able to negotiate prolonged truces, the 
suspicions of both sides jjrevented the conclusion of a definite peace. 
However, a disputed succession in the duchy of Brittany between John 
de Montfort, the brother, and Jane, the daughter of the late duke, ojDened 
up a new field of warfare. Edward, with curious inconsistency, supported 
the claims of John ; Philii^, more logical, as correctly distinguishing 
between the succession to a crown and that to a duchy, espoused that of 
Jane, and soon a civil war was being fought in Brittany with the aid of 
soldiers from both England and France. Meanwhile Edward had become 
disgusted with his northern allies. Louis of Bavaria had deserted him ; 
James van Artevelde had been murdered in 1345 by the men of Ghent 
as their answer to a suggestion that they should take Edward's son 
Edward as then- lord ; nothing more could be hoped from Hainault, so 
Edward determined to attack France from a new quarter. 

Since the cessation of the war on the Flemish frontier, Philip had been 
able to concentrate his forces in the south, and had pressed hardly on the 
English garrison of Gascony. The earl of Derby, however, had defended 
himself with great skill, and at Auberoche had won a brilliant victory 
over a superior French force. Accordingly, in 1346, Philip determined 
Invasion of to crush him with an overwhelming army of 100,000 men ; 
Normandy. ^^^^ ^g ^ diversion, Edward crossed the Channel and landed 
in Normandy. After reaching Caen he proceeded to Eouen, intending 
to cross the Seine and make a junction with a body of Flemings who were 
ravaging in the north-east. He found, however, that the bridge was 



1346 Edward III. 253 

strongly held, and that Philip with a numerous force was guardinc the 
northern bank. Foiled at Rouen, Edward marched up the river, sackino- 
and burning Mantes and Vernon as he went ; but failed to find a bridge 
or ford unguarded. His movements were followed by Philip on the north 
bank ; and it seemed as though retreat either to Gascony or to his ships 
was inevitable, when a clever feint on Paris caused Philip to hurry on, 
and Edward rapidly retracing his steps, seized the bridge of Poissy a few 
miles below Paris, and flung his army across the river before his design 
was discovered. (See p. 317.) 

From Poissy Edward made all haste towards the Flemish frontier, hotly 
pursued by the French ; but his road was barred by the river Somme, 
which flows slow and deep through a marshy soil, and could 
only be crossed at a few points. These were all held, and through 
Edward found himself enclosed in the angle between the ^^"^e. 
river and the coast. Escape seemed impossible, when a peasant was 
induced by promises and threats to disclose the existence of a bar of 
white shingle, still called Blanche Taque, where the Somme could be 
crossed at low- water just above its junction with the sea. On arriving 
there the ford was found to be defended by a powerful force of cavalry ; 
but the English, impelled by the courage of despair, fought their way 
across, and Philip only arrived in time to see the incoming tide efiectually 
jjrevent the continuance of the pursuit. Chagrined at his disappointment 
he retraced his steps to Abbeville, while Edward, who was now deter- 
mined to risk a fight, turned to bay at Crecy, a little village situated in 
his hereditary county of Ponthieu. 

The ground chosen may well have reminded Edward of Halidon Hill, 
where he had seen archers defeat a force of cavalry similar to that by 
which he now expected to be attacked. Behind the village 

^ , . , Crecy. 

of Crecy a piece of high ground slopes away on three sides 
for a distance of six hundred yards from a windmill which still marks the 
spot. Such sloping ground was exactly what was wanted for archers, in 
order that the rear ranks might have a good view of their opponents, and 
it also gave the cavalry the additional disadvantage of having to charge 
uphill. Accordingly, Edward halted there on the evening of August 25, 
and prepared to fight Philip on the following day. 

The rest was a great help to the English, and they made good use of it 
to prepare for the coming fight. Edward drew up his men on the hill- 
side with their backs to the light, in three bodies each com- Position of 
posed of men-at-arms and archers. All were on foot. The ^ ^ "g 's . 
archers of each body were arranged in lines behind one another, like 
the teeth of a harrow, or the pieces on a draught-board so that those 



254 



Later Angevin Kings 



1346 



in the rear could slioot over the heads of their fellows. Behind the 
archers stood the men-at-arms, armed with spear, sword and buckler, and 
provided with coats of mail. The first division, led by the Prince of 
Wales, now a lad of fifteen, assisted by the earls of Warwick and Oxford, 
was on the right. Behind him were a body of Welsh and Irish footmen, 
armed with long knives. To the left of the prince's men, and a little in 
their rear, was the second division under the earl of Northampton. The 
third, under Edward himself, was in reserve. Edward is said to have 
had in these divisions only four thousand men-at-arms and twelve 
thousand archers ; but besides these he had the Welsh and Irish, and a 
body of archers had been told off to guard the baggage and the horses. 



C=Vadicoiirt 

aboitt J^ tniles 
/roDi La Broye. 



\ English Foot. 

.» Archers. 

-J^rer.ch. 

4« Cross erected to met}iory 
of the King of Bo>t€7nia 




Position of 
the French. 



Against this smaU but highly efficient force, in which nobility, gentry, 
and yeomanry stood side by side, presenting on the battlefield the unity 
of sentiment which was the true cause of the national 
strength, Phili]3 brought an army, vast indeed, but singularly 
typical of the distracted condition of the country. The vast majority of 
the fighting-men were feudal vassals, arrayed in full armour and on 
horseback. The middle classes were conspicuous by their absence. A 
few serfs, dragged unwillingly to the field, made up the native infantry, 
to which was added a body of fifteen thousand Genoese crossbowmen by 



1346 Edimrcl III. 255 

way of supplementing the most obvious of their deficiencies. Philip, who 
liked not pitched battles, wished to postpone the fight till the next day ; 
but the impetuosity of his men, who looked on victory as certain, flunci 
prudence to the winds. 

The first to attack were the Genoese ; but a heavy thunder-shower had 
wetted their crossbow-strings, and their bolts flew feeble and inefficient. 
The English, on the other hand, to whom rain was no stranger, 
had kept their strings under their coats till the last moment, 
and their arrows flew true and strong to the mark. Before such a 
deadly hail the Genoese drew back, and the French knights, furious at 
thek defeat, cut down the poor fellows as they ran. Then the serious 
fighting began. As at Halidon, the cavalry struggled to mount the hill, 
but the English shafts soon strewed the ground with struggling horses 
and fallen men, among whom the Welsh and Irish did terrible slaughter 
with their long knives. At length by sheer weight of numbers the French 
closed on the English ranks, but so w^ell did the first and second divisions 
stand their ground, that the king, who from the windmill commanded a 
perfect view of the field, never found it necessary to engage his reserve 
at all. In vain the count of AleuQon, the brother of the French king, 
sacrificed his life ; in vain the blind old king of Bohemia, who was 
fighting as an ally of Philip, caused his horse to be led into the fight so 
that he might have one stroke at the English. When night fell the 
English ranks were still unbroken, while the French, wearied and leader- 
less, were in hopeless confusion. Philip, wounded, fled from the field to 
La Broye, and thence to Amiens. The next day a dense mist prevented 
the French from rallying or seeing their enemies, and the slaughter of 
stragglers was said to have exceeded that of the battle itself. Altogether, 
eleven princes and twelve hundred knights met their death, and of those 
of less note a number estimated at thirty thousand. The glory of the 
day was given to the Prince of Wales, who adopted as his own the motto 
Icii clien, ' I serve,' said to have been that of the king of Bohemia ; but the 
chief merit of the victory was really due to the archers. 

From Crecy, Edward marched to Calais and laid siege to it. For 
several reasons Calais was a valuable prize. Its possession siege of 
would place in English hands a convenient landing-place for Calais, 
troops, contiguous alike to France and Flanders. It would also be an 
excellent emporium for trade ; and, moreover, would destroy a nest of 
pirates which had long been a bugbear to the merchants of the Channel. 
The works of Calais, however, were strong ; the marshes by which it was 
surrounded were passable at few places. Winter was coming on, so 
Edward decided not to hazard the risk and loss of English hfe that must 



256 Later Angevin Kings 1346 

attend a regular siege, but to house his men comfortably, exclude all 
provisions from the beleaguered town, and wait for famine to do its 
awful work. Such a course, the hardships of which fell not so much on 
the fighting-men of the garrison as on the unfortunate inhabitants of the 
town, added a new and terrible horror to war. 

PhiliiD's first hope was that a Scottish invasion of England might 

compel Edward to return. At his request David had crossed the border 

Scottish with a large force of light horsemen, and made his way by 

Invasion. Hexliam into the bishopric of Durham. To meet them, a 

second army was collected by the orders of Queen Philippa, under the 

archbishop of York and the lords Henry Percy and Ealph Neville, and 

compelled the Scots to fight at Neville's Cross on October 

Battle of -"^ ° 

Neville's 17. Hedges and enclosures encumbered the Scottish attack. 
Checked by these, their horsemen presented an easy mark to 
the English archers. As the Scottish ranks wavered, the English in their 
turn charged, and so vigorous was their onset that both wings of the 
Scottish army were quickly broken. In the centre, however, David 
fought with unflinching courage, but an arrow- wound in the face brought 
him to the ground. Coupland, a Northumberland gentleman, effected 
his capture ; and the discomfited Scots fled in utter disorder. 

The victory of Neville's Cross and the capture of the Scottish king 
effectually secured Edward from Scottish interruption ; and his sailors beat 
off a relieving fleet which Philij) dispatched to succour the garrison. All 
through the winter the terrible blockade went on, and when spring came 
Philip summoned another army and advanced to raise the siege. His 
efforts, however, were abortive. He found the English lines too skilfully 
planned and too well defended to offer the least prospect of a successful 
assault ; and though Edward, somewhat rashly, advanced into the open 
country and challenged him to an equal fight, Philip preferred an 
ignominious retreat to another experience of English archery. Thus, 
deserted by their sovereign, and having finished their provisions, the 
garrison had no course but unconditional surrender ; and on August 4, 

Surrender 1347, Calais capitulated. Edward made some show of punish- 

of Calais, jjjg j-}jQ townspeople for their piracy ; but graciously yielded 
to the milder counsels of his queen, Philippa. Determined to hold the 
town at all costs, Edward removed all the inhabitants who declined to 
take an oath of allegiance, and filled up their places with colonists from 
England. To secure the prosperity of the town, a market was established 
for the staple commodities of tin, lead, and cloth, and as the chief channel 
for trade between England and the continent it enjoyed, under its 
English rulers, many years of great prosperity. The defences were put 



1349 Edward III. 257 

in such good order as to be deemed impregnable, and a strong garrison 
maintained. 

While Edward had been successful in the north, a less conspicuous but 
even more honourable war had been maintained in Gascony. -^^j. • 
Philip had sent his best troops to the south, and the summer Gascony. 
of 1346 saw John, duke of Normandy, his eldest son, enter the province 
with an excellent force of six thousand horse and fifty thousand foot, and 
a full complement of besieging engines. Before them the Gascon fortresses 
fell fast, till at length the castle of Aiguillon, defended by Sir Walter 
Manny, checked their progress. From May till the end of August, this 
brave man and his heroic followers repelled every assault. Famine, how- 
ever, was imminent, when the news of Crecy recalled Duke John to the 
assistance of his father ; and the earl of Derby, vigorously taking the 
offensive, was able not only to clear Gascony of the French, but to storm 
and plunder the rich town of Poitiers. In recognition of his t^i^xq of 
services, Derby, who in 1345 had become earl of Lancaster, Duke, 
was in 1351 honoured with the title of duke, a rank first created in 
England for Edward's eldest son, who had been made duke of Cornwall 
in 1337. 

The capture of Calais brings to a close the first period of the war. 

Towards securing the crown of France, Edward had made little or no 

progress, but he had taken Calais, brought home quantities of 

^ ® ' . . Effects of 

spoil, and permanently enriched the annals of England with the French 

the memory of the victory of Crecy. On the other hand, war 
and plunder had begun to have a demoralising efi'ect on the country. 
The standard of luxury is thought to have been permanently raised by 
the lavish squandering of the spoils of France ; the profession of arms 
had been exalted to an undue eminence, to the disadvantage of more use- 
ful though less showy avocations ; and habits of plunder and rapine, 
learned in foreign war, were not readily abandoned, and tended to harden 
the national character. 

For a time, however, the attention of men was diverted from the war 
by the arrival of a new and horrible calamity. This was the ^he Black 
Black Death, the best-known of a series of plagues which l^eath. 
devastated England during the years 1349, 1361, and 1369. It was 
believed to have broken out in China in 1333, and gradually made its 
way to Europe, devastating each country through which it passed with 
all the rapidity and destructiveness of a new disease. Carried by infec- 
tion along the usual trade-routes, it reached Constantinople and Cyprus 
in 1347. It appeared at Avignon in January 1348 ; in April it reached 
Florence ; and the first cases were noticed in Dorsetshire in August. 

R 



258 Later Angevin Kings 1349 

From the Dorsetshire ports it spread to Bristol, and thence to Oxford, 
and from Oxford it made its way to London, and from there to Norwich. 
It then spread over the northern counties. For some time, however, it 
was checked by the devastated line of the border, and the exultant Scots 
began to swear ' By the foul death of the English ' ; but presuming on 
their fencied impunity, a raiding party ventured across the line, and the 
disease soon showed itself no respecter of persons. From England it 
travelled to Norway, and finally reached Eussia in 1351. Everywhere 
it went its ravages were terrible ; the strongest died even more suddenly 
than the weak. Neither palace nor cottage was spared. The spread of 
infection was aided by the filthy habits of the people, and the neglect of 
all sanitary precautions. 

It is hard to know how many persons died. There were then no 

registers of deaths and burials, and in time of panic such matters are apt 

, to be exceedingly exaggerated. The best modern calcukitions, 

Extent of & J »» _ 5 

the Mor- however, put the number at one in three of the whole popu- 
^ ^ ^' lation. The disease spared no class. A daughter of 

Edward, and two archbishops of Canterbury, were victims of the first 
year ; in the East and West Ridings of Yorkshire, one half of the parish 
priests are said to have perished. On some manors whole families seem 
to have been cleared off. The Oxford students were decimated. In 
many monasteries the numerous vacancies had to be filled as best they 
could, and a permanent deterioration in the character of the monks seems 
to have been the consequence. On the other hand, the monks of Christ 
Church, Canterbury, sufi'ered little — an escape probably due to the good 
supply of pure water, which, a century before, they had prudently laid on 
from the hills. 

This great disaster was sufficient to cause an economical revolution. 
At that date England was almost wholly an agricultural country. Some 
The Manorial cloth was made, indeed, but mostly for domestic use and 
System. j^q^ fQp gg^jg . ^^ greater part of the English wool being 

despatched to the looms of Flanders. The whole of rural England, outside 
the forests, was divided into manors,^ which pretty nearly corresponded 
in area to the ancient township, and the manor was organised on a system 
which appears to have been in course of gradual development since the 
pre-Norman period (see page 40). Usually half the arable land was in 
the hands of the lord of the manor, and called the ' demesne ' — a name 

1 Our knowledge of the internal condition of the manor is derived from the 
Manorial Accounts, which began to be kept and enrolled on parchment about 
the year of Earl Simon's rebellion, and these play in the history of rural England 
the same part which the great Pipe Eoll does in that of the kingdom as a whole. 



1349 Edimrd III. 259 

which, under the form ' mains,' or even ' remains,' may often be traced in 
English farms at the present day. A second portion was usually in the 
hands of a body of freeholders, who might be military tenants holding 
the whole or part of a knight's fee, or socage tenants, who paid such a 
sum to the lord as had been fixed from time immemorial. Sometimes 
these freeholders made a payment in kind, such as a pound of pepper, a 
hawk or hound, or performed some duty, such as keeping two lamps 
lighted in the church. 

The rest was in the hands of villeins, and was held on more onerous 
terms, discharged partly by doing so much manual work on the lord's 
demesne, partly by money payments, partly by payments in kind. The 
villein was also restricted from leaving the manor without his lord's 
licence, from marrying his son or daughter without the same, or selling 
his stock, or cutting down timber, without the lord's consent. In return 
for these his holding, in some cases, was as much as twelve acres, at an 
estimated rent of about sixpence an acre, though sometimes the conditions 
were much harder. In every case, however, the villein had fixity of 
tenure so long as his dues were paid ; the rules show him to have been 
often the possessor of cattle and horses ; he had the run of the common 
for his stock, and could cut wood and get turf on the wastes ; the lord's 
licence could always be obtained for a money payment, and even if he 
chose to take French leave to the neighbouring town, the chances of his 
being reclaimed w^ere not great. Two opportunities of rising presented 
themselves — the church and the army — and the examples of Robert 
Grossetete, who became a bishop, and of Robert Sale, who became a trusted 
knight and officer of Edward iii., prove that servile birth was no check 
on the ambition of the intelligent and the brave. Beside the lord, the 
free tenants, and the villeins, all of whom were engaged in the actual 
cultivation of the soil, there were also certain artificers and craftsmen who 
held merely their houses, and perhaps a right to a run on the common for 
their cattle or poultry. Such were the miller, who rented the mill, the 
smith, and, in a large village, perhaps a regular weaver. There was also 
the parson, and perhaps a clerk of some kind, who undertook the prepara- 
tion of accounts, drew leases, and the like. Conspicuous among the 
inhabitants of every manor was the reeve, generally himself a villein, 
whose duty it was to see to the lord's interests, to exact the money pay- 
ments due to him, to require the fulfilment of labour duties, and to keep 
an exact account of the earnings and outgoings of the manor. In 
Chaucer's Prologue we have contemporary accounts of the miller, the 
reeve, and the ploughman, which should be read in this connection. 

If the lord was the owner of two or more manors, he visited each in 



260 Later Angevin Kings 1349 

turn to eat the produce of his estates ; and the arrival of himself and his 
servants must have been the event of the year. At other times the 
manor-house was the residence of the lord's bailiff. News from the 
outer world came from the lord's household, or the visit of a preaching 
friar or pardoner from Kome, or in times when land needed little atten- 
tion, lord, villein, freeholder and artisan might be found on pilgrimage. 
Such was the ordinary life of an English village in the thirteenth century. 
Life was hard, especially in winter, and comforts were few, but there 
always seems to have been plenty to eat. A man out of work, who 
wanted it, was unknown. The great curse of modern labour — uncertainty 
of employment — was absent ; and though the conditions of indoor life 
were inexpressibly dirty, fresh air and clean water were abundant, and 
the plentiful leisure of Sunday and holiday gave every one a fair chance 
of enjoying such sports and pleasures as lay within his reach. The chief 
business of the country was done at the great fairs, where the baihfFs 
brought their wool-packs, and the miners their pigs of lead or iron to seU 
to the foreigner or to the merchant of the town. The chief of these was 
that held at Stourbridge, near Cambridge, where the wares of different 
nations were arranged in sections and streets, as in a modern exhibition, 
and where it was the custom of the people of the eastern counties to lay 
in their stock of goods for the winter. Others were St. Bartholomew's 
fair in London, St. Giles' at Oxford, and St. Giles' at Winchester. 

At the period when the preservation of the manor rolls gives an 
accurate view of the condition of an English manor, two changes were 
Changes in taking place. First, just as the king had commuted mili- 
Progress. ^^-^j service for the payment of scutage, so the lord of the 
manor was gradually commuting labour services for money payments. 
When such a change was made, a memorandum of it was entered on the 
back of the manor roll, a copy of this was given to the villein, who then 
became what was called a copyholder, and his land a copyhold. All 
copyhold land at the present day must at some time or another have been 
in the hands of villeins. The second tendency was for the lord of the 
manor to give up farming himself, and to let his demesne to a farmer for 
a term of years at a fixed rent. This was certainly done so early as 1280. 
Such an arrangement generally involved the letting of the demesne as ' a 
going concern,' including the farm-buildings, implements of husbandry, 
and the stock. At the close of the term, the implements and stock, or 
their equivalents, had to be restored ; but it was the business of the lord 
to repair the buildings, and it is from this that the exceptional rule in 
English law that the landlord, and not the tenant, sliould do the repairs, 
takes its rise. 



1355 Edward III. 261 

This was the condition of rural England when some third of the 
population perished by the Black Death. The immediate result was 
a rapid rise in wages, and in the price of all articles in which 
the cost of labour was the principal item. This change fell the Black 
most severely on those estates where the lord had gone ^^^*^- 
furthest in the direction of commuting the services of his villeins, and 
on those farmers of demesne land who trusted to hiring labour. All 
landholders, in fact, except those who were themselves labourers, were 
very hard hit ; and ruin seemed imminent unless the price of labour 
could be kept down. Two plans presented themselves : the most obvious 
was the passing of a law to forbid any one to pay or to take wages higher 
than those paid in 1347 ; the second was to exact to the uttermost the 
labour services of those who had not entered into a composition. The 
first of these was done by a series of royal ordinances and statutes, known 
as the ' Statutes of Labourers,' which were passed in 1351, statutes of 
and again in 1362 and 1368, after renewed outbreaks of Labourers. 
plague. The second became the regular business of every reeve in the 
country. The effect, however, of the first remedy was exceedingly small. 
It is pretty certain that the statutes were evaded even by the reeves 
themselves, who found it needful at all costs to get their corn sown 
and their crops gathered ; and the average rate of wages increased 
by about one-half. The second merely caused a widespread exaspera- 
tion, which only waited for a favourable opportunity to produce a serious 
outbreak. 

For some years after the siege of Calais the French war languished, 

partly due to the plague, partly to the praiseworthy efi'orts of successive 

popes to arrange truces and to facilitate negotiations. In ^ , ,„ 

'^ . . Y 5 French War. 

1350 Philip died, and was succeeded by his son John, a 

better soldier than his father, who had usually commanded the French 
troops in Gascony ; but Edward's terms — Gascony in full sovereignty, 
in exchange for the renunciation of his claim to the crown — were still 
indignantly rejected both by the king and his subjects ; and at last in 
1355 the war was renewed in full violence. That year the Black Prince 
— a name given to the Prince of Wales possibly from the armour worn 
by him in some now-forgotten tournament — with sixty thousand men 
marched up the fertile and prosperous valley of the ujDper Garonne, 
devastated the whole country with fire and sword, and returned to Bor- 
deaux laden with sptoil. Next year the prince ventured into the heart of 
France with no more than twelve thousand men, and, sweeping north- 
ward from the scene of his last year's raid, harried the country from the 
frontier of Guienne to Poitiers. Near that city, however, he was forced 



262 



Later Angevin Kings 



1346 



to stand at bay at Maupertuis by an army which, unknown to him, had 
been collected by the king of France. Escape seemed utterly impossible. 
The French outnumbered the English by at least four to one ; and so 
desperate was the case, that the prince, in deference to the wishes of 
Cardinal Talleyrand, who, as representing the pope, was doing all he 
could to avert hostilities, offered to surrender his spoil and his prisoners. 



I. French attack. 



Eingr 














REFERENCE. 

A Salisbury. 

^..-JVar^uick. 
C 2^hc Prince. 

'^ ' Cavalry. 

'^Mp:- "*" Farm of 

r^l:^-.. Ma2iJ>ertuis. 






^:. 









'!i\\m^ 







Battle of 
POITIERS. _ 

19%}? 1356.' 









■"^i- 






■'Oilu,'--'' '-''jj.V. 



REFERENJCE. 



y A^~.Salisl>ury' 

B IVarwick. 

^.-JThe Prince, 
•^-^arin of 
Maupcrtitis. 
G. Detachynent seni to 
take the Prcnch 
in the rear. 



and to give a promise not to fight again for seven years as the price of 
a free retreat. Puffed with pride, however, John refused anything short 
of unconditional surrender, and the prince and his little band prepared 
to sell their lives dearly. 
The scene of the battle of Poitiers lies about four miles south-east of 



1356 ' Edward III. 263 

the town of Poitiers, near the present farm of Maupertuis. The 
ground occupied by the English at the beginning of the battle consisted 
of a broad plateau on the left, a hill on the right, and a Battle of 
ravine with a marshy bottom in the centre. All the slopes Poitiers, 
were covered with brushwood and vineyards, and in front of the left and 
left centre ran a hedge, in which, opposite the left, was a gap, doubtless 
for carts. The hedge and gap were defended by the earl of Salisbury, 
the ravine and marsh by the earl of Warwick, and the Prince with the 
earl of Oxford was on the hill. The reliance of the English was, as 
usual, on the archers, who occupied the hedge and every available piece 
of cover, while men-at-arms on foot were placed on the wings to guard 
against a flank attack. The French army was posted on the plateau in 
three great divisions, led resf)ectively by the king, the duke of Orleans, 
and the Dauphin. Mindful of Crecy, where the French wrongly be- 
lieved themselves to have been beaten by the dismounted men-at-arms, 
all the French were on foot, with the exception of two bodies of horse, 
who were to act as a forlorn hope and begin the action by charging, one 
at the gap, the other along the upper edge of the ravine. This attack 
completely failed ; for the French at the gap were utterly foiled by the 
showers of arrows that came through and over the fence, while their 
fellows suffered not only from these, but from the men in the ravine and 
even from the Prince's men across the ravine. A grand attack on foot 
by the Dauphin's division fared no better. Then followed a pause ; and 
Orleans, despairing of success, withdrew his men from the field. Seeing 
this, the Black Prince decided to take the offensive against the king's 
division. For this purpose he brought back his men from the hill, and 
formed most of them up with those of Salisbury and Warwick for a front 
attack, and also sent a body of men-at-arms and mounted archers to pass 
round the hill, keeping out of sight, and come out on the plateau in rear 
of the king. This combined attack proved completely successful. In 
spite of desperate bravery, John and his son Philip were both taken, and 
the French army was completely routed. Taking his prisoners with 
him, they returned in safety to Bordeaux. 

The capture of John was a terrible blow to France. That country had 
suffered infinitely more than England. Picardy, Normandy, Brittany, 
Poitou, and Auvergne, had all suffered the worst horrors of Effects on 
war. The finances were in utter confusion. The nobles, 
the peasantry, and the burghers were divided against one another, and 
the king's captivity soon brought the whole country to the verge of 
anarchy. Its desolation was its only defence against the English, but 
that was adequate enough. Every march through such a desert meant 



264 Later Angevin Kings 1356 

the loss of hundreds of lives. An advance of Edward in person to Paris, 
in 1359, was thought to have surpassed in hardshij) all previous experi- 
ences of war ; and in 1360 the utter exliaustion of the French, and the 
obvious hopelessness of further success for the English, compelled both 
sides to come to terms. 

The result was the Great Peace, made at Bretigny in 1360. By it 
Edward gave up his claim to the French crown, and, Avith the exception 
Peace of ^^ ^^^® Channel Islands, to Normandy, Anjou and Maine — 
Bretigny. t,hat is, to the continental possessions derived from Henry ii. 
On the other hand, he was to keep in full sovereignty the whole of the 
duchy of Aquitaine as the descendant of Eleanor of Guienne, the county 
of Ponthieu as the grandson of Eleanor of Castile, and his recent con- 
quest, Calais. By this arrangement, Edward gave up the empty dream 
of uniting the two cro^vns, a task even more beyond his resources than 
the conquest of Scotland, and secured for his jDeople the rich valley of the 
Garonne, with its trade in wine and salt ; Calais, with the command of 
the narrow seas and an easy road into the continent for either our wool 
or our soldiers ; and for himself, the reputation of the greatest soldier of 
his time. In addition, the impoverished French were compelled to jDay 
a large ransom for the release of their king. This sum, however, proved 
far beyond their resources, and John died in London, unransomed, in 
1364. The districts thus ceded were made into a principality for 
Edward's eldest son, on the analogy of Wales, and of the district 
of Dauphine, which had been handed over by the Dauphin or Dolj)hin, 
its hereditary ruler, to the French crown. The transaction, however, 
was incomplete until certain formal renunciations of homage and fealty 
had been performed. These ceremonies, however, were delayed by the 
procrastination of the lawyers, and eventually were not finished when a 
fresh outbreak of hostilities put a stop to the negotiations. 

In 1357 a permanent peace was made with Scotland. Ever since 1333 
Edward had been in name the ally of Edward Balliol ; but in 1356 Balliol, 
Peace with old and childless, surrendered his hereditary rights and the 
Scotland, estates of his family for a sum of money. Edward, how- 
ever, was now prepared to acknowledge David's position without reserve, 
on payment of a ransom for the king and a further sum for the renun- 
ciation of his claim. This was agreed to, and the money, though a 
great strain upon the Scots, was most punctually paid. David's 
death occurred in 1371. By his wife, Joan of England, he left 
no children, and the throne went to Eobert the Steward or Stuart, 
the son of his sister Margaret and his father's old general, Walter the 
Steward. 



1367 Edward HI. 265 

While England and France had been at war, Spain had been convulsed 
by the crimes of Pedro the Cruel, king of Castile. Unlike France or 
Germany, Spain had never made any pretence of being 
a united kingdom. The inroads of the Moors, which ^^^"' 
reached their greatest extent in the tenth century, had left the Chris- 
tian inhabitants huddled up on the slopes of the Pyrenees, and of the 
Asturias, in the districts of Arragon, Navarre, and Leon. When the tide 
turned, two new kingdoms — Castile, or the Castle land, and Portugal, 
the name of a colony of mixed settlers on the shores of the Atlantic — 
had also been formed of lands retaken from the Moors. Of these 
Arragon was chiefly important from its connection with Italian politics 
and with Toulouse ; Navarre from its proximity to Gascony ; and Castile 
from its ever-increasing size. In the fourteenth century, the crowns of 
Castile and Leon had been united by marriage, and this had given Castile 
a decided pre-eminence. 

A revolt had just broken out against Pedro the Cruel, one of the most 
sanguinary tyrants who ever disgraced a throne. It was headed by his 
illegitimate brother, Henry of Trastamare, who, with the aid Pedro the 
of the ' companies ' of professional soldiers who, during the ^'"''^^^• 
later years of the war, had fought both on the sides of the French and 
the English, and had lost their occupation by the Peace of Bretigny, had 
already pressed his brother hard. Pedro visited the Black Prince at 
Bayonne and besought his aid ; and nothing speaks worse for the tone of 
mind produced by the rules of chivalry than that the Black Prince should 
have felt himself under any obligation to assist so undeserving a fugitive. 
Such, however, was the case; and in 1367, Edward, by leave of Battle of 
the king of Navarre, led an army of thirty thousand men Navarette. 
through the passes of the Pyrenees and advanced into the plain of the Ebro. 
There, between Navarette and Najara, not far from Vittoria, he encountered 
and routed Henry, and restored Pedro to the position he had disgraced. 
The success, however, brought in its train a series of disasters. Pedro re- 
fused to repay the money raised by the prince for the expenses of his expedi- 
tion ; the summer heats of Valladolid jDroved fatal to the English soldiers ; 
and, eventually, the Black Prince retraced his steps, hopelessly loaded with 
debt, and with his constitution ruined by an insidious disease. His 
assistance did little good to Pedro. So soon as his back was turned, 
Henry of Trastamare again invaded the country, and Pedro was 
defeated. In an interview with his brother he made an attempt to 
despatch Henry. A struggle followed. The tyrant was stabbed to 
the heart, and Henry ascended the throne as the persistent enemy of 
the English. 



266 Later Angevin Kings 1367 

Meanwhile the Black Prince, driven to his wits' end by the impor- 
tunity of his creditors, was compelled to levy a hearth tax on his French 
French War principality. By some it was readily paid ; but in the 
renewed. recently-annexed districts it was bitterly resented, and an 
appeal against it was lodged at the French court. As the renun- 
ciation of suzerainty had never been made by the French king, Charles 
agreed to hear it, and summoned the Black Prince to appear before 
him. Edward replied that he would willingly do so, but ' with 60,000 
men at his back.' The boast, however, was a vain one ; and in 1369 
the war was resumed under very unftivourable circumstances for the 
English. In any long war the balance always turns in favour of the 
country attacked. The invaders have against them the difficulty of 
keeping up their supplies of men and money, of getting adequate 
and trustworthy information from a hostile peasantry, and of having 
all the country against them, except that which is in the imme- 
diate occupation of their armies. All these began to be felt in full force 
by the English. Besides these, there were special causes. The battles 
of Crecy and Poitiers had been won by trained soldiers over hastily- 
gathered feudal levies. In the latter part of the war, the French armies 
were chiefly composed of professional soldiers commanded by such chiefs 
as the celebrated Bertrand du Guesclin, who thoroughly understood their 
business. Again, the most disastrous thing for a defending army is a 
defeat ; for invaders not to be able to fight at all is ahnost as ruinous. 
The truth of this had been as much demonstrated by the campaigns in 
which the French had avoided battle as those in which fighting had been 
attended by defeat ; and the new king, Charles v., was fully determined 
that come what might he would never allow himself to follow his father's 
imprudence at Poitiers, or that of his grandfather at Crecy. He was also 
extremely economical, and contrived to get the uttermost value out of 
his limited resources. 

In such circumstances, and against such an antagonist, the Black 

Prince would have been sore bestead, even if he had been in his full 

. vigour. Weakened by disease, and embarrassed at every 
Illness of ® -^ ' '' 

the Black turn by want of money, it was out of the question for him 
to bring the struggle to a successful issue. In 1370, the 
French invaded Aquitaine in force ; but, avoiding a pitched battle, they 
contented themselves with throwing garrisons into all the disaffected 
towns, among others into the cite or episcopal town of Limoges. Roused 
by the danger, the prince gathered his forces, and caused himself to be 
carried in a litter to besiege it. The inhabitants and garrison defended 
themselves bravely ; but in spite of all their efforts a breach was made, 



1374 Edward III. 267 

and an assault was on the point of being delivered, when an offer of 

capitulation was made. So furious, however, was the Prince at what he 

regarded as the insolent treachery of the citizens, that he refused all 

terms, and actually ordered that every soul in the cite of Massacre of 

Limoges should be put to the sword. This atrocious order Li"^o&es. 

seems to have been literally carried out. Man, woman, and child perished, 

with the exception of a body of knights, who had placed their backs to the 

wall, and were preparing to sell their lives dearly, when their bravery 

won the compassion of Edward. Such a horrid deed as the massacre of 

Limoges admits of no palliation. Indeed, the sparing of the knights 

makes the slaughter of the unoffending Avomen and children even worse ; 

for it shows the class feeling which was one of the worst products of 

the debased chivalry of the time. In the eyes of his contemporaries 

the Black Prince might, indeed, be the mirror of chivalrous virtue ; 

but, judged by any other standard of morality, the massacre of Limoges 

has left a foul stain on his character. Soon afterwards the Black Prince 

returned to England. 

Two years later, a disaster befell the English cause which made their 

position even more serious. An English fleet, under the earl of Pembroke, 

was defeated off La Rochelle by the Spaniards ; and the Battle of 

dominion of the sea, which we had held since Sluys, passed Rochelle. 

out of our hands. The result was to make the sea-route so precarious that 

next year an attempt was made to send succour to Gascony by marching 

an army from Calais. This was entrusted to the charge of John of 

Gaunt, Edward's second surviving son. The campaign, however, was a 

complete vindication of Charles' tactics. In July the great expedition 

left Calais. The French carefully avoided a battle ; but, hanging on the 

rear of the troops, they cut off" every straggler who left the 

ranks, harassed the baggage, destroyed the crops along the Losses in 

Fr3.ncc 
line of march ; and though the army eventually made its 

way to Gascony in December, it arrived in sorry plight, decimated in 
numbers, ruined in morale, incapable of adding any real strength to the 
defenders. After such a disastrous campaign, the French were able to 
advance with rapidity, and in 1374 the English had lost not only all the 
recent acquisitions of the treaty of Bretigny, except Calais, but all 
Ponthieu and all Gascony, except the towns of Bordeaux and Bayonne. 
Next year, by the intervention of the pope, a truce was negotiated, and 
was fairly observed till the end of the reign. 

It is now time to return to English aftairs. The activity of parlia- 
ment, which was noted as one result of the French war, showed no 
diminution during its continuance, and a number of notable statutes had 



268 Later Angevin Kings 1352 

been passed. Earliest among these is the Statute of Provisors, passed 
in 1351. By Provisors is meant the system by which the popes 'provided 
Statute of fo^^ their officials by giving them English preferments. 
Provisors. gi^ce John had granted free election to the clergy, and 
had confirmed it by the Great Charter, the actual method of appointing 
bishops had been the subject of much contention, which, on the whole, 
had been decided in favour of the popes. Left to themselves, chapters 
rarely came to a unanimous decision. When they could not agree they 
appealed to the pope ; and so frequently was he called upon to arbitrate 
that at length he almost succeeded in making it a rule, that in case 
of dispute the election should be set aside, and that he himself should 
appoint the new bishoj). Besides this, the popes also invented a system 
by which, before the death of a bishop, letters were written to the 
chapter reserving the next appointment to the pope ; and, moreover, it 
became an accepted rule that if a vacancy were created by the removal 
of a bishop to another see, the new vacancy so caused should also be 
filled up by the paj)acy. These encroachments, however, met with less 
resistance than might have l)een expected, because the pope was generally 
willing to apjDoint the king's nominee, such as Archbishop Stratford. 
The provisions, however, were extremely unpopular in the country, 
especially after the popes had removed their residence to Avignon, and 
became the dei^endants of the French king. Accordingly, in 1351, the 
statute of provisors enacted ' that all persons receiving papal j^rovisions 
should be liable to imprisonment, and that all preferments to which the 
pope nominated should be forfeit for that turn to the king.' Ulti- 
mately a comj^romise was eifected wholly in the king's favour. When a 
see became vacant the king sent a conge d'elire, or licence to elect, 
accompanied by a ' letter missive,' in which he named a person whom, if 
elected, he would accept. At the same time the king requested the pope 
to name the same person by a ' jjrovision.' In this way the dignity of 
all concerned was saved ; and, so long as it lasted, the king j)ractically 
nominated his own friends to any vacant sees. By John's Charter free- 
dom of election had also been given in the appointment of abbots. In 
this neither pope nor king interfered ; the former probably because he 
trusted the monks, the latter because the elected abbots, chiefly absorbed 
in the internal afiairs of their respective monasteries, took little active 
share in the afiairs of state. 

In 1353 was passed the first Statute of Praemunire. These acts were an 

Statute of elaboration of the principle enunciated by Wilham the 

Pramunire. Conqueror, that no letters from the pope should be received 

if they had not been first shown to the king, and were specially directed 



1368 Edtvard III. 269 

against the growing practice of appeal from tlie English ecclesiastical 
courts to that of Kome. These appeals were regarded with great dis- 
like, partly because they tended to undermine the royal afithority, and 
much more, because they withdrew money from the kingdom and 
poured it into the laps of the lawyers and officials of the papal court, 
thus reducing the tax-paying capacity of the EngHsh clergy, and adding 
indirectly to the resources of the king of France. A statute was there- 
fore passed to prevent persons prosecuting suits in foreign courts with- 
out the king's leave. Its name was taken from the first words in the writ 
oi 'prcemunire (a corruption of prmmoneri facias, cause A.B. to be fore- 
warned). The act of 1353 was very carefully drawn, and the papal 
court was not mentioned by name ; but in a subsequent act, passed in 

1365, suitors in the papal courts are distinctly mentioned by name ; 
and later still, in 1393, when the country was exasperated by the pope's 
resumption of provisions and reservations, it was enacted that 'all 
persons procuring in the court of Eome or else^vhere such transla- 
tions, processes, sentences of excommunication, bulls, instruments, or other 
things which touch the king, his crown, regality or realm, should suffer 
the penalties of prsemunire.' These penalties consisted of forfeiture of 
goods and imprisonment during the king's pleasure ; and though the 
statute was often evaded, the fact that such penalties hung over delin- 
quents was a very serious check on papal interference with the affairs of 
the English Church. 

Coupled with the statutes of provisors and prsemunire, must be taken 
a decision made in 1368, by which the payment of the one thousand 
marks promised by John was finally repudiated. The money had been 
paid under Henry iii., discontinued by Edward i. ; again paid by his 
unworthy son, and again discontinued by Edward in. At length, in 

1366, the pope sent a formal demand for the payment of thirty-three 
years of arrears. The demand was submitted to parliament. Though 
the precise form of their answer is unknown, it is certain the payment 
has never again been made, nor did the pope again venture to ask for it. 

In 1352 a very important statute defined the meaning of treason. The 
person of the king had from the earliest times been hedged about with 
safeguards which did not exist in the case of ordinary men ; statute of 
and since the Norman Conquest, and especially since the Treason, 
rise of the great lawyers, the relations between the king and the people 
had been the subject of much definition. According to the view held in 
the fourteenth century, the relation between the king and his landed 
subject involved the ideas of fealty, homage, and allegiance ; with non- 
landed subjects, of fealty and allegiance only. Of these, fealty was a 



270 Later Angevin Kings 1368 

personal undertaking to be faitliful as between man and man, homage 
was the oath by which the vassal swears fidelity to the lord whose 
land he holds, allegiance was the duty which every subject — landed or 
landless — owes to the head of the nation to which he belongs. Every 
man of fourteen, on being admitted to his frank-pledge, swore to be 
' foial et loial,' — faithful and loyal to the king ; and if a landowner he did 
homage as well on coming into his estates. Treason and treachery were 
the violation of these undertakings. Under the Norman and earlier 
Angevin kings forfeiture had usually been the punishment for treason ; 
but in the time of Edward i. the less common punishment of death 
had been inflicted, and the adoption of this penalty, while it brought 
home to men's minds the heinousness of the offence, also made it 
imperative to have an exact definition of w^hat constituted the offence 
of treason. This was given in the Statute of Treasons of 1352, which 
defined the crime as ' compassing the death of the king or of his eldest 
son ; the violation of the queen, or of the king's eldest unmarried daughter, 
or of his son's wife ; the levying of war against the king in his realm, 
adhering to the king's enemies, counterfeiting the king's seal or his 
money, importing false money, or slaying the chancellor, or treasurer, or 
judges in the discharge of their duty.' 

In 1362 a most important statute was passed on the subject of taxation. 

By Magna Carta the feudal vassals had secured themselves, as a class, 

against the imposition of extra feudal aids or scutages ; by 

Grants the Confirmatio Chartarum the freedom of the nation as a 

forbi en. ^^,|-^Qjg £^,qj^-^ arbitrary taxation was secured. Neverthe- 
less, tallages on the royal demesne, and the cities and towns in it, were 
occasionally levied till 1332, but were finally forbidden by a statute 
passed in 1340, by which it was enacted that the nation should ' no more 
be charged or grieved to make any common aid or sustain charge, except 
by the common assent of the prelates, earls, barons, and other magnates 
and commons of the realm, and that in parliament.' It still remained 
open for the king to enter into special bargains with particular bodies, 
such, for example, as the wool merchants. Of this opening Edward in. 
had constantly availed himself; but the parliament of 1362 deprived 
him of this mode of evasion by enacting that no further subsidy should 
be set on wool without the consent of parliament. 

The long series of financial measures necessitated by the war resulted 

in several important changes in the system of taxation. In the twelfth 

_ and earlier centuries all taxation had fallen on land, and had 

New Taxes. i • n n i i < j 

taken the shape of scutages, carrucates, and aids, all calculated 

on so much per given area of land. In the thirteenth century, however, 



1374 Edward III. 271 

the rise of the great wool industry and the increased prosperity of the 
merchant class led to the introduction of taxes calculated, not on land, 
but on movable property — such as tenths, twelfths, fifteenths, of its 
value. Moreover, at the close of the century, the growth of foreign 
commerce attracted attention to the customs as an important source of 
revenue ; and duties on various articles of export and import began to 
form a large item in the national accounts. Accordingly, the ancient 
impost of scutage became exceedingly exceptional after the reign of 
Edward i. On the other hand, the customs duty on wool was first 
formally granted in 1275, and a general customs duty, under the title of 
tonnage and poundage, calculated at 2s. on the tun of wine, and 6d. on 
the pound of merchandise, was first formally granted for two years in 
1373, as a commutation of the king's ancient right to a ' prise' or share of 
all goods passing out of the country. From this time forward the 
customs duty on wool and tonnage and poundage became one of the 
most important items of the parliamentary grants. The three feudal aids, 
or rather two, ' pur fille marrier,' and for the knighting of the king's eldest 
son, continued to be collected as before. 

Besides these important statutes, jDarliament gave a great deal of 
attention to the regulation of trade, particularly the staples of wool, lead, 
and tin ; frequently altering the regulations under which the General 
sales of these articles were to be permitted. Their chief Legislation, 
objects were to render taxation easy by concentrating trade in a few 
places, and also to prevent gold and silver from leaving the country, a 
feeling which appears in the anti-papal legislation of the time, and which 
was based on the idea long held that the amount of coin in a country is 
the true test of its wealth. 

During the middle ages ecclesiastical affairs had always two aspects — 
(1) the connection between the church of England and the papacy ; (2) 
the internal condition of the English church. During the ^ , . 

'=' ^ . Ecclesi- 

reign of Edward iii. both require attention. For some time astical 

Affairs, 
a very serious feeling of discontent with the clergy had been 

growing up in the country and shown itself in various ways. One 
cause of the unpopularity of the ecclesiastics was the way in which, 
since the Norman Conquest, they had engrossed the offices of state. 
With the exception of the lay chancellor and treasurer, gjgi^^ 
named by Edward iii. in 1341, these offices had invariably 
been held by ecclesiastics ; and the minor offices of what we should now 
call the civil services were almost exclusively in the hands of ecclesiastics. 
For many years this had been almost an unavoidable necessity, in con- 
sequence of the almost exclusive possession by ecclesiastics of the 



272 Later Angevin Kings 1374 

knowledge of business, account-keeping, and of the civil law ; but of 
recent years the universities had been turning out students well skilled 
in such matters, and in particular the practice of the law was falling into 
the hands of laymen. To these, and to the baronage, the position of the 
official clergy seemed an injustice, and those who held this feeling were 
naturally ready to make common cause for the moment with the baronial 
party, which always (see page 228) regarded with hostility the official 
advisers of the sovereign. 

Against the parish priests the chief grievance was their non-residence, 
which arose partly from one clergyman holding several Hvings, and only 

Parish residing at most in one ; and partly from the practice of 

Priests. beneficed clergymen deserting their cures and residing in 
London or other towns, where they gained an easy livelihood as chantry- 
priests, while their livings were served by ill-paid curates. 

The 'regulars' were beginning to be unpopular on account of their 
wealth, which had turned even the Cistercians into little better than 
The Regular communities of rich sheep-farmers, while the Friars, though 
Orders. ^\-^q ywo^I recently created of the orders, had found the 

temptations of their vagabond existence too powerful to be resisted when 
the first ardour of their enthusiasm had passed away. 

More unpopular, however, than any one order were the officials of the 

ecclesiastical courts, who had long converted what was intended to be an 

. engine for the suppression of vice into a machine for coUect- 

astical ing blackmail from sinners, and whose j)erpetual meddling and 
prying made them universally detested. Two contemporary 
and easily accessible pictures of the ecclesiastical life of the day should 
be examined in this connection : the Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury 
Tales, in which he gives a kindly and not exaggerated sketch of the various 
ecclesiastics of his day, and the Vision of Piers Ploughman, in which 
the vices and avarice of the clergy are denounced in a sterner tone. To 
reform these abuses one party appeared who wished to drive the clergy 
from all secular offices, and another who wished to purge the church of 
abuses and restore it to the purity of primitive times. Of these sections 
the leaders were John of Gaunt and John Wyclif. 

John of Gaunt was only the third son of Edward, who had grown to 
manhood ; but the death of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, in 1368, and the 
John of l*^^o absence of the Prince of Wales in Gascony, made him 
Gaunt. ^\^Q most prominent man about the court. He had been 
born at Ghent in 1340, and was created earl of Kichmond. In 1359 he 
married Blanche, the daughter and heiress of Duke Henry of Lancaster, 
on whose death, in 1362, he had become duke of Lancaster, earl of 



1374 Edward III, 273 

Leicester, Lincoln, and Derby, and as such the natural leader of the old 
Lancastrian party. By his hrst wife, Blanche, he had one son, afterwards 
Henry iv., and two daughters. After her death he married Constance of 
Castile, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Pedro the Cruel, and when she 
died in 1394 he married Katharine Swynford, the governess of his children 
and sister-in-law of Chaucer the poet, by whom he already had several 
illegitimate children, afterwards well known as the Beauforts. His 
abilities were fair, but his personal character was bad, and he aj)pears to 
have had little skill in winning popularity. In consequence, he never 
acquired any real hold over the people at large, and his chief influence 
was exerted as the leader of the nobility. 

If the court was the headquarters of the hostility to the clergy, 
represented by the duke of Lancaster, Oxford was the headquarters of 
the hostility to clerical abuses, represented by John Wyclif. university 
Since Kobert Pullein lectured on the Scriptures in 1133, and of Oxford. 
Vacarius on Roman law in 1149, the schools of Oxford had steadily 
increased in importance ; and at some date unknown the body of teachers 
and scholars had come to be recognised as a university or corporation, 
presided over by a chancellor, named by the bishop of Lincoln as head 
of the diocese, and capable of conferring the degrees of doctor and master. 
So important were these schools, that in 1186, when Gerald the Welshman 
wished to make known his work on the Topography of Wales, he could 
devise no better way than to go to Oxford and read it on three successive 
days to the students. Another j)roof of their importance is shown by the 
efforts made by the various religious orders to get a hold over the 
teaching. In 1221 the Dominicans, on first landing, made their way to 
Oxford, and in 1224 were followed by the Franciscans, and afterwards 
by the Carmelites and Augustinians. Many of the older monastic orders, 
especially the Benedictines, sent scholars from their convent schools to 
reside at the university, and established for them special halls of residence. 
So successful were their eflorts that the mendicant orders soon became 
a very important and almost a dominant element in the life of the 
place ; and Roger Bacon, liimself a Franciscan, complains that they with- 
stood the progress of true learning no less than the clergy. Against 
this predominance of the orders a stand was made by Walter de Merton, 
chancellor of Henry iii. Hitherto with the exception of those who 
lived in one of the hostels of the orders, or had united for economy 
to hire a house under the leadership of a ' principal,' the pQu^dation 
students had lived in lodginos about the town. Walter's of Merton 

1 . . ■ 1 • 1 J ^ College. 

plan was to mcorporate his students as an independent 
society, enjoying the advantage of the lectures of the ' schools,' but living 

s 



274 Later Angevin Kings 1374 

together under proper discij)line. Such corporate life was calculated to 

promote in his scholars a feeling of esprit de corps, and in his statutes 

Walter de Merton set before them an ideal dififerent from that preached 

by the orders. No ' religious person' — that is, no monk or friar — was to be 

a member of the body, and the scholars were to set before themselves as 

their aim, not the narrow vision of obedience to the petty interests of 

an ' order,' but to go out and to do good service in the great world. It 

was in 1264 that Walter de Merton obtained his charter, and in 1274 

he settled his small body of Fellows and Scholars at Oxford. The 

foundation of Merton forms an epoch in the history of Oxford, for the 

example of Walter was soon coj^ied by others. The first ordinance of 

Balliol dates from 1282. Exeter College was founded in 1314, Oriel 

College in 1326, Queen's College in 1340. A similar change occurred in 

the life of the younger university of Cambridge, and in 1280 the statutes 

of Peterhouse, the first Cambridge college, were copied from those of 

Merton. The ' orders,' however, were not willing to lose their hold on 

the universities without a struggle, and it was as a leader in this rivalry 

between the 'seculars' and the 'regulars' that Wyclif»appears to have 

first established a reputation. 

John Wyclif is believed to have been born in 1324 at the village of 

Hipswell, near Richmond in Yorkshire, some ten miles from Wyclifi'e- 

,.. on-Tees, the home of his family. Of his boyhood nothing is 
John \Vyclif. 

known, but that he found his way to Oxford ; and the first 

definite fact known of his later career is that in 1361 he became master of 

Balliol College. As a head of a college Wyclif was by position a leader 

among the ' seculars,' and his character well fitted him for controversy. 

To a temperament naturally witty, humorous, and acute, he had added 

an admkable training in the methods of scholastic philosojDliy which 

turned upon acute definitions and distinctions. His personal character 

was so good that his opponents could never find in it the slightest handle 

for personal attack ; while his genial temperament appears to have won 

him the love and co-operation of others. Such a man made an admirable 

leader of the movement against the 'regulars.' In 1366 Wyclif brought 

himself into further prominence by defending, before the university of 

Oxford, the decision to withhold from the pope the tribute of 1000 marks ; 

and in 1375 he was selected as one of a deputation who were to meet the 

pope's representatives at Bruges, and argue the whole question of the 

relations between England and the papacy. 

Meanwhile, in 1372, the court party had taken vigorous action against 

the ecclesiastical ofiicials. Taking up the policy of 1341, they had 

demanded and secured thek dismissal, and a heavy tax had been levied 



1376 Edward III, 275 

on lands taken into mortmain since 1282 for the purpose of raising a 
fleet. A parable of the time illustrates the attitude of the courtiers. The 
owl (the church) had iDorrowed its feathers (endowments) Hostility to 
from the other birds (the laity) ; but when the birds were *^^ Clergy, 
in danger from the hawk (the French), then the birds rightly demanded 
to have their feathers restored for their own defence. Ill luck, however, 
attended the application of the story, for the fleet so provided perished 
oft' La Kochelle (see p. 267); the expedition of John of Gaunt was a 
failure, and the new lay officials showed themselves less competent to 
manage affairs than the more experienced ecclesiastics. 

Of these ecclesiastics the most conspicuous was William of Wykeham. 
This celebrated man was born in 1324. He had long served the court in 
the capacity of surveyor of works, had built for Edward the william of 
castles of Windsor and Queenborough and many other "VVykeham. 
buildings ; and in reward had been made president of the king's council, 
bishop of Winchester, and chancellor. In 1386 he founded New College 
at Oxford, and the college of Winchester, to which he gave for a motto 
the maxim 'Manners makyth man.' To John of Gaunt Wykeham 
appears to have been personally distasteful, and as Wykeham's cause 
was taken up by the clergy as a body, the controversy betw^een the two 
assumed a national importance. 

Meanwhile, the general condition of the country had become most 

unsatisfactory. Queen Philij^pa died in 1369; and after her death 

Edward iii. allowed himself to be completely fascinated by ^ 

'- , "^ Demoralisa- 

the charms of one of her attendants, Alice Ferrers or tion of the 

Pierce, whom he publicly exhibited in the streets of London 
as ' the Queen of Beauty.' Under her influence his character suffered a 
rapid deterioration. Alice acquired a greater influence than any king's 
mistress before or since ; wheedled the king into granting her the late 
queen's jewels, made an open sale of her influence, and actually ventured 
to dictate the decisions of the courts of law. Under her influence, the 
extragavance of the court knew no bounds ; the king was over- 
whelmed with debts ; and courtiers, such as lord Latimer and lord 
Neville and Kichard Lyons, made money by buying up the claims of the 
king's creditors and getting payment for themselves at the expense of 
others. 

Such a state of affairs at court caused widespread dissatisfaction ; and in 
1376 Edward the Black Prince, wdio, since his return to England, had 
been living the retired life of an invalid, roused himself to The Good 
exertion ; and, putting himself at the head of the malcontents, Parliament, 
demanded a change of ministers and the purification of the court. The 



276 Lat^r Angevin Kings 1376 

famous parliament of 1376, honourably distinguished as ' the Good 
Parliament,' met in April, and, probably under the direct guidance of 
the Black Prince and William of Wykeham, made a vigorous attack on 
the court. As their speaker they chose Peter de la Mare, steward of the 
earl of March, who had married the daughter of Lionel, duke of 
Clarence, and was friendly to a policy of reform ; and then proceeded to 
attack Latimer, Neville, Lyons, and Alice Perrers. Their method of 
attack was almost as important as the attack itself, for the commons 
proceeded by impeaching the accused before the House of Lords. In 
this method of procedure, the House of Commons, as a body, appears as 
prosecutor. The Lords act as judges ; hear the evidence brought by the 
managers for the commons, their speeches on it, and the answers of the 
accused, and finally pronounce by a majority the verdict and sentence. 
Latimer and Lyons were found guilty of having lent the king 20,000 
marks and receiving ^20,000 in return ; Neville of buying up the king's 
debts ; and Alice Perrers of breaking an ordinance which forbade women 
to practise in the courts of law. 

In June the Black Prince died, leaving behind him a name for military 
courage and chivalry, and perhaps a sounder reputation for the reforming 

John of 2®^^ ^^^ ^^^^ shown in his later years. As in the eyes of the 

Gaunt. reforming party John of Gaunt was capable of any crime, 
the commons proceeded to take trenchant measures to exclude him from 
j)Ower, and to secure the succession of the little Eichard, the sole surviv- 
ing child of the Black Prince. They had Eichard brought before them 
as heir ; induced the king to accept the addition to his council of ten 
additional members of the popular party ; and they presented no less 
than one hundred and forty petitions, demanding the redress of griev- 
ances of all sorts and kinds dealing with the administration of justice, 
the claims of the pope and foreign clergy, into whose pockets no less than 
i;20,000 of English money was said to go yearly, interference with the 
right of free parliamentary elections, and the non-enforcement of the 
statutes of labour. 

So long as parliament was sitting, favourable answers were given to 
their requests ; but when it was dissolved in July, after the longest 
session then recorded, John of Gaunt resumed his influence. 
Alice Perrers was recalled. Peter de la Mare was thrown 
into prison, and an elaborate list of charges of peculation, similar to those 
advanced against Hubert de Burgh and Becket, was brought against 
William of Wykeham. The new members of council were not allowed 
to sit, and not one of the petitions received the formal consent of the 
crown. Eeadily snatching at any weapon with which to attack the 



1377 



Edivard III, 



277 



clergy, John of Gaunt had endeavoured to pose as a sincere friend of 
WycHf ; and the Oxford doctor, perhaps too sanguine, perhaps too easily 
carried away by the blandishments of the court, had allowed himself to 
appear as a friend of the duke. Confident in the strength of his position 
and his power to pack a parliament, Lancaster summoned that body in 
January 1376, and was so successful that a majority of the members 
petitioned for the restoration of Latimer, Neville, and Alice Ferrers, and 
voted a poll-tax of one groat per head. 

Exasperated by the attack on Wykeham, convocation then determined 
to strike at the duke through Wyclif, who was summoned to appear 
before a committee of bishops at St. Paul's. He appeared Trial of 
under the protection of John of Gaunt and his friend Henry "Wyclif. 
Percy, who, having been formerly a reformer, had been won over by the 
office of lord marshal. The natural result was an altercation between 
Lancaster and the committee. The chairman, Courtenay, bishop of 
London, was insulted ; and so angry were the Londoners at the insult 
ofi'ered to their bishop that a riot followed, in which John of Gaunt 
and Percy with difficulty escaped with their lives ; but no violence 
seems to have been offered to Wyclif, in spite of his association with the 
unpopular noblemen. As yet, however, Wyclif had not published the 
views which afterwards gained him the reputation of a heretic ; but his 
short experience of political life seems to have decided him in favour of 
more effective and permanent ways of increasing his influence. 

For the moment John of Gaunt seemed supreme, and nothing short of 
an armed insurrection seemed able to displace him, when Death of 
the death of the king in June 1377 opened a new page in Edward iii. 
the contest. 



CHIEF DA TES. 









A.D. 


Battle of Halidon Hill, 1338 


Battle of Crecy, . 






1346 


Black Death, 






1349 


Statute of Treasons, . 






1352 


Statute of Praemunire, 






1353 


Battle of Poitiers, 






1356 


Peace of Bretigny, 






1360 


The Good Parliament, 






1376 



CHAPTEE IV 

RICHARD II.: 1377-1399 

T> -it^nn • 1 r 1381, Anne of Bohemia. 

Born 1366 ; married -{ ,„^_ Tin r -n. 

' 1 1395, Isabella of France. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 
Scotland. France. Emperor. 

Robert ii., d. 1390. Charles v., d. 1380. Wenceslas, deposed 1400. 
Robert ill. , d. 1406. Charles vi. , 1422. 

The Minority — Peasant Revolt — The Lollards —Opposition Nobles displace the 
King's Ministers — Richard's personal rule — His revenge on the Nobles, and 
final falL 

On Edward's death, his grandson Eichard, the son of the Black Prince, 

was made king. He was only eleven years of age, and his accession is a 

Accession of strong proof both of the popularity of his father and of the 

Richard II. strong hold gained by the idea of hereditary right ; for 

as yet, with the exception of Edward iii., no minor had been allowed 

to reign in England who had an uncle of full age ready to take the 

throne. 

The experiment, however, was fraught with many dangers, one of which 

was the accumulation of immense territorial influence in the hands of 

_ . . the royal fiimily. The problem of providing for their 

Provision '' . "^ ^ i o 

for younger younger SOUS has always been one of difficulty for mon- 

archs. Before the Norman Conquest, the temjDtation to find 

such provision in the revival of under-kingdoms frequently proved a 

menace to the integrity of the realm. It is a strong proof of the 

prudence of William the Conqueror, that he created none of his sons an 

English earl ; and Henry ii., in dividing his wide dominions, had wisely 

kept England intact. The first to depart from this wholesome policy was 

Henry iii. ' who created the earldom of Cornwall for his brother Eichard, 

278 



1377 Richard IL 279 

made his eldest son, Edward, earl of Chester, and his second, Edmund 
earl of Lancaster, Derby, and Leicester. Edward i. was responsible for 
the marriage of Edmund's son Thomas with the heiress of Lincoln and 
Salisbury ; and Edward ii. gave the earldoms of Norfolk and Kent to his 
lialf-brothers. 

On the accession of Edward iii., therefore, he found the earldoms of 
Chester, Lancaster, Derby, Lincoln, Leicester, Cornwall, Kent, and Nor- 
folk in the hands of the royal family, and when his sons ^he ^reat 
grew up, he carried on and extended the system. His eldest Earldoms, 
son, the Black Prince, was created duke of Corn wall in 1337, and married 
his cousin Joan, the heiress of the earl of Kent. His second son Lionel, 
duke of Clarence, married the heiress of William de Burgh, earl of 
Ulster, and heiress of a third of the estates of the earls of Gloucester and 
Hereford. In 1368 Lionel died, leaving a daughter, Philippa, who 
united her great possessions to those of Eoger Mortimer, earl of March, 
the great-grandson of the traitor, and himself one the leaders of the 
reforming party in the Good Parliament. Edward's third son, John of 
Gaunt, earl of Richmond, married the heiress of Henry, duke of 
Lancaster, who brought her husband, besides Lancaster, the earldoms of 
Derby and Leicester ; and their eldest son Henry married the heiress 
of half the lands of the Bohuns of Hereford ; while her sister gave her 
hand to Edward's fifth son, Thomas of Woodstock. The accumulation 
of territory in the hands of the royal family was therefore enormous ; 
and as the possession of certain territories appeared inevitably to force on 
the owner a certain uniform line of policy, it may be said, roughly speak- 
ing, that John of Gaunt was at the head of the ancient combination of 
north-country barons, that the line of Clarence was identified with the 
lords marcher of Wales, while the king as earl palatine of Chester and 
earl of Cornwall had special powers, which gave him a strong claim over 
the loyalty of the men of Cheshire, and a certain revenue from the valu- 
able mines of Cornwall. The most important earldoms unconnected with 
the royal family were those of Northumberland, created at the close 
of the last reign for Lancaster's friend, Henry Percy ; Warwick, held by 
the Beauchamps ; Salisbury, by the family of Montacute or Montagu ; 
Oxford, by the family of Vere, and Arundel. A knowledge of the dis- 
tribution of these earldoms is essential for understanding the events of 
the fifteenth century. 

Following the precedent set during the minorities of Henry iii. and 
Edward in., a council of government was appointed, re- The Royal 
presentative of both parties, including, for example, the earl Counci . 
of Arundel as the friend of Lancaster, and also the earl of March. To 



280 Later Angerin Kings 1377 

avoid jealousy the king's uncles were all excluded, and the guardianship 
of the king's person and the general superintendence of affairs were left 
to his mother, Joan of Kent, who enjoyed unbounded pof)ularity. 
When parliament met, the same conciliatory policy was carried on. The 
commons were deferential to the duke of Lancaster, and he on his part 
made no complaint when Peter de la Mare was re-elected speaker. It 
was agreed that during the king's minority the chancellor, treasurer, and 
other great officers of state should be chosen by parliament, and also that 
two London merchants, William Walworth and John Philipot, under the 
name of treasurers, should superintend the expenditure of a liberal grant 
made for the war. This excellent beginning, however, proved too good 
to last. John of Gaunt was too ambitious to be content with a secondary 
position, too incompetent to govern well when he got power into his 
hands, and his combination of arrogance and inefficiency soon made him 
as unpopular as ever. 

The greatest event of the early years of Richard ii. was the peasant 
revolt of 1381. It was the result of a variety of causes, the most obvious 
Peasant ^^ which, if not the most important, was the poll-tax of 
Revolt. 1381. Driven to their wits' end to provide money, and 
very imperfectly informed as to the taxable capacity of the country, 
the commons in 1379 had followed the precedent set in 1377, and levied 
a poll-tax. This tax was graduated. A duke paid £Q, 13s. 4d., 
earls paid ^4, and so on to the humblest villein, who contributed one 
groat ; and the clergy paid on a similar scale. This tax was collected 
with great exactitude ; and in those counties where the rate-books have 
been preserved, and especially where they have been printed, they afibrd 
a complete and accessible census of the population. The amount raised, 
however, feU short of what was needed, and in 1380 a second poll- 
tax was imposed. The graduation of this, however, was by no means so 
fair. The poorest were to pay one shilling ; the richest only one pound. 
Such an arrangement, which brought home to every one's door the 
consequences of ill government and extravagance, produced widespread 
discontent ; and in June 1381 the Kentishmen rose in arms, headed by 
Wat Tyler, who is said to have been driven to fury by an insult oflFered to 
his daughter, and rescued from Maidstone gaol a priest of revolutionary 
views named John Ball, the author of the distich 

' When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Who was then the gentleman ? ' 

who had been imprisoned by the archbishop of Canterbury. 

Simultaneous with the Kentish rising, but excited by various causes. 



1381 Richard II. 



281 



insurrections broke out in Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and 
Cambridge, and even in such an isolated shire as Somersetshire. The 
mainspring of these outbreaks was hatred of villein ao-e. In 
Kent villeinage was unknown, and there the movement was of the"^^"^ 
distinctly political ; but elsewhere the villeins were deeply ^^'^^""2- 
incensed at the attempted enforcement of the statutes of labourers and 
at the stop which had been put in practice to the commutation of villein 
services for money. The times were exceedingly prosperous ; wao-es were 
naturally high, and in consequence, not only was restriction on a further 
rise resented, but those who still continued in villeinage saw that the real 
money value of their service rents was steadily rising, while no lord would 
willingly exchange them for a money commutation. In addition to this, 
it seems certain that considerable excitement had been caused by the less 
temperate of Wyclif s simple priests and other enthusiasts ; and the 
materials for insurrection had of late years been much augmented by dis- 
banded soldiery, who had returned from the wars. 

Accordingl}^, all these causes worked together to produce the most 
serious popular outbreak that England has probably seen. The actual 
insurrection only occupied a fortnight ; but while it lasted, Tyler's 
all the south-eastern counties were in flame. Everywhere Revolt, 
the manor-houses were fired and the manor-rolls burnt, precisely as was 
done by the French peasantry in 1789 ; and every lawyer on whom the 
peasantry could lay hands was promptly put to death. Converging on 
London, the Kentishmen, under Wat Tyler, crossed the Thames at 
London Bridge, murdered Simon of Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury 
and chancellor, who is said to have called them ' shoeless ribalds,' and his 
colleague. Sir Kobert Hales, the treasurer, and roundly declared that they 
would never have a King John to rule over them. The villeins were less 
outrageous and more reasonable. Eichard met the Essex men at Mile-end, 
and having gained their goodwill by promising the abolition of villein tenure, 
prevailed on them to go home. Next day he met Wat Tyler at Smith- 
field ; but in the course of the interview an altercation broke out, in 
which Tyler was stabbed by William Walworth, the lord mayor. 
Richard, however, showed great presence of mind. Lad as he was, he 
rode boldly forward and won the hearts of Tyler's men by exclaiming : 
' I will be your leader ! ' Meanwhile, Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich, 
had put down the Norfolk insurgents at North Walsham,and burnt the 
church in which they took refuge ; and in other parts of the country 
the news of the king's promises was followed by the dispersal of the 
villeins. 

Difficulties, however, presented themselves in the way of giving these 



282 Later Angevin Kings I38i 

promises the sanction of law. The villeins' demands were that the 
customary services should be abolished in favour of a fixed rental of four- 
pence an acre, and that all should have liberty to buy and sell in fairs 
and markets. To promise on his own responsibility that these should be 
granted, was clearly in excess of the king's prerogative. It was giving 
away what did not belong to him ; and when parliament met, the members, 
while showing themselves willing enough to take up the political cries of 
the Kentish rebels, took up the unimpeachable legal ground that the king 
had no right to promise an arbitrary and wholesale commutation of 
customary services. 

Apparently the villeins had lost their case ; but in practice they gained 
from individual landlords what parliament refused to sanction in the 
Results of niass. Terrified by the prospect of a second outbreak, land- 
the Revolt. \qj.^^ willingly commuted services so difficult of exaction, 
and found their advantage in letting their lands to leasehold tenants who 
cultivated them with hired labour. From the villein tenants of the 
fourteenth century sprang the yeomen of a later period, holding their 
copyhold lands practically as freeholds ; while the landless wage-earning 
labourers enjoyed after 1381 a period of prosperity Avhich lasted more 
than a century, until the wholesale introduction of sheep-farming pro- 
duced a new economical crisis. 

The hostility shown by the Kentish rebels to John of Gaunt convinced 
that nobleman that he had little chance of playing a great political game 

, , , in England. Nevertheless, he retained considerable influence 

John of '^ ' 

Gaunt goes till 1385, when he began to make preparations for an 

expedition to Spain, where he had some hopes of winning 

the crown of Castile, as husband of the elder daughter of Pedro the 

Crael. In 1386 he left England, and did not return till the close of 1389. 

Meanwhile, the ideas of Wyclif had been rapidly spreading. Shortly 

after the death of Edward, a bull directing his trial for holding opinions 

subversive of church and state had been received from 
Wyclif. 

Rome ; but when Wyclif appeared to answer the charges, 

he was backed by the presence of a large body of Londoners ; and the 
Princess of Wales, who knew Wyclif 's worth, and seems to have generally 
consulted him about papal business, peremptorily stopped the proceed- 
ings. Upon this, Wyclif retired to his living of Lutterworth, which had 
been presented to him by the crown, seemingly for his services at Bruges 
in 1375, and devoted himself to popularising his ideas. In this work he 
showed a capacity with which his Oxford friends could hardly have 
credited him. Abandoning his scholastic style, he poured forth a series 
of tracts in homely English, which are generally considered to be the first 



1384 Pdchard II. 



283 



specimens of literary English prose written since the cessation of the 
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the reign of Stephen, and which even had 
they no historical importance, would have given Wyclif a high place in 
the history of English literature. Besides this, he organised a body of 
poor priests, not by any means dissimilar to Wesley's preachers who 
were to go through the length and breadth of the land, teaching, when 
permitted, in the churches, when not, on the village green or common and 
who were to show in their own persons an example of real poverty 
and asceticism. But what did more tlian anything else to secure per- 
manence for his reputation was the English translation of the Bible de- 
signed by himself, and carried out partly by his own hand and partly under 
his supervision. This translation was made, not from the original Hebrew 
and Greek, but from the Vulgate or Latin version ; so good, however 
was the Latin text, that Wyclif s English version has been made the basis 
of our own translation, and many passages of the latter repeat almost 
verbatim the words of Wyclif, 

Though Wyclif's name is not directly connected with the risino- of 
1381, for John Ball's ideas were quite independent of Wyclif's teachino-, 
there is little doubt that the doctrine of equality preached 
by his priests, and their invectives against wealth and luxury, attack on 
had not been without influence in producing the feelings which ^^ ^ ' 
gave rise to it ; and it is certain that its suppression was followed by a 
formidable attack upon the reformer. Simon of Sudbury was succeeded 
by Courtenay, bishop of London, and, in 1382, he called a provisional 
synod to consider Wyclif's views. In the former trials it was Wyclif's 
political tenets which had been called in question ; now he was accused 
of heresy, and twenty-four conclusions extracted from his writings were 
branded as heretical. Among these was one which questioned the literal 
truth of the doctrine of transubstantiation ; a second that ecclesiastics 
should not hold temporal possessions ; a third was that ' he who gives 
alms to a mendicant is excommunicate.' Having obtained this decision, 
Courtenay's next step was to attack Oxford, the stronghold of Wyclif's 
views, and drive his adherents out of the university. Peter Eigge, the 
chancellor, Wyclif's friend, was expelled ; some were compelled to recant ; 
others fled. At a parliament held in Oxford, Wyclif was summoned to 
appear before convocation and explain his views. The result was a 
further condemnation, upon which Wyclif for the last time retired to 
Lutterworth. But in England Courtenay could do no more. No law 
existed for the burning of heretics ; and Wyclif was too wyciifs 
infirm and too prudent to obey a summons to Kome, and died 
in peace at Lutterworth in 1384. So successful had he been that in 



284 Later Angevin Kings 1384 

spite of the suppression of his ' simple priests,' his tenets spread rapidly, 
not only among the poorer classes, but even at court. Richard's queen, 
Anne of Bohemia, whom he married in 1382, was a convert ; and so 
numerous were his followers that it was said by an exasperated monk 
that ' if you saw five men talking together, three were Wyclifites.' The 
general name given to them was Lollard. Its origin is unknown. Some 
derive it from lullen, 'to sing' ; but in 1396, Pope Boniface ix., "writing to 
Richard ii., mentions them as those who call themselves ' the j^oor men of 
Christ's treasure-house,' but whom ' the common people in more correct 
language have called " lollards," as being " dry tares," lollium aridum,' 
which may or may not be a pun. 

As there were no children of Richard's marriage, it was needful to 
provide for the succession, and in 1385 the young Roger, earl of March, 
Richard's grandson of Lionel, duke of Clarence, was definitely 
Favourites, recognised as successor in case the king died without 
children. The same year the Princess of Wales died ; and as she 
was a woman of ability and tact, her loss as a moderating and reconciling 
power was much felt. Richard was now nineteen ; but in spite of the 
promise given by his resolute conduct in 1381, it was a long time before 
he showed any real inclination to assume the responsibility of government, 
and at an age when his father and grandfather were immersed in affairs, 
he was still given over to jDleasure. In these circumstances, his immediate 
friends had much influence ; and, as a rule, their influence was bad. His 
half-brothers, Thomas and John Holland, earls respectively of Kent and 
Huntingdon, were violent and lawless men ; Robert de Vere, earl of 
Oxford, the king's bosom friend, was in everything, except that he 
belonged to an ancient English family, very much a second Gaveston ; 
Sir Simon Burley, his tutor, inculcated notions of high prerogative 
which were sure in their application to lead to trouble ; and though 
Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, the chancellor, was a painstaking 
financier and honest soldier, he never won the confidence of the country. 
Against these men, who might be regarded as a court party, a powerful 
opposition was being organised by Thomas of Gloucester, the king's uncle. 
The Opposi- and by his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, earl of Derby, son 
^^°"* of John of Gaunt. Much more astute than Lancaster, 

Thomas and Henry made every effort to conciliate not only the clergy but 
the commons. Lancaster had offended the former by his attacks on 
Wykeham and his patronage of Wyclif ; Bolingbroke won their favour 
by deference to Courtenay and by discountenancing any approach to 
LoUardism. On his part, Gloucester cultivated popularity, made himself 
a rival of Richard for popular favour, aided Bolingbroke to win the 



1387 Richard II. 285 

alienated affection of the Londoners. The result was the orowth of an 
opposition of no ordinary power, including Thomas Beauchamp, earl of 
Warwick ; Thomas Mowbray, earl of Nottingham ; Thomas, bishop of Ely, 
and his brother, Eichard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, and even William of 
Wykeham, now a very old man. 

The attack, which was more personal than political, opened in the 
parliament of 1386, when a demand was made for a heavy tax to enable 
Kichard to carry on the war in person. This naturally led Suffolk's 
to discussion ; and Richard was ill-advised enough to take dismissal, 
this opportunity to make his friend, Vere, duke of Ireland. The result 
was a storm. Parliament demanded the dismissal of Michael de la Pole ; 
Richard declared that at their request not a scullion in his kitchen should 
be dismissed. On this the act of deposition of Edward ii, was moved for 
in the commons, and Richard, having convinced himself that parliament 
was in earnest, dismissed Suffolk, and made bishop Arundel chancellor. 
The fallen minister was then impeached on the usual charge of malversa- 
tion, found guilty, stripped of his property, and ordered to be 
imprisoned. 

The next step of the opposition was to demand the appointment of a 
commission to regulate the royal household and the reahn after the 
manner of the Lords Ordainers. This was agreed to ; but 

Royal 

though he had yielded to pressure, Richard was none the Household 
less furious at what he considered an insult to his prerogative, by Commis- 
Taking with him Sir Simon Burley, the duke of Ireland, ^^°"' 
archbishop Neville, Tressilian, the chief justice. Sir Nicholas Brember, a 
Londoner, and releasing Suffolk, he retired into the country, and elicited 
from the judges an opinion that the commission was contrary to the 
prerogative of the crown. In return, Gloucester charged Neville, Vere, 
Suffolk, Tressilian, and Brember with treason, and both parties prepared 
for war. The collapse of the king's friends was, however, 
complete. Bolingbroke defeated Vere at Radcot Bridge Radcot 
in Oxfordshire, and Vere at once fled to the continent. 
Suffolk and Neville did the like. Tressilian and Brember alone were 
taken. 

A new parliament met in January 1387, and in it the five named by 
Gloucester were formally charged by Gloucester, Derby, Nottingham, 
Warwick, and Arundel, who were named the Lords The Lords 
Appellant. The charges were various : ranging from ^^^ 
attempting to make Vere king of Ireland, to causing Richard to 
impoverish the crown by lavish gifts of lands and money. The judges 
declared an accusation brought in this form illegal ; but parliament over- 



286 Later Angevin Kings 1387 

rode tlieir decision, found the accused guilty of treason, and, by what 
amounted to an act of attainder, condemned all except Neville to be put 
to death. This was immediately done in the case of Tressilian and 
Brember, and Neville was disposed of by the ingenious device of getting 
Pope Urban vi. to promote him to the archbishopric of St. Andrews in 
Scotland, a country which acknowledged a rival pope. Besides Tressilian 
and Brember, Sir Simon Burley and three other laymen were put to 
death ; and these wholesale executions of rival politicians mark a further 
development of the barbarous practices which had been begun by the 
murder of Gaveston, and were to culminate in the wholesale attainders of 
the Wars of the Eoses, and the judicial murders of the Tudors and Stuarts. 
By such acts the parliament of 1387 well earned its infamous title of the 
Merciless. For about a year Gloucester and his friends retained their 
power ; but in 1389, Eichard, who was now twenty-two years of age, 
suddenly declared his intention of managing his own affairs, dismissed 
Arundel from the chancery and the lords appellant from the council, and 
apparently with great satisfaction to his subjects inaugurated a new 
regime. 

The character of the young king has always been regarded as one of 
the puzzles of history. Good-looking, clever, cultivated, inheriting the 
Character of popularity of his father and mother, he nevertheless proved 
Richard II. ^ complete failure ; and ended by having his crown taken 
from him by a decision almost as unanimous as that which dethroned 
Edward ii. One cause of this was undoubtedly his habitual idleness. 
Whether this was due to constitution, or was the result of an evil bringing- 
up, cannot now be determined, but it certainly was the dominant trait of 
his political character ; and the occasional flashes of fitful energy which 
he displayed only served to make his ordinary conduct more exasperating. 
Nevertheless, for eight years, from 1389 to 1397, in spite of his high 
views on prerogative, he reigned with considerable success, acting con- 
stitutionally through his ministers and by the advice of parliament ; and 
the contrast between this period and the two years which followed is so 
marked that it has been suggested, with some plausibility, that a mental 
change amounting to insanity is the true explanation of his later conduct. 

Several events made government work more smoothly after 1388. In 
1389 John of Gaunt returned from Spain, and, instead of resuming his 
Quieter former intrigues, showed himself an honest subject and a 
Times. faithful adviser of his nej)hew ; and as he had great influence 
over both his brothers, Gloucester and York, this change in his conduct 
was of the first importance. In 1390 Henry of Bolingbroke left England 
to fight against the Lithuanians, in the ranks of the German knights. 



1396 Richard II. 



287 



and with the exception of one short visit to England, stayed with them 
till 1392. Then he went by way of Prague, Vienna, Venice and Rhodes 
to Jerusalem, and returned home in 1393 by way of Italy and France. 
Suffolk died abroad ; and, as Vere never returned to England, a com- 
plete break was made between Richard and his old advisers. The 
energies of Henry Percy were for the most part occupied in border 
warfare, during which, in 1388, was fought the famous battle of Otter- 
burn, near Wooler, the true facts of which have been almost lost in the 
ballad of 'Chevy Chace.' The earl of March was in Ireland; and 
Warwick, Mowbray, and Arundel were not strong enough of themselves 
to give trouble. All these things made for peace. 

The chancellorship was first given by Richard to the aged WiUiani of 
Wykeham ; and on his death in 1391, to bishop Arundel, who held it 
till 1396, when he became archbishop of Canterbury ; and 
the treasury was occupied by a series of able but not re- tionai 
markable bishops, whose policy was confined to the routine °vernment. 
of office. The period covered by their rule is marked by all the signs of 
good government. Ministers were trusted by parliament, which, on one 
occasion, expressly declared that it had no fault to find with their rule. 
Taxation was moderate and regular. Prices were low and waoes good. 
The irritation of the villeins was fast passing away through the reason- 
able concessions of the lords. A series of truces were concluded with 
France. The eight years of constitutional government, moreover, were 
marked by a large amount of useful legislation, in which the com- 
mons had their full share. The statutes of provisors and statutes of 
proemunire were re-enacted with additional safeguards. The Provisors 

. . and 

statute of mortmain was enlarged so as to forbid the practice Praemunire 
of granting estates to laymen in trust for religious houses, 
and guilds or fraternities were also forbidden to acquire land. On the 
other hand, Richard, to his great honour, refused his consent to a 
monstrous proposal that villeins should not be allowed to acquire lands, 
or to send their children to school. 

Another statute, that of maintenance, dealt with an evil which was to 
be the curse of England for the next hundred years. 

In the days before the statute of quia emptores, the military strength 
of the great nobles had lain in their sub-tenants bound to do them mili- 
tary service ; but since the practice of subinfeudation had statute of 
been abolished, they had begun to replace their vassals by ^'" 
bands of hired retainers, men clothed and fed at their expense, who 
wore the badge of their lords, and who were ready at any time to fight 
in their battles. This practice appears to have been much stinnilated by 



288 Later Angevin Kings 1396 

the habits of coniinand acquired by the nobles in the French wars, and 
their capacity for indulging in it had been increased by the recent prac- 
tice of letting land for a money rent, which added to their command 
of ready money. The men thus hired constituted practically a small but 
efficient standing army at the beck and call of each nobleman, and their 
existence was at once an incentive to and a means of carrying on the 
civil warfare, which, from the battle of Eadcot Bridge to the battle of 
Stoke in 1487, was such a terrible characteristic of English life. In 
1390, this practice was forbidden by the statute of maintenance, under 
the name of ' livery of company ' ; but this law, though often renewed, 
was a dead letter for want of an adequate force to compel its observance, 
and remained so till the time of Henry vii. 

The time which we are now dealing with was also remarkable as the 
culminating point in one of the great epochs of English literature. The 

fourteenth century was remarkable throughout Europe for 
Literature. . . . 

the progress made in ousting the literary Latin of the 

Middle Ages in favour of the vernacular tongue of each country. In 

Italy was written by Dante the great j)oem of the Divina Commedia ; 

France produced the prose Chronicle of Froissart ; Spain produced the 

Cid. In England the revolt was a double one. Not only had we to 

displace Latin but also French, which the spread of French fashions 

among the upper classes had made the usual sj)eech of court and castle, 

from which it had spread to such an extent that Eobert of Gloucester 

tells us that no man who valued himself neglected to learn it ; and 

William Langiand represents his poorest peasants as singing French 

songs on their way to work. When the great French war opened, a 

reaction set in. French began to be less used in documents of state ; and 

in 1362 it was forbidden in the courts of law. It held its own, however, 

with great tenacity. The rolls of parliament under Kichard ii. were 

always in French ; and, indeed, the phrase, ' yes ! yes ! ' {Oyez ! 

Oyez !) of the town-crier ; and the royal phrase, la reine s'avisera or la 

reine le veult survive to the present day. Fortunately the revival of 

English was contemporary with the ai3j)earance of three great writers — 

Wyclif, Chaucer, and Langiand — who did more than any three other 

men to make English the literary language, both of verse and prose, and 

to secure its acceptance by all classes of the community. Of Wyclif s 

life, his tracts, and his translation of the Bible, we have already spoken ; 

it remains to notice Chaucer and Langiand. 

Geoffrey Chaucer was the son of a London vintner, and was probably 

born in the year 1340. His father's interest sufficed to get him the post 

of page in the service of Lionel, duke of Clarence ; and he saw service 



1396 Bichard II. 



289 



in France in 1359. About 1366, Chaucer married a sister of the Katha^ 
rine Swynford, afterwards wife of John of Gaunt. He then served in 
a variety of missions abroad, visiting among other places 
Genoa and Florence ; and was rewarded with the post of ^"'^^J'- 
comptroller of the customs and subsidy of wools, skins, and leather at 
the port of London ; and in 1382, comptroller of the petty customs, or 
tonnage and poundage. In 1386 he sat in parliament, but soon after- 
wards was dismissed from his post, and for some years was in money 
difficulties. He apparently recovered his good fortune by the aid of the 
Lancasters, and died in 1400. Chaucer was a voluminous writer ; but 
his best-known work is the Canterbury Tales, in which he o-ives a 
picture of most of the familiar characters of his own day. Though 
a courtier and a linguist, Chaucer chose to write in English, and the 
popularity of his tales and poems did much to secure the position of our 
native tongue. Of Langland, much less is known. He was 
born about 1332, near the Malvern Hills ; became a clerk, 
and lived in London, dying about 1400. His chief work is the Vision 
of Piers Ploughmanj in which the ploughman is depicted as living 
the only true Christian life, with which the lives of the barons, the 
clergy, and the gentry are forcibly contrasted. His works show much 
better than those of Chaucer the real grievances of the jieasants, and the 
feelings which led both to the revolts of 1381 and the revolution of 1399. 

The period of peace and good government terminated in 1397, and the 
change was led up to by several noticeable events. In 1394 died the 
good queen, Anne of Bohemia, whose influence, like that of Death of 
Richard's mother, had always made for peace, and whose Q"^^" Anne, 
funeral witnessed an unseemly scuffle between Richard and the earl of 
Arundel. The same year died John of Gaunt's wife, Constance of Castile, 
and he at once married Katharine Swynford, governess to the children 
of his first wife, and sister-in-law of Chaucer, by whom he already had a 
numerous family. To oblige his uncle, Richard promoted the passing of 
an act of parliament, by which the Beauforts— as these children were 
surnamed — were made legitimate, an act thought to have annoyed the 
dukes of Gloucester and York. In 1396, Richard, having concluded a 
truce of twenty-five years with France, went over to Paris and married 
Isabella, daughter of Charles vi., then a child of eight years. 

From this moment Richard's character seems to have changed, whether 
from physical causes, or whether his head was turned by the splendour 
of the French king, or by an illusory suggestion that he Deterioration 
should be elected emperor, it is impossible to say ; but from 
that time he gave free scope to his extravagant tastes ; is reported to 

T 



290 iMter Angevin Kings 1396 

have given ;£ 10,000 for a coat ; and to have filled the court with bishops 
and ladies, a change from which his subjects augured no good to the 
realm. 

Accordingly, the parliament of 1397 took up the old question of 
grievances ; and in particular, a complaint about the extravagance of the 
Haxey's royal household was brought forward by Sir Thomas Haxey, 
Case. ^ prebendary of the collegiate church of Southwell, who is 

believed to have been sitting as a proctor for the clergy. In the first 
instance Haxey's motion was accepted by the commons and passed on to 
the lords ; but Richard, hearing of it, made a violent protest, and declared 
it to be a most offensive interference with his rights. Before his wrath 
both lords and commons gave way, apologised for their mistake, and 
actually adjudged Haxey to die as a traitor. Archbishop Arundel, how- 
ever, saved him as a clerk, and soon afterwards he obtained pardon. 
The incident is most remarkable, and shows how little influence the 
commons had unless they were supported by the military power of the 
great barons. 

Fearful, however, lest the discontent of the commons should be taken 
advantage of by the old baronial party, who were exasperated by the 
Richard's \ong truce with France, to fetter his independence, Richard 
Coupd'Etat. determined to strike first. In July 1397, with the help 
of the Hollands, Rutland, son of the duke of York, and Nottingham, 
he carried out a couj) d'etat by suddenly arresting Gloucester, Arundel, 
and Warwick ; and provided against a new battle of Radcot Bridge by 
levying in his county palatine of Chester a formidable body of archers. 
He then called a parliament to meet at Westminster in September. The 
commons met in a temporary building, erected in Palace Yard, and were 
completely overawed by the presence of a body of 4000 Cheshire archers, 
ready to let fly their arrows at a moment's notice. The king also took 
careful steps to form a royalist party in the commons, headed by Sir 
John Bussy or Bushy, the Speaker, Sir Thomas Green, and Sir William 
Bagot ; and in the lords induced Nottingham, Rutland, John Beaufort, 
earl of Somerset, the earl of Salisbury, and three others, to accuse 
Gloucester, Warwick, and Arundel of treason for the acts done in 1387 
and 1388. Arundel was tried first, convicted, sentenced by Lancaster as 
high steward, and beheaded the same day. Gloucester's turn came next ; 
but it was announced that, having been sent to Calais for safe keeping, he 
had died in prison. Whether Gloucester died a natural death is 
uncertain ; if he was murdered the blame must fall, as it did in current 
rumour, on Richard and on Nottingham, who, as governor of Calais, was 
responsible for his safe custody. Warwick was then sentenced on his 



1398 Bkhanl IL 291 

own confession to perpetual imprisonment, and was removed to the Isle 
of Man ; and a little later, Arundel's brother, the archbishop, was trans- 
lated by Boniface ix. to St. Andrews, a change equivalent to banish- 
ment and deprivation. In reward for their services, the earl of Derby 
who, though not an appellant, was seemingly a consenting party 
was made duke of Hereford ; Kutland, duke of Albemarle ; the two 
Hollands, earls of Surrey and Exeter ; Nottingham, duke of Norfolk • 
and Sir William Scrope, earl of Wiltshire. 

As soon as the trials were over, the parliament was adjourned till 
January 1398, when it again assembled at Shrewsbury. There it held 
a session of three days, again overawed by the Cheshire Shrewsbury 
archers, and passed three measures which practically cancelled Parliament. 
all the constitutional progress made during the last century. By the first, 
the whole of the acts of 1388 were annulled, and an amnesty granted. 
By the second, the great subsidy on wools, wool fells, and leathers, and an 
annual tax of one-fifteenth on the counties, and one-tenth on the towns, 
was granted to the king for life. By the third, the full powers of parlia- 
ment were delegated to a body of eighteen members : ten lords temporal, 
two earls as proctors for the clergy, and six members of the House of 
Commons. The eighteen, it is needless to add, were devoted followers of 
the king. Kichard's victory was now complete. He had secured a good 
income for life : he held parliament in the hollow of his hand ; he 
had terrified the opposition by executions, and possibly by murder ; he 
even obtained a confirmation of his acts by the pope. His position in 
1398 is not unlike that of Charles ir. in 1685 ; but Kichard lived to face 
the reaction ; Charles, more fortunate, left the task to his brother. 
Whether, after all, Kichard exhibited the cunning of a madman, or 
whether, like many another ingenious schemer, he just overshot his 
mark, is a problem which in all probability will never, in the insufficiency 
of the evidence, be satisfactorily decided. 

The actual opportunity for the reaction arose out of a personal matter. 
In December 1397, the new dukes of Hereford and Norfolk were riding 
between Brentford and London, when, according to Here- 

. Quarrel 

ford's account, Norfolk informed him that Richard intended between 
to kill both Hereford and Lancaster ; and in answer to Here- and^Norfolk. 
ford's objection that he had the king's pardon, added that 
the king was not to be believed on his oath. By Richard's orders 
Hereford repeated the words before the Shrewsbury parhament as a 
slander on the king, and, after a personal altercation in Richard's presence 
at Oswestry in February, in which Norfolk gave Hereford the lie, 
the committee referred the matter to a court of chivalry, which ordered 



292 Later Angevin Kings 1397 

the disputants to decide the question by a judicial eonibat at Coventry, 
on the 16th of September. However, when the combatants entered the 
lists, Kichard stopped the iight, and, by his own award, without further 
trial, ordered Norfolk to quit the kingdom for life, and Hereford for ten 
years, which he afterwards reduced to seven. The unfairness as well as 
the injustice of this was obvious ; but Eichard may have thought him- 
self clever in ridding himself by one blow of two such barons. In 
banishing them, Eichard made them swear that they would not communi- 
cate with the exiled archbishop Arundel ; and promised Hereford that he 
should not be dejDrived of any lands or goods which might come to 
him by inheritance during his exile. 

News, however, had arrived that on July 20 1398, Eoger Mortimer, 
earl of March, had been killed in Ireland, in a skirmish between the 
t? ^A-*-^,. O'Briens and the O'Tooles : and Eichard, whose extra va- 
to Ireland, gance always kept him poor, took advantage of the death of 
John of Gaunt, which occurred in January 1399, to seize the Lancaster 
estates ; used them in fitting out an expedition to that country, and in 
May 1399 he sailed to Ireland, leaving his uncle York as regent. On 
Landing of the 4th of July, Henry landed in Yorkshire, demanded the 
Bohngbroke. restoration of his family estates, and was immediately joined 
by Percy, earl of Northumberland, who had his own quarrel with Eichard, 
and by other north- country barons. His arrival was the signal for a 
rising as unanimous as that which had dethroned Edward ii. All the 
friends of Gloucester, all who were aggrieved by Eichard's arbitrary 
government, all who had lands to leave to their heirs, and feared to see 
them share the fate of the Lancaster estates, rallied round the duke as the 
natural leader of a constitutional party. The adhesion of archbishop 
Arundel carried with it the support of the church, and without striking a 
blow, Lancaster found himself master of the country. On July 27 he 
was joined by the regent. On the 29th, Scrope, earl of Wiltshire, 
Bussy, and Green, who had been captured at Bristol, were put to 
death. 

Meanwhile, contrary winds had detained Eichard in Ireland ; and when 
he landed in Wales on July 25, he found that a body of Welshmen, 
Deposition whom the earl of Salisbury had collected to support him, 
of Richard. \^c^^ j^jg^ dispersed. Eecognising the futility of further 
resistance, he made an offer of resignation to archbishop Arundel and the 
earl of Northumberland. At Flint he met Lancaster, and went with him 
to London, where a full parliament was to meet on September 30. On 
the 29th Eichard affixed his signature to a written document in which he 
absolved his subjects from fealty, homage, and allegiance ; renounced 



1399 Richard It. 29o 

every claim to royalty ; declared himself insufficient and useless, and not 
unworthy to be deposed ; and verbally expressed a wish that Lancaster 
might be his successor. This document was read to parliament, and in its 
turn parliament prepared a statement of thirty -three reasons why Richard 
ought to be deposed. None of these were trivial ; but, from a constitu- 
tional point of view, the most notable were the sixteenth, in which he 
was accused of asserting that his laws were in his own mouth and in 
his own breast, and that he alone could change and frame the law of 
the land ; and the twenty-sixth, which charged him with saying that the 
life of every liegeman, his lands, tenements, goods and chattels, lay at 
his royal will without sentence of forfeiture. Richard was then formally 
deposed. 

Then Henry of Lancaster spoke in English, and claimed the crown as 
of the right royal blood of Henry iii., and, more important, as sent by 
God to recover his right when ' the realm was on the point 
to be undone for default of governance and undoing of the claimed by 
good laws.' His plea was at once accepted unanimously, and ° '"^ 
he was led to the throne by archbishop Arundel of Canterbury, and arch- 
bishop Scrope of York. With the exception of the deaths at Bristol, no 
blood was shed in the carrying out of this great revolution. Richard had 
friends, but with the doubtful exception of bishop Merke of Carlisle, no 
one spoke on his behalf. At the moment the list of charges must have 
seemed overwhelming, and it was impossible for any Englishman to defend 
the position taken up by Richard in the clauses cited above. ,^ ^^ jj 
Outwardly there was much resemblance between the cases and 
of Edward ii. and Richard ii. In reality they had little in 
common except their melancholy fate. Edward fell because he never 
even attempted to play the part of a king : Richard because he held too 
exalted an idea of such a part, Avithout possessing the tact to secure a 
party and make his power a reality. Edward had the advantage of an 
admirable example in his predecessor, and of succeeding to a well- 
organised kingdom. Richard's difficulties were very largely inherited ; 
and it is to this and to the inculcation of altogether wrong principles of 
rule that his ftiilure is to be attributed, and not, as in the case of Edward, 
to personal worthlessness of character. As it was, he had played the 
game of high prerogative and lost, and the unanimous choice of the nation 
transferred the throne to a popular leader, who, they believed, would 
restore government on constitutional principles, and this distinction was 
made perfectly clear by Henry himself. For, whereas Richard had 
declared that the law was in the heart and mouth of the king, and that 
the goods of his subjects were his own, archbishop Arundel officially 



294 Later Angevin Kings 

informed Henry's first parliament that the new king would act 'by 
common advice, counsel, and consent,' and *do right to all people in 
mercy and truth according to his oath.' y_. 



CHIEF DATES. 

A.D. 

The Peasant revolt, 1381 

Death of Wyclif, 1384 

Battle of Radcot Bridge 1386 

The Merciless Parliament 1387 

Battle of Otterhurn 1388 

' Maintenance ' and ' Livery ' forbidden by Statute, 1390 

Parliament at Shrewsbury 1398 

Roger Mortimer killed, 1398 



Book V 
THE LANCASTRIAN AND YORKIST KINGS 



XL— THE HOUSES OF YORK AND LANCASTER. 

Edward in., 1327-1377. 



Lionel, 
Duke of Clarence 
(2nd son), d. 1368. 



Edmund, 
Duke of York 
(4th son), d. 1401. 



John of Gaunt 
(3rd son), 
d. 1399. 



: Blanche of Lancaster. 



Philippa,= Edmund Morti- 



d. 1381. 



mer. Earl of 
March (great- 
grandson of 

Roger Mortimer, 
who was 

executed 1330). 



Elizabeth, 
m. Henry 
Hotspur. 



Roger, 

Earl of March, 

killed 1398. 



Edmund, 

Earl of March, 

d. 1424. 



Anne = 



Henry V. , 
1413-1422. 



Henry IV., 
1399-1413. 



Thomas, 

Duke of 

Clarence, 

killed 1421. 



John, 
Duke of 
Bedford, 
d. 1435. 



Henry VI., 
1422-1461. 



Richard, 

Earl of Cambridge, 

executed 1415. 



Humphrey, 
Duke of 

Gloucester, 
d. 1446. 



Richard, Duke of York, 
killed at Wakefield, 1460. 



Edward, 

Duke of York 

(elder son), 

killed at Agincourt, 1415. 



Edward IV. 
1461-1483. 



George, Duke of Clarence, 
executed 1478. 



Richard III,, 
1483-1485. 



Edward V., Richard, Duke of York, 

1483. supposed to have been murdered 

in the Tower, 1483. 



Elizabeth = Henry vn. 



296 



XII.— SCOTTISH KINGS, 1306-1488. 
Robert Bruce, 1306-1329. 



David II., Margaret = Walter the Steward, 
1329-1370. I generally spelt Stuart. 



Robert II., 1370-1390. 



Robert III., 1390-1406. 

I 

James I. , = Jane Beaufort. 
1406-1437. I 

James II., 1437-1460. 

James III., 1460-1488. 



Robert, Duke of Albany, 
d. 1420. 

I 

Murdoch 

captured at Homildon, 

d. 1425. 



XIII.— THE KINGS OF FRANCE, 1350-1515. 

John IL, 1350-1364. 

I 



Charles VL, 
1380-1422. 

I 

Charles VII., 

1422-1461. 

I 
Louis XI., 
1461-1483. 

Charles VIII., 
1483-1498. 



Charles V., 1364-1380. 



Louis of Orleans, 
murdered 1407. 

Charles, Duke of Orleans, 

captured at Agincourt, 

grandfather of 

Louis XII., 
1498-1515. 



Philip, Duke of Burgundy, 
d. 1404. 

John, Duke of Burgundy, 
murdered 1419, 
at Montereau. 

Philip, Duke of Burgundy, 
d. 1467. 

Charles (the Bold), 

Duke of Burgundy, 

d. 1477, 

m. Margaret, 

sister of Edward iv. 



2«7 



CHAPTER I 

HENRY IV.: 1399-U13 

•D loaa -J r 1380, Mary de Bohun. 

Born 1366; married -{,.^0 t r xt t^ , r t, . 

U403, Joan of Navarre, Duchess of Bnttauy. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS 

Scotland. France. Emperor. 

Robert iil., d. 1406. Charles vi., d. 1422. Sigismund, 1410-1437. 

Jaraes I., d. 1437. 

Rebellions in Richard's Favour — The Lollards — Owen Glendower — The Risings 
of the Farcies and of Scrope — Foreign Aifairs— Henry's Constitutional 
Government. 

It would not be easy to find two men whose characters presented a greater 
contrast than those of Henry iv. and his predecessor. Few of the graces 
that marked Richard 11. had fallen to the lot of his cousin, character of 
His person, though sturdy and active, appears to have been ^enry iv. 
neither handsome nor graceful ; and his square face and thick beard had 
little of the charm and refinement which had distinguished the son of the 
Fair Maid of Kent. But whereas Richard had been a mere carpet-kniglit, 
untried in the field, and dependent on others both for counsel and execu- 
tion, Henry was pre-eminently a man of action, who had seen much hard 
fighting in many lands, had been accustomed always to think and act on his 
own responsibility, and was capable of inspiring confidence in others by 
showing that he believed in himself. Nor was the difierence between 
their conceptions of kingship less marked than that between their 
personal characters. Richard, as Shakespeare has rightly delineated him, 
was the holder of a theoretical view of the dignity of royalty of the most 
exalted kind, to which his personal insufficiency acted as a perpetual foil. 
Henry, on the other hand, put forward no such theoretical claim to 
respect ; but his personal force of character and self-restraint secured him 
a deference to which Richard was a complete stranger. 



300 House of Lancaster 1399 

The new govermnent had to provide for the safe custody of the ex- 
king. By the advice of the lords, it was ordered that he should be 
removed to some safe place and there kept in custody ; that 

Imprison- no former members of his household should have access to 

™^" him ; and that he should neither send nor receive letters of 

any kind. Accordingly, he was removed from the Tower at dead of night 
and taken to Leeds Castle, in Kent, and thence to the Lancastrian strong- 
hold of Pontefract, in Yorkshire. He had still a good many personal 
friends, of whom the chief were the eldest son of the duke of York, com- 
monly known as the earl of Rutland ; the Hollands, Richard's half-brother 
and nephew, earls respectively of Huntingdon and Kent ; John Beaufort, 
earl of Somerset ; and John Montague, earl of Salisbury. By request of 
the commons, the cases of these noblemen were examined by the lords, 
and after much consideration it was decided that they should forfeit all 
lands acquired since 1397, and they were expressly warned that any 
further support of Richard would be dealt with as treason. At the 
same time, a sweeping Act against retainers was passed, in hope of 
doing something to curtail the power for mischief possessed by the 
malcontents. 

In spite, however, of the warning against treason, the lords were no 
sooner at liberty than some of them began to plot. The chief conspirators 
Rebellion in were the earls of Huntingdon, Kent, Rutland, and Salis- 
his favour. \)X[T[j ; Roger Walden, ex-archbishoj) of Canterbury ; Thomas 
Merke, bishop of Carlisle ; two abbots, and a priest named Maudelyn, who 
happened to be in appearance a double of Richard himself. Their scheme 
was to assemble at Kingston in January 1400, and to cut off Henry, who 
was expected to be at Windsor, from his supporters the Londoners. 
Henry was then to be seized, Richard proclaimed, and Maudelyn was to 
play his part until his place of imprisonment had been discovered. At the 
critical moment, however, the marplot, Rutland, revealed the plan to his 
father, and York lost not a moment in warning the king. Without hesita- 
tion, Henry rode through the night to the capital, appealed to the Londoners, 
and within twenty-four hours had 20,000 men-at-arms, archers, and bill- 
men in the field. The king's midnight ride completely disconcerted the 
rebels ; a sharp fight took place at Maidenhead Bridge, and then they 
fled westward to Cirencester. There a new danger confronted them. 
The country people, flocking into the town, attacked the house occupied 
by the leaders, compelled them to surrender, and, without waiting the 
formalities of a trial, cut off the heads of Kent and Salisbury in the open 
street. Huntingdon was captured by the Essex men at Chelmsford, and 
beheaded at Fleshy ; Lord Despenser, another conspirator, was put to 



1400 Henry IF, ;^q] 

death at Bristol ; Mauclelyn was hanged at Tyburn ; and the ex-bishops 
placed in safe custody. The most striking feature of this insurrection is 
the proof it gives both of the popularity of Henry and of the detestation 
in which the personal friends of Richard were held by the populace. To 
Richard himself it was fatal. Hitherto, the king himself had probably 
stood in the way of any violence to Richard's person, for on the first news 
of his capture, the Londoners had written to Henry asking that he should 
be beheaded at once ; and about Christmas, the duke of York and the 
earls of Northumberland, Westmorland, Arundel, and Warwick, had 
presented a petition to the same effect. Both these suggestions, however 
Henry had put aside, though he told his uncle and the other lords that if 
a rising took place, Richard should be the first to die. There is little 
doubt that he was as good as his word, and that while the rebels were 
out in the Thames valley, Richard was put to death at Richard's 
Pontefract. At any rate, by the end of January 1400, it Death, 
was generally accepted that he was dead; a body said to be his was 
exhibited and buried, and for some time the fact remained unquestioned. 
The exact date and manner of his death are, however, unknown ; and 
about two years afterwards rumours that he had escaped and was still 
living began to be current, which added so much to Henry's difiiculties 
that his enemies gave them every encouragement. 

Hardly had rebellion at home been put down, than Henry's attention 
was called to the affairs of Scotland. Since the release of David in 1357, 
the courts of England and Scotland had been, on the whole, Scottish 
on fair terms, though the unceasing raids of the border lords Affairs, 
kept the marches in constant disorder, and resulted from time to time in such 
a serious battle as that of Otterburn in 1388. In 1400 the nominal king of 
Scotland was Robert iii. ; but as he was a cripple, the real sovereignty 
was in the hands of his brother, the duke of Albany. A truce made by 
Richard expired at Michaelmas 1399, and it was extremely important to 
have this renewed to prevent the Scots giving their usual aid to the 
French, in case Richard's father-in-law, Charles vi., chose to make his 
deposition a pretext for renewing the war. Finding the Scots hesitate, 
Henry determined to force from them an acknowledgment of his accession 
and a renewal of the truce, and in the summer of 1400 he invaded Scot- 
land, accompanied by George of Dunbar,' earl of the march of Scotland, 
who had taken offence at the Scottish king. Warned, however, by much 
experience, the Scots declined to be drawn into battle, while Henry was 
too wary to attack them at a disadvantage ; so after burning Leith, he 
was compelled by famine to retire, leaving the exasperated Scots to 
revenge themselves on the next opportunity. 



302 House of Lancaster 1400 

With France dissatisfied and Scotland burning for revenge, Henry's 
hands were full enough, when a further trouble on the Welsh border was 
Owen Glen- added to his other difficulties. A Welsh landowner, Owen 
dower. Glendower — or, as he spelt himself in full, Owain ap 

GruflFydd, lord of Glyn-dyfrdwy, i.e. the Valley of the Black Water or 
Dee — had quarrelled with his neighbour, Lord Grey of Ruthin, and the 
squabble develoiDed into a national rising. Owen had been a law-student at 
Westminster, and an esquire of Henry himself before he came to the throne. 
He was a man of wealth and hospitality, of popular manners and address, 
and, as his subsequent career showed, possessed a genius for irregular 
warfare. While Henry was in the north, Owen's men not only harried 
the lands of Lord Grey, but attacked the English settlers in the towns, 
and even carried their depredations into the English county of Shropshire 
Hurrying west, Henry invaded Wales in September ; but his attempt met 
with as little success as his invasion of Scotland, for Owen retired into the 
mountains, and there, secure amidst inaccessible fastnesses, he bade 
defiance to the English till the November frosts compelled Henry to beat 
a retreat. He left his eldest son Henry, a lad of thirteen, to guard the 
borders as earl of Chester, under the guidance of Henry Percy, eldest son 
of the earl of Northumberland, an able and brave man, whose border 
raids had gained him the nickname of Hotspur. 

In January 1401 Henry assembled his second parliament at West- 
minster. The session was chiefly notable for the passing of the statute 
De Haeretico ^^ Hwretico Comhurenclo. John Wyclif had died in 1384 ; 
Comburendo. ^^^^ j^jg doctrines had been spreading since his death, and, 
though the Lollards can hardly be regarded as a defined and coherent 
religious sect, the number of malcontents both among the laity and the 
clergy was undoubtedly very large. . The chief points attacked by them 
were pluralities, the wealth of the clergy, the mendicant orders, image 
worship, the sale of pardons, pilgrimages, and habitual confession ; but 
some had followed Wychf in an attack on the doctrine of transub- 
stantiation. This state of affairs was carefully considered in 1401 by the 
convocation of the province of Canterbury. 

The Convocation of Canterbury consisted of two houses : the upper of 
which contained eighteen bishops, with the abbots of Gloucester and Glas- 
tonbury, and the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury; the lower, of the other 
priors and abbots, and the proctors of the cathedral and parochial clergy of 
the province. This body specially considered the views of four Lollards, 
of whom the most notable was a beneficed clergyman, William Chatrys — 
pronounced Sawtery or Sawtr^ — who had been vicar of a church at Lynn, 
but had afterwards removed to London. Eventually, this examination 



1402 Henry IV. 3O3 

turned upon his sacramental views. ' Bread,' he said, ' it remains ; but 
bread plus the body of Christ.' This, however, was not considered 
sufficient, and he was pronounced heretical, and degraded r • ^ "^ 
from the ministry. The same day Henry addressed an order Sawtr6. 
to the mayor and sheriffs of London, directing them to burn Chatrys alive. 
Such executions had been common enough on the continent, but it was 
the first of the kind in England ; and, to provide for other cases, convoca- 
tion petitioned the king to enact that heretics condemned, or relapsing 
after recantation, should be handed over to the king's officers, and that 
' further action should be taken.' In accordance, therefore, with this re- 
quest, a statute was drawn up, by which all heretical writings were ordered 
to be given up within forty days ; and obstinate and relapsing heretics 
were ordered to be publicly burnt. This statute was passed by the advice 
of the lords and at the request of convocation ; but, as the commons 
thanked God for the king's destruction of evil doctrine and of the 
sect who preached it, the famous statute of de Hceretico Comhurendo 
must be regarded as an expression of the views of the time with regard 
to the proper way of dealing with heresy. From this time forward 
executions for heresy were not infrequent. One notable case is that of 
Badby, a tailor, burnt in London in 1410. As a rule, however, such 
events did not attract the attention of the chroniclers, but the expenses 
of burning a heretic occur from time to time in the accounts of cities and 
boroughs. The act, it must be noticed, dealt distinctly with doctrinal 
heresy, under which head many of the Lollard opinions did not come ; 
and the discontent of the people with the general condition of the church 
does not seem to have suffered any diminution in consequence of the new 
statute. 

After Henry's return to England in 1400, the conduct of the Scottish 
war was left to the earl of Northumberland, and the exiled earl of March. 
Little, however, was effected in 1401, which was chiefly g^^^jg ^f 
occupied with negotiations ; but in 1402 the earl of March, Nesbit 

Moor 

at the head of a body of English, defeated the Scots at the 
battle of Nesbit Moor, near Berwick ; and when Hotspur returned from 
Wales, a body of 10,000 Scots, under the earl of Douglas and Murdoch 
Stewart, earl of Fife, eldest son of the duke of Albany, Homildon 

Hill 

which had penetrated into Northumberland, was cut off at 
Humbledon or Homildon Hill, by the river Glen, utterly discomfited by 
the English archery, and both leaders were taken. 

Unluckily, the brilliant success of the Percies contrasted ill with 
Henry's personal achievements. Owen was still at large. All the eflbrts 
of Hotspur and the prince had failed to stop him raiding the open country, 



304 House of Lancaster 1402 

and the castles even were with difficulty defended. In the spring of 
v 1402 he captured Lord Grey de Kuthin ; and when Sir Edmund Morti- 
Disasters ^^^ ^^^ defending the Mortimer lands in the valley of the 
in Wales. Teme, he failed in an attack on Glendower at Brynglas, near 
Knighton, many of his followers perished, and he himself only saved his 
life by surrender. Then Henry himself attempted an elaborate invasion j 
but the ingenuity of Owen again avoided battle, and Henry's followers, 
drenched with rain and half-starved among the barren crags of Merioneth- 
shire, were forced, after three weeks, to make an ignominious retreat. 
Against such an enemy the ordinary resources of civilised warfare were 
expended in vain. Short campaigns were useless ; and Henry's want of 
money effectually prevented him from garrisoning his numerous castles 
with men sufficient to make them a terror to the surrounding country. 

Other causes also had by this time begun to undermine his unpopu- 
larity. The revolution of 1399 was soon followed by the inevitable 

reaction which waits upon all popular movements. Ham- 
Reaction •.IIP. 
against pered as he was both by foreign war and domestic revolu- 

^^^^' tion, it was out of Henry's power to conciliate popular 

feeling by reducing taxation. His poverty deprived him of the means of 

conciliating opposition ; while his inability to pay his debts kept him a prey 

to the importunity of a band of discontented creditors. For some reason, 

in spite of his religious zeal, the mendicant friars were against him, and their 

preachers were doing all they could to promote discontent. Rumours of 

impending wars and conspiracies were in the air, and stories of Eichard's 

escape were being industriously spread. It might well seem that Henry 

was a failure ; and, though Richard was dead, the existence of the little 

earl of March, eldest son of Roger Mortimer, and his brother and sister, 

afforded a rallying point for any insurrectionary movement. Of this 

state of affairs the Percies determined to take advantage to raise a most 

formidable rebellion. 

Though the earl of Northumberland, in a fit of pique, had aided Henry 

to overthrow Richard 11., a long-standing feud existed between the 

_ . ^ ^ Percies and the house of Lancaster. Since Henry's acces- 
Discontent . ^ _ •' 

of the sion, a variety of causes had tended to bring about a renewal 

Percies 

of the strife. Foremost among these were money difficulties. 
The Percies, father and son, had for two years borne the brunt of the 
struggle, both in Scotland and Wales. Their expenses had been 
enormous ; and of ^60,000 which they had provided, ;£20,000 yet 
remained unpaid, while the condition of the royal finances made the 
raising of this sum almost out of the question. The brilliant part played 
by the Percies in the north contrasted with Henry's useless invasion of 



1403 Henry IV. - 305 

Scotland and his inglorious campaigns in Wales ; while Hotspur's tenure 
of office in North Wales had not been unproductive of jealousy and 
distrust. Matters first assumed a threatening aspect over the surrender 
of the prisoners taken at Homildon Hill, whom the Percies retained as a 
security for their money. A further difficulty presented itself in the case 
of Sir Edmund Mortimer, uncle of the young earl of Mortimer. Actuated 
partly by an idea that Sir Edmund had been a traitor all along, partly, no 
doubt, by a feeling that the uncle of the young earl was better out of the 
way, Henry refused to raise money for his ransom, saying that he would 
not pay money to help the Welsh. Mortimer's sister, Elizabeth, was 
Hotspur's wife, and the refusal led to an open quarrel, in which Henry is 
said to have actually struck Percy. 

The result of Henry's refusal was the marriage of Mortimer to 
Owen's daughter, and the creation of a grand alliance between his 
enemies — of which the heads were Owen and Mortimer, Percy's 
Henry Percy, the earl of Northmnberland ; his brother. Conspiracy. 
Thomas Percy, earl of Worcester ; Hotspur, and the earl of Douglas. 
Short of paying them their money, Henry had done all he could do to 
secure the goodwill of the Percies, even making them a grant of a large 
slice of southern Scotland which he had declared annexed to England 
after the battle of Homildon. He seems, therefore, to have been unpre- 
pared for their treachery, when, in the summer of 1403, he suddenly heard 
that Thomas Percy had escaped from Shrewsbury, taking with him all 
the treasure in his possession, and that Hotspur himself was in full march 
towards Cheshire with the evident intention of using his influence there 
to raise a force with which he could co-operate with Owen against the 
Prince of Wales. 

In Cheshire Eichard 11. had always been popular ; and Hotspur him- 
self had acquired much influence there during his residence in the 
marches ; consequently the Cheshire men flocked eagerly Battle of 
to his standard, and he soon found himself at the head of at ""^^^ ^^^' 
least 14,000 men. He then issued a manifesto accusing Henry of having 
murdered Eichard, of collecting taxes contrary to his word, and of 
tampering with free election to parhament, and declaring his intention 
of redeeming his own error in supporting him by placing on the 
throne the earl of March, the rightful heir of Eichard. After moving 
from Chester to Lichfield, Hotspur invested Shrewsbury, where the 
Prince of Wales was stationed, and waited the arrival of Owen's con- 
tingent ; but when he heard that Henry was marching from Burton to 
attack him, he concentrated his troops on a line of country, some three 
miles north of Shrewsbury, where a slight rise in the gi'ound would 

u 



306 House of Lancaster 1403 

give his archers a decided advantage, and awaited the king's coming. 
On his side, Henry, though he had an army at least as large as Hotspur's, 
was by no means eager to fight, but made every eflFort to induce the 
rebels to agree to an accommodation. His efforts, however, were fruit- 
less ; and on July 21 he gave the order for attack. A most obstinate 
battle was the result. The struggle began at noon : it did not close till 
nightfall. Seven thousand men are said to have fallen, and the struggle 
was probably more severe than any battle on English soil since North- 
allerton and Hastings. The result, however, was a complete victory for 
Henry. Hotspur fell in the thick of the fight, and the earls of Worcester 
and Douglas were taken prisoners. Two days after the battle, the earl 
of Worcester and two Cheshire gentlemen were executed for treason, and, 
as a proof of Hotspur's death, his head was exposed for a month on 
London Bridge. 

Henry seems to have been really grieved by Hotspur's fate, and did 
all he could to avoid the slaughter of another battle. Fortunately, the 
„ , . . aged earl of Northumberland had been completely cowed by 

Submission ° i j j 

of North- his son's death. On August 11 he met Henry at York, 
surrendered his person, and agreed to all the stipulations 
made by the king for the security of peace. Henry then marched to 
Worcester, to see what could be done against Owen. The depredations 
of that chieftain were at least as audacious as ever ; but he had no force 
in the field that could be regarded as a regular army, and Henry experi- 
enced exactly the same trouble in dealing with his guerilla troops as had 
twice before defeated his efibrts. In these circumstances nothing could 
be done but to keep up as far as possible the garrisons of the border 
castles, and to wait till the insurrection died out. The process, however, 
was excessively slow ; and Owen's power was a thorn in Henry's side 
till the day of his death. After 1407, however, the actual business of 
dealing with him was left to the Prince of Wales, who acquired on the 
Welsh borders the military experience which afterwards served him in 
such good stead. Within six months of his surrender, the earl of 
Northumberland was restored to liberty and his estates ; but Henry's kindly 
attempt to give his old friend a chance of making a fresh start met with 
little gratitude. Nothing could stop the earl from intriguing ; and in 
1405 another conspiracy was formed between him and 

Conspiracy ^ "^ 

of Mowbray Thomas Mowbray, earl of Nottingham, son of the late duke 
^ ■ of Norfolk, and Eichard le Scrope, archbishop of York, 
brother of Lord Scrope of Masham, and a kinsman of the earl of Wilt- 
shire (see page 291). The rebels, with 8000 men, were met on Shipton 
Moor, near York, by the king's thii'd son John, afterwards the great 



1407 Henry IF, 307 

duke of Bedford, and by Northumberland's old rival, Ralph Neville, 
earl of Westmorland. In some negotiations which passed between 
the leaders, Scrope stated their case against the king, accusing him 
of getting the crown by treachery and false promises, of conniving at 
Richard's murder, of illegally putting both clergy and laity to death, 
and generally of causing the destruction and misery of the country. He 
demanded a free parliament, a reduction of taxation, and the vigorous 
prosecution of the war against the Welsh. Reform, not revolution, seems 
to have been Scrope's desire, and no suggestion of March's claim seems 
to have been made. Though Mowbray had certainly been privy to an 
abortive attempt just made to release the Mortimers, Westmorland 
promised to lay their demands before the king, and on this assurance 
the rebel soldiers dispersed. Of this advantage was immediately taken to 
arrest Mowbray and Scrope. This time Henry showed no mercy ; and, 
after the bare semblance of a trial, both prisoners were beheaded. No 
such public execution of a bishop had ever yet taken place in England. 
The audacity of the act seems to have struck universal horror ; miracles 
were soon reported to be worked at the tomb, and an illness with which 
Henry was subsequently aflfected was generally believed to be a judgment 
for his crime. 

Meanwhile, Northumberland and Lord Bardolph had made their way 
north and escaped across the border ; while Henry seized Alnwick, Prud- 
hoe, and Cockermouth, and other Percy strongholds. There they vainly 
attempted to gain Albany's assistance, and, failing, made their way to 
Owen in Wales, and thence visited France and Flanders. At length, in 
1407, they again returned to Scotland, and having crossed the border 
with some Scottish troops, were joined by a few of Northumberland's 
former tenants. Yorkshire, however, was against them ; and Sir 
Thomas Rokeby, the sheriff, at the head of the posse-comitatus, put them 
to rout at Bramham Moor, near Tadcaster. Northumberland ^^^^^^ ^^ 
perished on the field ; Bardolph was mortally wounded ; Bramham 

111 Moor. 

and the long struggle between Henry and the barons was 
virtually at an end. About the same time, though Owen was still at 
large, he ceased to be formidable. A French force, which landed at 
Milford Haven in 1406, found almost as poor entertainment on the 
Welsh mountains as Henry himself, and returned home in disgust ; and 
after this effort the war gradually died out, though the fidelity of his 
countrymen enabled Owen himself to preserve his freedom till his 
death, which occurred several years after that of Henry himself. 

The prolonged struggle with Owen and the Scots, the rebellion of the 
Percies, coupled with the constant anxiety about money matters, made 



308 House of Lancaster 1407 

Henry's throne no enviable seat during the first eight years of his 

reign ; and no one but a man of first-rate ability and of iron resolution 

could have battled through his difficulties. As it was, the 

Difficulties 

of Henry's victory of Bramham found Henry, though only forty-one years 

osi ion. ^^ ^^^^ ^ -worn-out and enfeebled man ; and the last six 
years of his reign, though a period of comparative peace as far as 
external affairs were concerned, were passed by him in a constant struggle 
against a debilitating and wearisome disease. 

In other respects, however, fortune was kind, and two strokes of luck 
relieved him from anxiety on the score of Scotland and France. For 
years Robert iii. had been only in name a king — wandering from one 
abbey to another, a mere looker-on at the proceedings of his strong and 
energetic brother, the duke of Albany. At length Albany seized Robert's 
eldest son, the duke of Rothesay, and starved him to death in Falkland 
Castle. In 1406 the poor king despatched his second son James, then 
about twelve years old, to France. On his voyage, while becalmed off 
Flamborough Head, his ship was boarded by some English seamen, and 
, James was taken to Henry's court. Delighted to possess a 

Capture of . ^ 

James of further hostage for the good behaviour of the Scots, for 

Murdoch, Albany's eldest son, was already in his hands, 
Henry caused the boy to be carefully guarded at Windsor ; but gave 
him an excellent education, and the nineteen years passed by James in 
England were probably the happiest, and certainly the most peaceful, 
of his life. 

In France a struggle was taking place, not unlike the English Wars of 
the Roses, where the government of the country during the incapacity of 

the imbecile king Charles vi., was the prize contended for by 
gundians John, duke of Burgundy, the king's cousin, and Louis, duke 
Armagnacs °^ Orleans, his brother. This civil contest made foreign war 

impossible, and Henry had merely to watch his opportunity, 
and prevent the weaker side from being overwhelmed by the other. In 
1407 the duke of Orleans was murdered in the streets of Paris ; but 
the quarrel was kept up by his son Louis, whose father-in-law, the count 
of Armagnac, was so powerful that the name of Armagnacs was fre- 
quently given to the whole Orleanist or southern party. The first duke 
of Orleans had made himself a personal enemy of Henry iv., so the English 
influence generally inclined to support the Burgundians, even after the 
murder of Orleans. In 1411 a considerable force was sent to their 
aid ; but in 1412, finding the cause of the Armagnacs failing, Henry 
transferred his assistance to them, and in this way peace was secured at 
the price of consistency. 



1412 Henry IV: 309 

The real interest, however, of the reign of Henry iv. lies not in the 
national aspirations of the Welsh, or the rebellions of the Percies or the 
fighting in Scotland, or the intrigues in France, but in the 
fact that Henry iv., as representative of the constitutional tiona?*"' 
ideas of the Lancastrian party, was honestly trying to govern ^''^^^"'"ent. 
as a parliamentary sovereign. In this respect, as well as in others a 
profitable comparison might be instituted between him and William in. 
Both were compelled to engage in long and not very successful wars ; 
both were confronted by a rival supported by a powerful party ; both 
were extremely badly ofi" ; and both had to deal with parliaments deter- 
mined to use the king's necessities for the advancement of their own 
rights. 

Throughout the whole reign, finance was Henry's great difficulty. 
His normal income amounted to rather over £100,000 a year ; made up 
of .£50,000 yielded by the ' great custom ' on wool and the Financial 
'small customs' on other articles, and the remainder from Difficulties, 
the crowTi lands, feudal dues, fines, forfeitures, annual payments for 
charters, and a practically annual grant of fifteenths and tenths. During 
the first year of his reign, which included the putting down of the rising 
of the earls and the expedition to Scotland, his income was £109,249, his 
expenses £109,006, leaving a balance in hand of £243. As time went 
on, however, things grew worse. The expenses of the Welsh war alone 
were enormous ; a large force had constantly to be kept on foot ; castles 
to be garrisoned and kept in repair. Even in time of peace Calais cost 
£18,000 ; while the six great castles of North Wales : Conway, Car- 
narvon, Criccieth, Harlech, Denbigh, and Beaumaris, consumed over 
£5000, to say nothing of some fifty smaller strongholds, each of which 
required its garrison. The exjDenses connected with the restoration of 
Richard's widow, Isabella, accounted for £8000. Money was also needed 
for Guienne, for Ireland, for the Scottish border ; and, year after year, 
Henry had to tell his officers and his parliament that the exchequer was 
empty, and that he had no idea where money was to be got. 

In these circumstances, any attempt to govern without reference to 
the wishes of parliament would obviously have been futile ; but Hemy 
was on principle a constitutional ruler, and had no desire p^j.jjg_ 
to revert to the arbitrary practice of his predecessor, mentary 

•' ^ . . , . Influence. 

Accordingly, we find him carrying into practice the prin- 
ciple so often enunciated, that the king's ministers should be a body 
possessing the confidence of parliament. For example, in 1404 the king, 
at the request of the commons, named twenty-two members of parliament 
to be his great and continuous council ; and changes in its composition 



310 House of Lancaster 1412 

were made at the request of the commons in 1408 and 1410, throwing upon 
the council the responsibility of government, just as a constitutional sove- 
reign would now do ; and in 1406, when complaints were made of the in- 
efficiency of government, Henry's reply was that he would ask the council to 
do its best. Equally complete was the control of parliament over finance. 
The expenses of the royal household were regulated again and again, and 
various sums, ranging from about £7000 to £12,000 a year, were assigned 
for its maintenance, an arrangement wdiich anticipates the modern Civil 
List. In spite of some reluctance on Henry's part, the commons 
were permitted to name auditors to inspect the national accounts, and 
taxation without consent of parliament was not even imagined. Little 
less striking was the advance made by the House of Commons. Eegular 
sessions, one even extending over one hundred and fifty-nine days, con- 
solidated the corporate feeling of the members and accustomed them to 
act together. The paramount importance of finance increased the power 
of the commons. Being the poorer house, its votes were a fair test 
of the taxation which the nation was able to bear, and in 1407 
the constitutional practice was made definite by a declaration of the 
king. For the future no report about money grants w^as to be made by 
either house tiU both were agreed, and then the report was invariably 
to be made through the Speaker of the House of Commons. The 
adoption of such constitutional principles and practice make the relations 
between Henry iv. and his parliaments quite unique in the history of the 
middle ages. 

One cause which decidedly aided Henry to maintain his position was 
the unvarying support he received from the church, as a body, under the 
Support of leadership of archbishop Arundel. The church, indeed, had 
the Church. jjgg(j ^q walk warily. The Lollard movement — particularly 
the non-doctrinal part of it, directed against the position and wealth of 
the clergy — had, for ahnost a generation, been undermining their position ; 
while the papal schism, which had followed the return of the popes from 
Avignon, had deprived them of any efiective support from the holy see. 
Consequently, they w^ere compelled to rely on the king, and a sovereign 
at once so orthodox and so constitutional as Henry became their natural 
ally. We, therefore, find the great ecclesiastics, such as Arundel and 
Beaufort, ready to advance money for the royal necessities, and the 
general body of the clergy making no objection to the severe taxation 
which Henry's difficulties entailed. From time to time, indeed, the 
grumbling of the commons reminded the clergy of the insecurity of 
their tenure. On several occasions it was suggested that the whole 
revenue of the clergy might be impounded for a year ; and in 1410 the 



1412 Henry IV. 2,\\ 

commons actually brought forward a definite proposal to confiscate 
the whole property of the bishops and religious corporations, and to 
employ it to endow fifteen earls, fifteen hundred knights, six thousand 
esquires, and a hundred hospitals, an arrangement which would still 
leave £20,000 a year for the relief of the revenue. The plan, however 
broke down, not apparently from any regard for the church, but because 
it was obviously dangerous to add to the number of an already too 
powerful baronage. Both Henry and his eldest son were against it, and 
the suggestion was not renewed. Arundel, however, was by no means 
satisfied with a mere passive resistance. In his office of archbishop, he 
ciirried the war vigorously into the enemy's country ; and in 1409, by 
the authority of a church council, published a series of constitutions for 
the church, by one of which the Bible was forbidden to be translated into 
English until such a translation had been approved by the bishop of the 
diocese or a provincial synod ; while another forbade all disputes on 
points determined by the church. 

After the year 1405, a great change took place in the king's health. 
Opinions differ as to his malady ; but it is certain that he became a hope- 
less invalid, and apparently he suffered some diminution in 

, . , , „ , • , . 1 • . , . Failure of 

his mental as well as his physical capacity. At such times the King's 
the chief direction of affairs fell into the hands of the Prince 
of Wales, whose life was divided between active service in the Welsh or 
Scottish marches, and official business as chairman of the council in 
London. Next to the Prince, archbishop Arundel was decidedly the 
most important man in the country, and a steady friend to Henry j but 
his power was subject to the rivalry of the Beauforts. 

John Beaufort, earl of Somerset, son of John of Gaunt, died in 
1410, leaving two sons, young John and Edmund, and a daughter 
Joan. He was not a man of much mark, but his younger /p^g 
brothers, Henry and Thomas, possessed more ability and Beauforts. 
ambition. Henry had been made bishop of Lincoln in 1398, and in 1404 
he succeeded William of Wykeham as bishop of Winchester, He is said 
to have been tutor to the Prince of Wales, and he was through life his 
intimate friend. Thomas distinguished himself both as an admiral and 
a soldier, especially at Agincourt, and was ultimately created duke of 
Exeter. By the act of legitimation passed under Eichard ii., the right 
of the Beauforts to count as legitimate children of John of Gaunt was not 
limited by exclusion from the crown ; but when it was confirmed by 
Henry in 1407, he interpolated the words excei^ta dignitate regale, 
which, however, could not be regarded as having the force of law. 
Owing probably to the circumstances of their birth, the Beauforts always 



312 House of Lancaster 1413 

hung closely together, and, although friendly to the Prince of Wales, it 
was always possible that they might take a line of their own. Arundel, 
also, seems to have been less of a constitutional minister and more closely 
allied to the ideas of the old nobility than were the Beauforts, and to 
have been, far more than even Henry Beaufort, a representative of the 
separate interests of the church. We therefore find the chancellorship 
sometimes in the hands of Arundel, sometimes in that of a Beaufort, 
according to the policy in favour at the time, and also according as Henry 
or his son had the greater influence in the council. In 1407 Arundel 
became chancellor, and held the post till 1409. In that year, however, his 
promidgation of ' the constitutions,' and a quarrel which followed with 
Prince Oxford university, in which the Prince of Wales, himself 
Henry, ^n Oxford man, took the opposite side, made him unpopular, 
and the office was given to Thomas Beaufort. He held the place tiU 
1412, during which time it is probable that the prince really governed in 
his father's name ; but in that year a crisis occurred, brought on, accord- 
ing to one account, by a formal suggestion by the f)rince and the Beauforts 
that Henry should definitely resign the crown. What happened, however, 
is obscure, but Arundel came back to power ; the Prince of Wales gave 
up the presidency of the council, and his place was taken by his second 
brother, Thomas, duke of Clarence, who appears to have always been 
against the Beauforts. Moreover, the expedition to France, which was 
sent to aid the Orleanists, was entrusted to the second brother. The 
change, however, was only temporary. Henry grew rapidly worse, and 
in March 1413 he died, leaving a name which ought to stand very high 
among English sovereigns, but has been much overclouded by pity for 
the misfortunes of his predecessor, and by the admiration excited by the 
showy exploits of his briUiant son. 

CHIEF DATES. 

A.D. 

Statute 'de liseretico comburendo,' . . 1401 



Battle of Homildon Hill, . 

Battle of Shrewsbury, 

Scrope's rebellion, 

James of Scotland captured. 

Commons secure the final vote on taxation, 



1402 
1403 
1405 
1406 
1407 



CHAPTEE II 

HENRY V. : 1413-1422 
Born 1388 ; married 1420, Katharine of France. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS 
Scotland. France. Emperar. 

James i., d. 1437. Charles vi., d. 1422. Sigismund, 1410-1437. 

Popes. 
Martin v., 1417-1429; Eugenius iv., 1431-1438. 

. The French Wars — Agincourt — Siege of Rouen— Treaty of Troyes. 

Tradition records that at some period of his life Henry the Fifth led 
a wild and riotous life. If this is true, it probably refers to the last 
year of his father's reign, when the Prince's enforced idleness Traditions of 
put him into the way of temptation. At all other times Early Life. 
authentic records show that he was far too busy with serious work to 
have time for dissipation. Whether the story, however, is anything more 
than a myth is immaterial ; at most, the riotous living was an interlude 
of idleness between two periods of hard work, and never after his accession 
did Henry show the slightest wavering in his determination to be, accord- 
ing to the ideas of his age, a thoroughly good king. 

In accordance with his preference for the Beauforts, the first act of the 
new king was to give the chancellorship to his uncle, Henry Beaufort, 
bishop of Winchester, a change which left Arundel free to ^.j.^_ 
attend to his archiepiscopal duties. Determined, however, tory 

^1 ensures* 

not to quarrel with the Arundels, he made his friend, the 
earl of Arundel, treasurer. In the same spirit of conciliation, he had the 
remains of Eichard ii. honourably re-interred at Westminster. A little 
later, he restored their lands to the sons of Hotspur and the earl of 
Huntingdon ; made a confidential friend of the young earl of March ; and 
arranged that the loyalty of the duke of York— formerly earl of Eutland 
—should be formally recognised by parliament. In short, he did all lie 
could to show that, in his eyes, bygones were bygones, and that he 
meant to act as kins: of a united nation. 

° 313 



314 House of Lancaster 1413 

For playing this part, Henry had qualifications which had been denied 
to his father. He was perfectly satisfied of his own right to the crown, 
Personal ^^^^ haunted by no doubts as to the propriety of his former 
Character, actions, and he brought with him no blood-feuds, the relics 
of ancient entanglements in political intrigue. His personal qualities were 
excellent — tall, strong, stately, and of winning manners, he looked as he 
felt, every inch a king. His moral character was good ; his orthodoxy unim- 
peachable. He had received an admirable training in the business both of 
peace and war, and he had the invaluable capacity for taking infinite 
pains. Such a man would at all times have made his mark as a sovereign ; 
but, fortunately for Henry, the national bent for foreign war gave him 
exactly the opportunity he needed, and though we, with our later know- 
ledge, are tempted to impute to him the responsibility for the disastrous 
termination of his French enterprise, there is no doubt that his warlike 
policy was in perfect accord -with the ideas of the time, which regarded 
him as the mirror of chivalry. War, however, did not break out at once ; 
for mediaeval kings, who fought not for mere accessions of territory or for 
ideas, but for rights, were deliberate in their proceedings, and did not 
proceed to open hostilities before they had made their demands in a diplo- 
matic shape. The first two years of the reign, therefore, were occupied 
with preparations and the routine of ordinary business. 

The most striking exception to this was the afiaii^ of Sir John Oldcastle. 
Though few martyrs had braved the terrors of the stake, the Lollard 
Sir John views were by no means extinct ; and the first use Arundel 
Oldcastle. ^^ade of his freedom from the cares of the chancellorship 
was to attempt to make an example by striking at their most noticeable 
supporter at court. The victim he chose was Sir John Oldcastle, generally 
known by right of his wife as Lord Cobham, who had sat in the House of 
Commons as member for Herefordshire in 1404, and had been called to 
the House of Lords since ]409. Oldcastle was a brave and intelligent 
man, who had been one of Henry's best lieutenants in the Welsh war ; 
he was also a sincere adherent of Lollardism, and had aided to spread it 
by giving countenance to Lollard preachers, both in Kent and Hereford- 
shire. Acting under Arundel's direction, convocation presented an indict- 
ment against him, and he was summoned to appear before three bishops. 
Failing to appear, he was then arrested by the king's order, and, after a long 
examination before the archbishop, was pronounced to be heretical, and 
ordered to be burnt. Forty days, however, were allowed him to recant, 
and he used the opportunity to escape. A plot then seems to have been 
fonned to seize the king at Eltham on Henry's removing to London 
for a meeting in St. Giles' Fields, The king, however, was fully on the 



1415 Henry V. 3].^ 

alert, and when the night came he closed the gates of London scoured 
the country in person with a body of horse, captured some sixty of the 
conspirators, and so effectually put a stop to the design that 
it has been doubted whether there was any reality in the St^GiiS'^" 
movement. All attempts to arrest Oldcastle failed for the ^^^^^^• 
time; and he was not captured till 1417, when, at the request of the 
commons and by sentence of the lords, he was put to death as an heretical 
traitor by being drawn, hanged, and burnt. Arundel died in 1414, and 
was succeeded by Henry Chichele, who, however, did not play so 
prominent a part as his predecessor. Lollardism still survived; and, forty 
years later. Bishop Pecocke of Chichester thought it worth while to attack 
it in a book called The Repressor of over-much Blaming the Clergy, in 
which he defended pilgrimages, confession, the decoration of churches 
with pictures, and other practices attacked by the Lollards, This fact 
shows the tenacity of Wyclif s teaching, and it is one of the problems of 
history how far the Lollardism of the Lancastrian era is connected with the 
reforming movement of the Tudors. 

The year 1414 was also notable for the grant of a parliamentary privi- 
lege which had long been a great object with the commons. The right 
of the commons to a share in legislation had been fully 

• 1 • 111 f. n 1 Petitions of 

recognised smce 1322, but the actual text of all laws was a the Com- 
matter for the royal officials ; and consequently, although the 
commons found their petitions granted in name, the actual statute fre- 
quently differed most materially from what they had suggested. Accord- 
ingly, in granting tonnage and poundage for three years, the commons 
asked ' that there never be no law made ' on their petition, ' and engi'ossed 
as statute and law, neither by addition or by diminution, by no manner of 
term or terms the which should change the meaning and the intent asked.' 
To which the king replied, that ' henceforth nothing be enacted to the 
petitions of his commons that be contrary to their asking, whereby they 
should be bound without their assent.' At the same time the king's right 
to grant or refuse his consent to a petition was fully confirmed. 

In 1415 Henry was ready to declare war against France. His plan 
was discussed in parliament ; received the consent of the three estates ; and 
supplies were voted and paid with a readiness which tends ^^^^^^ ^^ 
to show with what a wonderful recuperative power such the French 
an agiicultural country as England then was could take 
advantage of a very few years of peace. The same causes which contri- 
buted to the warlike enthusiasm of the early years of Edward iii. were 
doubtless again at work ; but in addition to these, the king, probably 
acting on the advice of his father, was glad to find an outlet for the 



316 House of Lancaster 1415 

warlike energy of his nobles, while, according to one account, the clergy 
were not sorry to see the attention of the nation diverted from the abuses 
of the church. Henry himself believed thoroughly in the propriety of 
his demand, though it is difficult to see how he reconciled his claims with 
law, for by inheritance the rights of Edward iii. had passed through 
Richard ii. to the earl of March. The moment, however, was favourable, 
for the Burgundians and Armagnacs were quarrelling as usual, and he 
hoped to gain the support of one or the other. Accordingly, in 1414 he 
sent a demand for the restoration of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and 
such parts of Gascony as were not already in English hands ; and as his 
demand was rejected, he took the advice of parliament and set about 
Parliament- ^^ invasion of France. Parliament granted two-tenths and 
ary Grants, two-fifteentlis, and also made over to Henry the lands held 
in England by foreign monasteries, technically called 'alien priories.' 
An army was hired in the usual way : a duke receiving 13s. 4d. a day for 
his services ; an earl 6s. 8d. ; a baron or a knight-banneret, i.e. 

rmy ay. ^ jj^^jgi^t with other knights in his train, 4s.; a knight 2s,; 
an esquire Is. ; an archer 6d. As the ordinary pay of a labourer was 
about 4d., Henry's liberal offer drew to his banners the pick of the 
country, and a further inducement of two-thirds of all booty for the rank 
and file was also offered. When all was ready, a ' Great Council,' i.e. a 
meeting of the magnates without the inferior clergy and the commons, 
determined that war should begin. Then in April 1415 a formal demand 
was made for the French crown, and this having been rejected, Henry led 
his forces to the coast, and, in the course of an inspection of the London 
contingents, remarked that his policy would ' redound to the manifest 
advantage of the whole realm.' 

The troops assembled at Southampton, and were on the point of start- 
ing when a plot in favour of the earl of March was unexpectedly brought 
Cambridge's ^o light. The principal in this was Richard, earl of Cam- 
^^°*" bridge, younger brother of the duke of York, who had been 

permitted by Henry iv. to marry Anne Mortimer, sister of Edmund, earl 
of March, whose claim to the throne stood next after that of her brother. 
His coUeagTies were Henry, Lord le Scrope, a relative of the late archbishop 
of York and of the earl of Wiltshire, executed in 1399, and Sir Thomas 
Grey of Heton. Their plan was to take advantage of Henry's absence 
to carry oflf March to V\^ales and proclaim him king ; but the design is 
believed to have been imparted to Henry by March himself. The con- 
spirators were instantly arrested. Cambridge and Grey confessed their 
guilt ; Scrope was convicted by his peers ; and all three were beheaded. 
Henry showed his magnanimity by making no change in his friendship 



1415 



Henry V. 



317 



with March, or in his relations to the duke of York, The little son of 
Cambridge was brought up in his court, and lived to be the celebrated 
duke of York, the antagonist of Henry vi. 

From Southampton, Henry, with a force estimated at 21,000 archers 
and 6000 men-at-arms, and well suiDplied with siege cannon, sailed to 
the mouth of the Seine, and, landing at Havre, laid siege to invasion of 
the fortress of Harfleur. Henry placed his chief reliance on ^''ance, 
his cannons, ' the London,' ' the Messagere,' and ' the King's Daughter,' with 




NOHTH OF FRAISCE, TO ILLUSTRATE THE CAMPAIGNS OF CRECY AND AGINCOURT. 



which he kept up a continual bombardment— and on mines, in the use of 
which, however, the English seem to have been inferior to the French. 
The siege lasted thirty days ; and it was not till their outer works 
had been destroyed by fire that the besieged found the shot from ' the 
gunners intolerable,' and agreed to capitulate. Dysentery, capture of 

f ' ° . , • Harfleur. 

however, broke out in the camp, owing to exposure, eating 

unripe fruit, and the stench ; and when a garrison had been told off to 

guard the town, under the command of the earl of Dorset, only nmv 



318 House of Lancaster 1416 

hundred men-at-arms and five thousand archers remained for active 
service — a number, however, which is so small that it throws much doubt 
on the correctness of the original estimate. 

With these Henry detennined to march along the coast to Calais — a 
perilous undertaking — for the expedition was unaccompanied by ships, 

March to and a powerful French army lay at Eouen. On their road 

Calais. ^j^g little band suflfered terrible privations, having for some 
days only ' walnuts for bread,' Henry's design was to cross the Somme 
at Blanche Taque ; but he found the ford strongly guarded and staked, 
and, the bridges being held, had to march wp the river to Peronne before 
he found a place to cross. He then made straight to Calais. Meanwhile, 
the French army, under the dukes of Bourbon, Orleans, Alengon, the 
constable, and the Marshal Boucicault, had crossed the river at Abbe- 
ville, and had placed itself across his line of march at Agincourt, near 
Hesdin. As he had no provisions, Henry had no choice but to fight 
or surrender, so he and his little army faced the French, and prepared to 
make a brave resistance. 

Although the French had chosen the field of battle, it was not at all 
suited to their army ; which, although authorities difler as to the actual 

Field of numbers, certainly greatly outnumbered the English, pos- 

Agincourt. ^^^^y by as much as seven to one. It was a defile between 
two woods, and so narrow in proportion to their numbers, that the 
French had to be drawn up in three bodies, each some distance behind 
the other. Even as it was, the five thousand men of the front line were 
so packed together that they could hardly use their swords. Moreover, 
the field in which they stood was new-harrowed and very wet, so that 
the men-at-arms in their heavy armour sank knee-deep in the mud. 
The French had no archers, but relied chiefly on the dense masses of 
their men-at-arms, who, as at Poitiers, fought on foot ; partly in a body 
of picked horsemen on each wing, who were to charge the archers, not 
in front as at Poitiers, but in flank. 

Henry fully expected that the French would make the attack, and 

his arrangements were all made for defence. Early in the march, by the 

_ ^. advice of the duke of York, he had ordered the archers 

Preparations , ' 

of the to provide themselves with six-foot stakes, sharpened at each 

end, as a protection against cavalry ; and now these were 
ordered to be set up slantwise in the ground, so that the point was on 
a level with a horse's chest. To get a firmer grip of the ground, each 
archer bared his left foot ; and the men cut off or turned up the sleeves 
of their jackets so as to have free play for their arms. Thus arrayed, the 
archers took their places in open order in the front line ; behind them 



1415 



Henry V. 



319 



on foot were the men-at-arms ; and on the wings were mixed bodies of 
cavalry and archers, designed either to repel the attack of the French 
cavalry, or to make their way through the woods and take the French in 
flank. 

For some hours Henry awaited the French attack ; but finding them 
immovable he gave the word to advance, and the archers, taking their 
stakes with them, moved forward. Then from each wing Battle of 
five thousand French horsemen in full armour swooped Agincourt. 
down on the English bowmen, but the stakes did yeoman's service ; 
the arrows fell like rain, and the discomfited horsemen galloped back 



S> ^-'!f 




FIELD OF AGINCOURT, 25th OCTOBER lilo. (Adapted from Spruner.) 

into the second line. Thus free from attack, the archers were able 
to send their shafts without interruption on the crowded masses of 
French infantry ; and when the supplies of arrows were exhausted, the 
whole army bore down on the French line. Then the fighting became 
terrible ; the ranks swayed now this way, now that ; and the chaplams, 
who were watching the battle from the rear, expected every moment to see 
their countrymen overthrown; but at length the English, aided by a flank 
attack of their cavalry, carried the day, and the first division was routed. 
A suuilar manoeuvre destroyed the second; and then the English, con- 
fident of victory, marched to attack the third. At that moment a cry was 



320 House of Lancaster 1415 

raised that they were being attacked in the rear. Nothing could be 
more likely, and as only ten horsemen and twenty archers had been left 
to guard the sick and the baggage, the danger Avas most serious. The 
alarm, however, proved false ; but the mistake was not discovered till 
orders had been given to kill the prisoners, lest they should take advan- 
tage of the danger to turn upon their captors. Then the third line was 
attacked, and a charge in flank completed its destruction. The loss on 
both sides was heavy. The constable of France, four other dukes, and 
a vast number of officers and men lay dead. On our side, the duke of 
York had atoned by a soldier's death the many treacheries of his early 
life, and the earl of Sufi"olk had met the same fate. The number of 
French prisoners of note was immense, and the list was headed by two 
princes of the blood — the dukes of Orleans and Bourbon. Henry himself 
had fought in the thickest of the struggle ; and his declaration that, 
come what might, England should never be put to expense for his ransom, 
made him more than ever the idol of his soldiery. 

Meanwhile, the anxiety in England had been terrible. Since Henry 
set out from Harfleur on the 8th of October, no news whatever had been 
heard of his fortunes, and the reaction was proportionate when the tale 
of such a splendid victory was reported. Overjoyed at their success, but 
conscious of the insecurity of their position, the English lost no time in 

Henry's marching to Calais and returning to England. So eager was 

Return. Henry to get home, that he crossed in a storm so tenible 
that the French prisoners said they would rather fight another battle 
than make such another passage. Even before his arrival, parliament, in 
the first transports of enthusiasm, had granted the great customs on wool 
and the tonnage and poundage on other goods for life, and given him 
another tenth and fifteenth ; and, when he landed" in triumph with his 
prisoners, he was received by the whole nation with tumultuous 
rejoicings. 

Even outside his own country the victory of Agincourt made Henry 

the most renowned of European sovereigns, and in 1416 his assistance was 

personally invoked by the Emperor Sigismund, brother of 
European \ ^ i. , . . , . , , . ' 

Reputation Anne of Bohemia, with a view to the closing of the never- 
ending conflict between the rival popes, which had distracted 
Western Christendom since 1378. To this Henry agreed, and in the 
council of Constance, which terminated the schism by the election of 
Martin v., a distinguished part was taken by Henry Beaufort, and by 
Robert Hallam, bishop of Salisbury. 

Henry, however, was well aware that the victory of Agincourt, however 
brilliant, had done little to advance the conquest of France, and he 



1419 Hennj V, 32 j 

immediately set about preparations for a second expedition. In the cam- 
paign of Agincourt, luck had undoubtedly played a very large part and 
nothing shows more clearly the real greatness of Henry than 
the care he was at to eliminate chance in his second cam- for^a^secomf 
paign. No subject was too trivial for his attention. Like ^^"^P^ig"- 
Eichard i., he took special pains with the fleet; and with his six great ships, 
eight barges, and ten ballingers, may be said to have created the nucleus 
of the royal navy. Surgeons were appointed both for the army and for 
the navy. A code of regulations for soldiers and sailors was drawn 
up. Piracy was forbidden ; duelling discouraged ; and every detail of 
victualling was carried on under Henry's personal supervision. Abroad, 
Henry had been working without intermission to secure the assistance of 
allies, negotiating, besides his league with Sigismund, an understandino' 
with the Hanse towns, and with Cologne, Holland, Bavaria. At home he 
carried further the work of conciliation ; drew closer his friendship with 
the earl of March and with Henry Hotspur's son ; restored the earldom 
of Huntingdon to young John Holland ; and rewarded Thomas Beaufort 
for his services at Harfleur by the title of duke of Exeter. 

At length in 1417 he again crossed to Harfleur, which had been bravely 
defended by Beaufort, and a naval attack had in 1416 been defeated by 
the duke of Bedford. The second campaign, though it con- 

111 c T • Henry's 

tained no such striking mcident as the battle of Agmcourt, second 
reflected perhaps even higher credit upon him as a cautious, ^"^p^is"- 
painstaking, and determined commander. Eschewing all fighting in the 
open field, the French endeavoured to gain time by obstinately defending 
the Norman fortresses, and the seasons of 1417, 1418, and 1419 were 
consumed in sieges. Early in 1419, however, Henry brought to a 
successful conclusion the great siege of Eouen, where, exasperated by a 
joke of the garrison, who placed a braying ass on the walls by way of a 
bad pun on his name (i'fme rii : Henri), he sullied his fame by cruelly 
allowing the women and children of Eouen to perish between his trenches 
and the walls. In July Pontoise feU, and the road to Paris lay open. 

Danger now made the French factions unite. Hitherto, the queen, 
with her daughter Katharine, had been on the side of the Burgundians, 
and Charles the Dauphin on that of the Orleanists ; but hopes ^^^^^^ ^f 
were now entertained that a reconciliation might be efi'ected. the Duke of 
Accordingly, in August a meeting was arranged between the 
duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin at the bridge of Montereau-faut- 
Yonne. A strong barrier separated the two sides ; but the duke of 
Burgundy unsuspectingly crossed it, and the followers of the Dauphin, 
headed by Tanneguy du Chastel, put the duke to death. This horrid 

X 



322 House of Lancaster 1419 

crime destroyed all hopes of resisting Henry ; for the duke's son, Philip, 
and the French queen opened negotiations with the English. The pro- 
spect opened by this caused Henry to raise his demands, which would 
probably have at first been satisfied by the cession of Normandy ; and, 
eventually, it was agreed that Henry should marry Katharine, become 
king of France on Charles' death, and should act, meanwhile, as Regent 
Treaty of ^^ France. This arrangement was completed at Troyes on 
Troyes. May £4, 1420. On June 3, Henry and Katharine were 
married. Soon afterwards he entered Paris in triumph, and after spend- 
ing Christmas in royal state, returned with his bride to England in 
February 1421, leaving Clarence to act as his representative in France. 

Meanwhile, the Dauphin had gathered to his standard the forces of the 
south of France, where the Armagnacs had most adherents ; and called 
Battle of ^^ ^^^ ^i^ ^^^ Scots, who, as was usual during a war with 
Beaugd. France, had invaded the north of England. Their raid, long 
remembered as ' the burnt Candlemas,' did no great harm ; but the 
arrival of a body of Scots in France, under the command of the earl of 
Buchan, was a more serious matter. In March, Clarence marched against 
the allies, and, forgetful of the old adage, ' England were but a fling, but 
for the crooked stick and the grey goose wing,' foolishly attempted to 
surprise them by a forced march of his cavalry. The result was disastrous. 
At the battle of Beauge the English were completely routed, and Clarence 
paid with his death the penalty of his temerity. 

To repair the disaster, Henry returned to France in June 1421, and 

his arrival restored victory to his countrymen. The Dauphin was driven 

south of the Loire, and the strong fortress of Meaux was 

Henry's . . ' , ^ 

third Cam- besieged. During the winter a son, afterwards Henry vi., 

P^^S"* was born at Windsor, and in May Katharine rejoined her 

husband. The same month Meaux fell. Though unbroken success had 

hitherto followed Henry's standards, and he had fought no battle he 

had not won, and besieged no town that he had not taken, there was 

Henry's ^ne chance that he could not eliminate. Dysentery, then 

Death. \)^q scourge of camps, attacked him ; and he died at 

Vincennes on the 31st of August 1422, and in the 34th year of his age. 

Henry's character has been much and deservedly praised. There is 

no doubt that he was an able warrior and a great administrator, and also 

that, according to the ideas of the time, he was a really 

Henry's . . 

place in religious man. His persecution of the Lollards has been 

condemned by the judgment of subsequent times, but it is 

hard to blame a man because he was not in advance of his age, and his 

cruelty at the siege of Rouen is a more suitable subject for detestation. 



1422 



Henry V. 



323 



In his dealings with parliament, he was as true to constitutional prin- 
ciples as his father, though much less under the influence of compulsion ; 
and while aiding the clergy against the Lollards, he was by no means 
blind to the necessity of reform, which he showed by ordering a reduction 
of the clerical fees, and by ordering bishops to enforce the residence of the 
parochial clergy. He also stood well with learned men, and the impres- 
sion he created among his contemporaries was certainly most favourable. 
Even a French chronicler, Juvenal des Ursins, admits that 'he had 
been of high and great courage, valiant in arms, prudent, sage, great in 
justice, who, without respect of persons, did right for small and great. 
He was feared and revered of his relations, subjects, and neighbours.' 



CHIEF DA TES. 





A.D. 


Battle of Agincourt, . 


1415 


Siege of Rouen, .... 


1419 


Murder of the Duke of Burgundy, 


1419 


Treaty of Troyes, 


1420 


Battle of Beauge, 


1421 



CHAPTEE III 

HENRY VI. : 1422 — (DETHRONED) 1461 — (dIED) 1471 
Born, 1421 ; married 1446, Margaret of Anjou. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS 



Scotland. 


France. 


Pope. 


James i., d, 1436. 


Charles VI., d. 1422. 


Eugenius iv 


James ii., d. 1460. 


Charles VII., d. 1461. 





French Wars— Siege of Orleans— Loss of France — Growth of Hostile Parties 
headed respectively by the Beauforts and the Duke of York— Outbreak of 
Civil War — Dethronement of Henry vi. 

The heir of Henry v. was liis son, a child of nine months old, and during 
his minority the government was carried on by a protector and a council. 
-Phe Some dificulty was experienced in defining the exact powers 

Minority, gf gjid^ . "b^t eventually, by the sanction of parliament, it was 
arranged that the duke of Bedford should be protector and defender of 
the realm and of the church of England, and principal counsellor to the 
king whenever Bedford was present in England ; and in his absence the 
same duties were assigned to the duke of Gloucester. The council con- 
sisted of Gloucester, as chairman, and of five prelates, one duke, five earls, 
and five barons, and was fully representative of the gTeat baronial 
families. All ]3atronage was reserved in its hands, and all business was 
carried on with its cognisance and advice. In practice, however, Bedford 
was almost invariably in France, so that Gloucester acted as protector ; 
and after him the most prominent ]3lace was held by Henry Beaufort, 
bishop of Winchester, the uncle and friend of Henry v. 

The characters of these men, who may almost be called a triumvirate, 

were very difi'erent. Bedford was now thirty-three years of age, and had 

had plenty of experience both of government and war. He 

had been thoroughly trusted by his brother, and well 

deserved it, for he was really a noble character, distinguished by serious- 

324 



1424 Henry VI. 325 

ness, honesty, and complete disinterestedness ; and, tliougli he was not so 
brilliant as his elder brother, he combined Henry's thoroughness and 
soundness with some of the nobility of character which distinguished the 
Black Prince. Gloucester, on the other hand, may be com- 
pared with his great uncle, Thomas, the popular rival of 
Eichard ii. His good qualities were all of the showy order. Brave, 
adventurous, amiable and cultivated, he gained popularity while his 
brother earned respect ; and his self-seeking ambition and complete 
thoughtlessness hurried him into actions most injurious to the fortunes 
both of his country and of his house. Fortunately, the evil genius of 
Gloucester was, to a great degree, balanced by the sterling qualities of 
the great bisliop of Winchester. With abilities, both for peace and war, 
as great as those of any of his family, Henry Beaufort was, Henry 
by his profession, debarred from exhibiting the latter on Beaufort. 
English fields, but the former he placed fully at the disposal of his 
nephews ; and for nearly forty years he was the guiding spirit in English 
domestic politics, always ready to sacrifice both time and money for the 
interests of his countrymen. 

The late king had wished that the regency of France should be 
undertaken by Philip, duke of Burgundy ; but as that prince declined it, 
the duty fell to the lot of Bedford. His first care was to French 
secure the territories occupied by the English from French Affairs, 
attacks. Eoughly speaking, the English district took the form of a 
wedge, wdiose base was the sea-coast from Calais to [the borders of 
Brittany, and whose apex was at Paris. The security of this obviously 
depended on the maintenance of friendly relations with Burgundy and 
Brittany ; and to gain their goodwill Bedford negotiated a double 
marriage, by which he himself married Anne, sister of the duke of 
Burgundy, and Arthur of Kichemont, brother of the duke of Brittany, 
married her sister. His next step was to drive the French from 
those lands wdiich divided the English territories from those guttle of 
of their allies. Two campaigns effected this. In 1423 the Crevant. 
victory of Crevant, won by Thomas Montague, earl of Salisbury, cleared 
the district between Paris and Burgundy ; and in 1424, Bedford's great 
victory of Verneuil did the same for the lands north of the Battle of 
Loire, between Paris and Brittany. By a politic act of Verneuii. 
generosity the council also detached Scotland from the French alliance by 
releasing king James, and in 1424, after a captivity of nineteen years, he 
returned home taking with him an English wife, Jane Beaufort, cousin of 
the English king. 

Unfortunately, the folly of the duke of Gloucester went a long way to 



326 Rouse of Lancaster 1424 

neutralise Bedford's policy. Exactly a month before his brother's 

marriage to Anne of Burgundy, Humphrey was unpatriotic enough to 

marry Jacqueline of Hainault, the half-divorced wife of the 

ness of duke of Brabant, an act which gave mortal offence to Philip 

oucester. ^^ Burgundy, who expected to succeed to her dominions ; 

and, as if this were not bad enough, in 1424 he proceeded to Hainault to 

push his wife's claims by arms. 

By this time the condition of France was much less favourable to 
the invaders than it had been. The imbecile Charles vi. died in 1422, not 
Charles VII. long after Henry v. ; but the succession was claimed by the 
of France. Dauphin as Charles vii., and he was, of course, supported by 
the French national party, who regarded him as the rightful champion of 
the French cause. The old difficulties which had proved too much for 
the Black Prince also began to tell against Bedford. The first enthusiasm 
of the English had spent its force, and men and money were both more 
difficult to get. Moreover, the feudal armies, against which all the 
great English victories had been won, were replaced, as the war went on, 
by professional soldiers of the type of the celebrated Dunois. The gTave 
disadvantages that always beset armies which have to oj)erate among a 
hostile poj)ulation also told their tale, and it only required that a striking 
success should restore the confidence of the French to bring about a turn 
of the tide. 

In this state of affairs, Bedford decided to lay siege to Orleans. As 
this turned out badly, he has been much blamed, but the causes of the 

Siege of failure could not well have been foreseen ; and the serious 

Orleans. danger to be apprehended from leaving Orleans in French 
hands was obvious. Commanding, as it did, the j)assage of the river 
Loire, the city acted as a gate by which the French troops from the south 
could cross over into English territory, and so long as it remained untaken 
it was a constant source of anxiety and disquiet. Accordingly, in 1428, 
Bedford ordered an English force under Salisbury, the victor of Crevant, to 
lay siege to Orleans. Unluckily, however, Salisbury was killed by an iron 
cannon-shot aimed at him by a French gunner while he was inspecting 
the works, and his place was taken by William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. 
For some months the siege went steadily on ; and in February 1429, at 
Rouverai, a small detachment under Sir John Fastolf distinguished 
itself by beating off a French force which tried to capture a convoy of 
provisions which was being brought up for the besiegers. When the 
attack commenced, the Englishmen drew up the wagons in a circle — 
laager wise — and eventually repelled the attack with showers of arrows, 
though the French cannon-balls made so much havoc among the herring- 



1435 Henry VI. 327 

barrels, with which the wagons were loaded, that the fight was jocularly 
called the battle of the herrings. The failure of this attempt appeared to 
seal the fate of the garrison, when a completely new turn was given to 
events by the appearance on the scene of the Maid of Orleans. 

This wonderful personage was a girl of eighteen, named Jeanne Dare, 
daughter of a Domremy peasant, who believed that she had a divine 
mission to lead her countrymen to victory over the English, jeanne 
and to crown Charles vii. in the cathedral of Elieims. Her Dare. 
j)ertinacity and belief in the truth of her mission gained her admittance 
to the court. There her services were accepted ; and clad in armour, and 
girt with a sword, she led the enthusiastic soldiers against the English. 
In May the sieo;e of Orleans was raised. A few days later, the „ , 

^ J 5 Battles of 

earl of Suffolk was defeated and captured at Jargeau, and Jargeau 
the heroic Sir John Talbot suffered the same fate at Patay ; 
and, within the year, Charles vii. was actually crowned at Rheims. The 
effort, however, died away. The English recovered their nerve ; jealousy 
again broke out among the French ; and the capture of the maid at Com- 
piegne, in May 1430, finally broke the spell. To the disgrace of all 
persons concerned, she was tried as a witch and condemned to die by a 
court of Norman and Burgundian prelates, presided over by the bishop 
of Beauvais. She was burned to death at Eouen in May 1431, and 
her ashes thrown into the Seine. The failure at Orleans put a stop to 
any further forward movement on the part of the English ; but for some 
time their defensive strength seemed unimpaired, and it was not till six 
years after this that the French made any considerable progress in ridding 
themselves of the invaders. 

Unfortunately, in 1433, Bedford himself made a most serious mistake, 
which had the effect of breaking the English alliance with Burgundy, on 
which, more than on anything else, their power of holding their conquests 
rested. His first wife, Anne of Burgundy, died in 1432 ; and very soon 
afterwards he married Jacquetta of Luxembourg, the sister ge^ford 
of the count of St. Pol. The lands of St. Pol lay along the j^^^''^^^^^ 
watershed which separated Flanders from Artois, and so ofLuxem- 
formed a barrier between the king of France and the duke 
of Burgundy, nmch as at a later date Savoy was the barrier land between 
France and Italy. Of this the counts of St. Pol had made their advan- 
tage, by siding sometimes with the duke of Burgundy, and sometimes 
with the king of France. Consequently, his alliance with Bedford was 
most distaseful to the duke of Burgundy, who from that moment sought 
an excuse to separate himself from the English. The opportunity came 
in 1435. For some time Bedford's health had been declining, and he 



328 House of Lancaster 1435 

had found it hard to cope Avith the accumulation of difficulties with 
which the English were threatened ; and, moreover, English affairs had 
compelled him to leave France for sixteen months. Meanwhile, negotia- 
tions between the French and the Burgundians resulted in a secret 
agreement that the French should formally offer terms of peace to the 
English, and that if these were refused, Burgundy, at the price of the 
cession of Amiens and certain other towns along the river Somme and 
of the county of Ponthieu, should come over to the French side. Accord- 
ingly, in 1435, and when a great congrress was summoned by pope 
Congress of Eugeuius IV. to meet at Arras in August, and try to con- 
Arras, elude the war, the French were ready with their terms, 
which were, that Normandy and Aquitaine should be given up in full 
sovereignty to the English king, and that in return he should repudiate 
all claim to the French crown. In an evil hour the offer was declined. 
On September 14, Bedford died at Rouen ; and on the 21st the duke of 
Bedford's Burgundy made a formal treaty with France, and openly 
Death. renounced his alliance with the English. The death of 
Bedford and the severance of the Burgundian alliance bring to a close 
the second period of the war, which lasted from the treaty with Burgundy 
in 1419 to 1435. 

During Bedford's thirteen years' struggle to uphold the English rule 

in France, he had been continually harrassed by having to attend to the 

p H perpetual bickerings and disputes, of which his brother, 

ings of Gloucester, was the originator. That infatuated man, after 

mortally offending the duke of Burgundy by his marriage 

with Jacquehne of Hainault, had actually, in October 1424, led an armed 

expedition into Hainault, drawn oflF the duke from France, challenged 

him to single combat, and assumed for himself the title of count of 

Holland and Zealand. He gained, however, little or nothing by his 

expedition ; and returned to England loaded with debt. His next 

action was to pick a quarrel with Henry Beaufort ; and in 1425 Bedford 

had to return home to restore peace. This was eventually accomplished, 

rather on the whole to Gloucester's advantage, at the instance of the 

Parliament parliament of 1425, long remembered as the parliament of 

of Bats. ^y-^^^ pj, bludgeons. In 1426, Bedford returned to France, 

accompanied by Henry Beaufort ; and Gloucester immediately renewed 

his desigTis against Burgundy. The same year, however, Beaufort made 

the great mistake of his life. Hampered in England by 

becomes a the intrigues and follies of his nephew, he seems to have 

turned his thoughts to playing a part in the larger field of 

European politics ; accepted from the pope the title of cardinal, and 



1435 Henry VI. 329 

spent some time in Germany, where a campaign was being carried on by 
the papacy against the Hussites of Bohemia. No sooner, however, had 
he returned to England in 1428 than he found that he had placed a most 
formidable weapon in the hands of his English oj)ponents ; for, in spite 
of all his protests to the contrary, it was easy to represent him as a 
traitor to his country, and to play upon the ancient hostility of the 
English people to all forms of papal interference in English affairs. A 
year later, therefore, Beaufort was glad to go to France in attendance on 
the little king, who was crowned king of France in 1429, and Beaufort 
remained with him the greater part of two years. On his return the old 
troubles broke out afresh ; and, in 1433, Bedford was again in England, 
doing what he could to restore peace. Next year, however, he was com- 
pelled to return to Normandy, and never saw England again. Throughout 
these quarrels Gloucester was usually supjDorted by the London mob, 
with whom Beaufort was unpopular ; but Beaufort had the confidence of 
the country at large, and parliament was therefore on his side. 

For some time the question of the right method of conducting parlia- 
mentary elections had been in agitation. The writs of summons of 
knights of the shire, issued to the sheriffs in the time of 
Edward i., seem to have left the actual method of election to mentary 
the discretion of that official, and the practice was therefore ^gui^^ted. 
subject to wide variations ; while the tendency was to leave 
the election pretty much in the hands of the sheriff. Under Edward in. 
and Eichard ii. complaints had been made of the partiality and over- 
bearing conduct of the sheriffs ; and, in 1406, an act of parliament was 
passed by which it was directed that the election should be made by the 
whole county at the next county court held after the writ had been 
received. Ordinarily, however, the monthly meeting of the county court 
was attended by few persons of importance ; and so it was open to the 
sheriff, by giving notice of the election only to his personal friends and 
adherents, to pack the court as he pleased ; or, in case of a riot, to return 
his own candidates after going through a mere farce of election. Accord- 
ingly, in 1430, an act was passed by which the right of election was 
secured to all freeholders, whose lands were worth forty shillings a year ; 
and, in 1432, it was further ordered that these freeholds were to be 
situated in the county itself. The force of this act was twofold. First, 
it checked the power of the sheriff by securing a right to vote to certam 
qualified people in each shire ; and, second, it checked mob violence by 
taking away from every casual attendant at the county court the right of 
interference. Another act passed in 1445 insisted on sheriffs duly send- 
ing the ' precept to elect ' due to each city or borough in the county 



330 House of Lancaster 1435 

which returned members. The election then took place in the city or 
borough, according to its own customs ; and a deputation from it 
attended the county court to hand in the return, and to see it 
attached by the sheriff to his return of the knights of the shire. 
Owing, however, to variations in practice, the whole subject of parha- 
mentary elections is very obscure ; but the object of the legislation of 
the reign of Henry vi. was to secure the free expression of the opinion 
of both town and country against the interference of the sheriff, whose 
action was doubtless often inspired by the party which was for the 
time in power. At the same time, it distinctly reduced the number of 
those who had been able to take a part in the conduct of elections, for in 
silencing the voices of the sheriffs' retainers and hangers-on, parlia- 
ment also disfranchised the copyholders and villeins, some of whom had 
certainly attended the court ; and the forty shillings freeholders con- 
tinued to be the only voters in counties till the Reform Act of 1832. 

The desertion of Burgundy in 1435 roused the English parliament to 
such anger that the death of Bedford passed almost unnoticed. The 
pff f regency was bestowed on the young Richard, duke of York, 
Burgundy's then about twenty-six years of age, and the captaincy of 
Calais, which from its situation was likely to bear the brunt 
of Burgundy's attack, was entrusted to the duke of Grloucester. Neither, 
however, was able to effect much. Paris was irretrievably lost, and Calais 
proved strong enough to defy the duke of Burgundy without Gloucester's 
personal assistance. A year later York was recalled by the council, and the 
command entrusted first to the earl of Warwick and then to John Beau- 
fort, earl, and afterwards duke, of Somerset ; and though York was again 
employed, the rivalry between him and the Beauforts began the feud 
which afterwards played such a conspicuous part among the causes of the 
Wars of the Roses. For the time, however, their rivalry resulted in efforts 
which, though unable to keep back the advancing tide of French success, 
served to maintain the English reputation for deeds of arms. Among 
these, the most conspicuous was the recapture of Harfleur, in 1440, by 
Somerset and his brother Edmund Beaufort. 

In spite, however, of the active continuation of the struggle, a peace 

party was forming itself, which based its convictions on the growing 

_ ^ ^ certainty that England was not strong enouoh to establish 

Growth of \ ® . . 

a Peace an English dominion in France in defiance of French national 

^' feeling. Before his death this conviction had certainly been 

forming itself in Bedford's mind ; after his death it was taken up as the 

ground of a definite policy by the great cardinal and some of the most 

experienced of the statesmen and soldiers. On the other hand it was 



1442 Benry FL 33 1 

bitterly opposed by Humphrey of Gloucester, partly, no doubt, because 
it was the cardinal's, partly, too, because by temperament and 
inclination he was the natural mouthpiece of the warlike nobility 
and of that class of mind which regards the carryino- on of a 
hopeless or unjust war as less ignominious than coming to q 
honourable terms. His opposition, however, was most Gloucester. 
serious ; for he was very popular with the Londoners, and had contrived, 
by means not easily comprehended, to win himself the reputation for 
chivalry on which was based his title of 'the good,' which accords ill 
either with his exploits in war or the story of his private life. Whatever 
he could do to thwart the peace party, however, he did ; and in 1440, 
when the peace party persuaded the king to release the duke of Orleans, 
who had been a prisoner since Agincourt, on condition that he should use 
his good offices in favour of peace, Gloucester addressed to the king a 
letter, in which he reiterated all his charges against Cardinal Beaufort and 
the peace party, and endeavoured to make it appear that the writer and 
the duke of York were the leaders of the only patriotic party. Though 
not successful in preventing the release of Orleans, this protest was of 
importance as giving the nation a wholly false estimate of the real motives 
and policy of the Beaufort party. John Beaufort died in 1444, leaving a 
daughter, Margaret ; and his place at court was taken by his younger 
brother Edmund, who also became duke of Somerset. 

Meanwhile, the peace party received a valuable adherent in the person 
of the young king. Henry actually came of age in 1442 ; but for some 
years before he had acted as king, and the date is, therefore, 

'' o' ' ' Henry 

of little consequence. From the first he was a delicate boy ; becomes 

of 2,&r6. 

quite unfit to take his share in the business of war at an age 
when his father and uncles had led armies in the field. On the other 
hand, his mind seems to have been singularly precocious ; and ill-con- 
sidered efforts to force him forward make it probable that he was a 
victim of educational overpressure. Warwick instructed him in chivalry, 
Gloucester in the study of literature, Beaufort in the art of government ; 
and the docile lad seems to have well profited by their instruction, for he 
grew up a courteous gentleman, an accomplished man, with a real anxiety 
to do his duty to his subjects, but at the same time wholly unfitted 
by nature to be the successful king of a high-spirited people in such 
troublous times. For a long time, however, the real incompetence of 
the king for independent action was concealed from the eyes of the nation 
by his youth, and by the conspicuous parts played by such men as 
Gloucester and the cardinal ; but sooner or later it was inevitable that 
the real character of the king would come to be understood. 



332 House of Lancaster 1442 

In 1441, 1442, and 1443, the English held their own well in Normandy 

under the duke of York ; but the peace party held true to their policy, 

and in 1444 an embassy was sent to Paris, headed by 
Negotia- . . "^ ' .7 

tions for William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. This nobleman, who 

was the grandson of Michael de la Pole, the minister of 
Kichard 11., and son of the earl of Suffolk, who fell at Agincourt, had 
early distinguished himself in war and diplomacy, and had gained great 
influence over the king. He was a thoroughgoing member of the peace 
party, and his embassy resulted in a truce for two years, and an arrange- 
ment that Henry should, as a step towards a permanent peace, marry 
Margaret of Anjou, daughter of Eene, duke of Anjou and 

marries couut of Provence, and titular king of Naples and Jerusalem, 

of Xn^ou^ and niece of the queen of Charles vii. In April 1445 the 
bride reached England and was married to Henry, he being 
twenty-four years of age and she sixteen. At first this marriage and the 
hopes of peace that it brought with it were popular in the country. Both 
houses of parliament voted their thanks to Suffolk in 1445. The 
merchants were glad to renew commercial relations with France ; and it 
seemed as if the policy of Cardinal Beaufort, who heartily approved of the 
marriage, was going to be crowned with complete success. Of this state 
of affairs Suffolk, as the negotiator of the marriage, took every advantage 
to ingratiate himself with the new queen, and by so doing diverted to him- 
self the ill-will of Gloucester, who naturally disliked the marriage, not 
only as a triumph for the peace party, but also because the possible 
birth of an heir to Henry would bar his hopes of succession to the crown. 
Since Bedford\s death he had stood next in the succession, and so eager were 
some of his household, at any rate, for his interests, that his wife, Eleanor 
Cobham, whom he had married on his union with Jacqueline being pro- 
nounced null by the pope, practically confessed that she had been guilty 
of emjiloying sorcery to bring about the king's death. The cardinal's 
health was failing, and it was clear that his place as leader of the peace 
party was about to fall to Suffolk, who attempted to strengthen his 
position by arranging a marriage between his son John and the little 
Margaret Beaufort, who, after Henry and Humphrey, was the next repre- 
sentative of the line of John of Gaunt. 

In 1447 the struggle between Gloucester and Sufiblk came to a head. 
Suftblk was sufficiently influential to have the parliament of that year 

„ ,. summoned at Bury St. Edmunds, where Gloucester would 

Parliament , ,. 

of Bury St. be at a distance from his friends the Londoners, and where 

Suffolk's own influence would be at its greatest. The 

House met in February ; and on Gloucester's arrival he and some of his 



1448 Henry VI, 333 

followers were arrested by the earl of Salisbury and several other noble- 
men. This occurred on the 18th, and on the 23rd Gloucester died 
in his lodgings. How he met his end none can say. On ^ 
the one hand, he is known to have been in exceedingly Gloucester, 
delicate health, and anxiety and indignation may have hurried on the 
course of natural disease ; or he may have been slain by some officious 
underling ; or he may have been deliberately put to death by Suffolk him- 
self. The cardinal can hardly have had a hand in it, for the removal of 
Gloucester was a most serious blow to the house of Lancaster, whose 
fortunes it was his interest as a Beaufort to support. Henry was certainly 
innocent ; and it is hard to suspect Margaret, a girl of eighteen. At the 
time, as much uncertainty seems to have prevailed as since ; but as time 
went on, the darker rumour became the more popular, though unsup- 
ported by additional evidence. Six weeks after the death 
of his old antagonist. Cardinal Beaufort also passed away. Cardinal 
leaving behind him a great reputation as the mainstay of his 
house, and, next to Cardinal Wolsey, the most magnificent ecclesiastic 
produced by this country. 

The deaths of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort made Suffolk for a 
time supreme. With great adroitness he had made himself the confi- 
dant of Margaret, and there was no one at court to compare Suffolk in 
with him in influence. Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somer- P°^^''- 
set, was occupied with his French command ; and in 1447, Eichard, 
duke of York, was made lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and so kept at a 
distance. Among the officials, Bishop Moleyns and Lord Say and Sele 
were Suffolk's adherents ; while Cardinal Kemp, the archbishop of 
Canterbury, represented Beaufort's ideas. The general aim of Suffolk's 
policy was to secure peace, and it must be taken as a proof of his honesty 
that he pursued this unpopular object with such tenacity. Accordingly, 
in 1448, the remaining places held by the English in Anjou and Maine 
were given up to Eene, probably in accordance with a ^ .^^ ^j^d 
verbal promise made by Sufi'olk at the time of the marriage Maine 

^ "^ ji . !• surrendered. 

negotiations. This was an attempt to secure the rest of 
the English dominions by the surrender of a part, but it was bitterly 
resented in England ; and, with Somerset's consent, some men of the 
Maine garrisons in their retreat sacked Fougeres, a town belonging to 
the duke of Brittany. This wicked and foolish action led ^^^^ ^^ 
to the renewal of open war. In May, Pont de I'Arche, Br^^tany 
which commanded the approach to Kouen, fell ; and, in 
October, Kouen itself was taken. For these accumulated disastei-s Suffolk 
and Somerset were held responsible. A cry of treachery was raised ; and 



334 House of Lancaster 1448 

the council seeing itself involved in their unpopularity, was at its wits' 
end for a defence. 

The position of the council was certainly a hard one. Constitutional 
government had been carried far enough to make the ministers respon- 
sible for failure, but not far enouoh to provide a ready and 
Unpopular- ' „ . » i j 

ity of the peaceful way of transferring the duties of government from 
the shoulders of unpopular ministers to those of their 
critics ; and, with the excej)tion of the discredited Suffolk, there was 
no man in the court party strong enough to take the lead at such a 
crisis. A strong king, who believed in himself, and could be his own 
prime minister and his own commander-in-chief, might have brought the 
nation through its troubles ; or under a constitutional sovereign, a strong 
minister like the elder Pitt might have weathered the storm ; but 
Henry vi. was completely wanting in the qualities of a successful despot, 
and no one of the politicians who surrounded him had a tithe of Pitt's 
capacity and spirit. The natural consequence was that, judged by every 
standard, the administration of Henry vi. was a failure. Suffolk's peace 
policy and Somerset's ill luck or want of capacity were alike condemned 
by the nation. The debt amounted to ^370,000 ; and the household 
expenses had increased from ^5000 to ^25,000 a year. The regular 
income was but £5000 ; and, though additional taxation was voted with- 
out much demur by parliament, the burden was wearily borne by the 
nation. 

Moreover, the elementary duty of government, that of preserving 

order, had been neglected. The bands of retainers, of whom little is 

Disorder in heard between the rebellion of the Percies and the loss 

England. ^^ Normandy, had again become a curse to the country, and 

the great nobles, each with his little standing army at his back, showed 

scant respect to the king's peace when their interests were at stake. For 

example, in Norfolk, a gentleman named John Paston, 

whose family letters have been preserved, and furnish a 

mine of information as to the events of the time, made good his legal 

right to the manor of Gresham, which was wrongfully claimed by Lord 

Moleyns. The baron collected a body of one thousand men, and choosing 

a time when Paston was away, stormed the house,. and took the beams 

from under the floor of Mrs. Paston's bedroom, to make her leave the 

place. So early as 1435, a quarrel between two branches of the Nevilles 

had led to fighting, and the lawlessness of the country was such as had 

_ ^ . not been tolerated in England for many centuries. More- 

Retainers. . => "^ 

over, in addition to their household retainers, the great 
nobles had begun the practice of making bonds with the freeholders and 



1450 Hennj VI. 335 

knights in their neighbourhood, by which the latter agreed— save their 
allegiance to the king— to serve their patron against all comers, so that 
each noble had a small standing army in readiness, and a laro-er force 
behind on which he could count in an emergency. In these circum- 
stances, nothing but a leader was wanted for a rebellion. York, however 
was in Ireland ; there was no other name likely to attract a following ; 
and in consequence a number of disconnected outbreaks took place, which 
make the year 1450 notable as a year of riot and disorder. 

In January, Bishop Moleyns of Chichester was sent to Portsmouth to 
pay the sailors, who were starting for France. Unluckily for him, his 
funds did not permit of his doing more than making a 
payment on account ; and the sailors, furious with disappoint- Bishop 
ment, seized and murdered him, the soldiers meanwhile look- ''*'^°*^y"^- 
ing on. On January 22 parliament met, and Suffolk, well aware that an 
attack would be made upon him, endeavoured, by a vigorous protest of 
innocence and an appeal to his past services, to stave it off. The attempt, 
however, was unsuccessful ; and the commons acting apparently under 
the direction of Lord Cromwell, himself one of the lords of the council, 
prepared a long series of charges, on which they impeached 
Suffolk before the lords. The accusations thus made dealt ment of 
some with incompetency and some with treason. The 
former practically arraigned the whole policy of the peace party, the latter 
accused Suffolk of a plot to marry his son, John de la Pole, to Margaret 
Beaufort, and to place them on the throne. The latter charge could only 
be met by a denial ; but the former, which really involved the council, 
was most embarrassing for the court ; and apparently it was arranged, as 
the best way out of the difficulty, that Suffolk should avoid a trial, which 
would be as awkward for his party as dangerous to hunself, by throwing 
himself on the king's mercy, without answering the charges at all. 
Accordingly this was done, and then Henry ordered Suffolk to leave the 
country for five years. On April 30 Suffolk set sail ; but his ship was 
intercepted off Calais by the Nicolas of the Tower ; and on May 2 he 
was taken into a small boat, decapitated, and his body cast Murder of 
on the shores of Kent. Evidence is wanting to decide Suffolk, 
whether his murder was due, like that of Bishop Moleyns, to the anger of 
mutinous sailors, or to a determination of Suffolk's political enemies not 
to be baulked of their prey. There is no doubt, however, that by 
depriving Henry of the one really able councillor he possessed, it struck 
a severe blow at the Lancastrian dynasty, and may be compared to the 
loss which Charles i. sustained by the death of Strafford on the eve of 
the civil war. 



336 House of Lancaster 1450 

A month later Cade's rebellion threw the south-eastern shires into 
confusion. Jack Cade was an Irish retainer of Sir Thomas Dacre, who 

Cade's ^'^^^ A^d the country as a murderer, but returned under 

Rebellion. ^^^ assumed name. It is, however, a moot point whether 
he was the real leader of the rebellion which bears his name, or whether, 
the original leader having perished or fled, Cade did not step into his 
place. The first beginnings of the movement are imperfectly under- 
stood ; but a rumour that the men of Kent would be held responsible 
for Suffolk's death, and indignation at the exactions of Crowmer the 
sheriff", seem to have been the sparks which set fire in Kent to the com- 
bustible matter with which all England was filled. Once on foot, the 
movement soon assumed formidable dimensions. No nobles and only 
one knight are said to have joined it ; but the lesser gentry and yeomen 
came out with as much unanimity as though the militia had been sum- 
moned, and marched in orderly array to Blackheath. There they heard 
that Henry was coming against them in person and retreated ; but when 
a detachment sent in pursuit by Henry, under Sir Humphrey Staff'ord 

Battle of ^^^ l'^i''3 brother William, overtook them at Sevenoaks, the 

Seven oaks. j.g]3gig turned, defeated the royal troops, killed both their 
leaders, and returned to Blackheath. From this moment Cade was 
certainly their leader. He dressed himself in the armour of the fallen 
Staff'ord ; declared himself to be Mortimer, a cousin of York, and did 
all he could to make it appear that he was acting in his cousin's 
interests. 

Meanwhile, Henry had found his troops disheartened by the defeat at 
Sevenoaks, and so far from being whole-hearted in defending the govern- 
ment, that an imperious demand was made for the imprison- 

retires to ment of Lord Say, the treasurer. This was granted ; and 
oventry. ^-^^^ Henry, feeling himself unequal to the task of rallying 
his mutinous followers, retreated to Coventry, leaving London to its fate, 
and giving a clear demonstration to the whole nation that he had neither 
the fighting power nor the self-reliance necessary for an English king. 
On the king's retreat. Cade advanced to Southwark, setting forth as the 
grievances of the rebels : the loss of France ; the heavy taxation ; the 
exclusion of the king's relatives from the Council ; interference with elec- 
tions ; and, generally, the ill government of the country. On July 3, 
Cade crossed the bridge into London. There he was well received 
by the citizens, and had no difficulty in getting possession of the persons 
of Lord Say and Crowmer, both of whom were beheaded. Every night 
his men slept in Southwark ; but Cade himself having set the example 
of plunder, the citizens, aided by Matthew Gough — a veteran of the 



1450 Henry VI , 337 

French wars — manned the bridge, and though Gough himself was killed 
the rebels were defeated in attempting to cross on July 6. Disheartened 
by this failure, and finding no nobleman willing to join 
them, the mass of rebels accepted pardons, which the London" 
government offered through Cardinal Kemp and Bishop ^^''^s^- 
Waynflete, and the most part returned home. Cade, however, kept 
some men together, and retired with his plunder to Rochester. Thence 
he fled alone, but was overtaken and slain by Alexander Death of 
Iden, the new sheriff of Kent. During the course of Cade. 
Cade's rebellion, other risings had taken place. In Wiltshire, Askew, 
bishop of Salisbury, had been slain at Edington by his Murder of 
own tenants ; outbreaks had occurred in Gloucestershire and Askew, 
the eastern counties ; and the fact that no less than twenty-four traitors' 
heads were placed on London Bridge within the year, shows into what 
anarchy the nation had drifted. 

The deaths of Sufiblk, Moleyns, and Say left Henry almost without 
responsible advisers. Somerset was in France, and in dire distress ; for 
the battle of Formigny, April 15, in which the English were Battle of 
defeated by the skilful use of the French artillery, had Formigny. 
shattered the reinforcements sent out under Sir Thomas Kyriel, with the 
loss of three thousand Englishmen ; and the surrender of the remaining 
garrisons of Normandy was merely a question of days. In these circum- 
stances the natural adviser of the king was undoubtedly the duke of 
York ; but that nobleman, whose abilities as a warrior and . 

' ' Position 01 

an administrator had been proved both in France and the Duke of 
Ireland, had long been an exile from court, and the way in 
which his name had been used by the Kentish rebels and by the discon- 
tented generally, as a contrast to the late incompetent advisers of the king, 
was not likely to have made him more welcome. Now, however, Duke 
Richard thought that the time had come to assert himself; and in 
September he crossed over from Ireland, collected a force of 4000 men 
from the Mortimer lands on the Welsh marches, advanced on London, and 
demanded a personal interview with the king. At this interview York 
presented a petition, in which he complained of the false charges made 
against himself, and of the hindrances that had been put in the way of his 
landing ; and demanded to be confronted with his accusers. In answer, 
Henry replied that the language used by the insurgents had naturally 
caused some suspicion, but that he was now satisfied of York's innocence, 
and ' reputed and admitted him as his true and faithful subject, and as 
his faithful cousin.' Thus relieved of the fear of a prosecution for treason, 
York's next object was to get the reins of government out of the hands of 

Y 



338 



House of Lancaster 



1450 



the survivors of the court party. He was, however, a cautious man, and 
would proceed no further than he could be sure of his ground, for his 
methods were always slow. 

The fall of Bayeux and Caen set Somerset free from his duties in 

France, and in September he too was in England, reorganising the 

shattered court party, and preparing to dispute York's clamis 

Somerset ^^ direct affairs. At this moment Edmund Beaufort, duke 

^°"^ of Somerset, was probably the most un]30}Dular man in 

England.^ Now that Suffolk was gone, Somerset had to bear 
the full odium of the loss of Normandy ; and peculation, cowardice, 
treachery, and incompetence were everywhere laid to his charge. His 
one hope of maintaining himself lay in his intimate relations with the 
court ; and his first act on his return was to secure the title of constable 
of England, Avhich might be regarded as a virtual acknowledgment of his 
claim to direct affairs. Moreover, he had the confidence of Queen 
Margaret, who was now beginning to exercise a decisive influence over the 
king's mind, and who naturally disliked York as the probable successor 
of her husband in case her marriage proved childless. Henry himself, 
weak both in mind and body, was little better than a tool in their hands. 

For three years York and Somerset manoeuvred against one another. 
Somerset was actually in power, and York was excluded from all share 
in the government ; but politics were resolving themselves into a set 
struggle between the two. Unluckily for Somerset, affairs in France 
were going from bad to worse. No sooner had Normandy been cleared 



1 THE BEAUFORTS. 

John of Gainit, = Katharine Swynford. 
d. 1399. 



Jolni, Earl of Somerset, d. 1410. 



Henry, Cardinal Beaufort, d. 1447. 



Katharine = Owen Tudor, 
of France. I 



John, Duke 

of Somerset, 

d. 1444. 



Edmund Tudor, = Margaret. 
Earl of Kichmond. 

Henry vii., 
1485-1509. 



Edmund, 
Duke of 

Somerset, 
killed at St. 
Albans, 1455, 



Jane, 
m. James i. 
of Scotland. 



Henry, Duke of Somerset, 

executed after Hexham, 

1463. 



Edmund, Duke of Somerset, 

executed after Tewkesbury, 

1471. 



John, killed 

at Tewkesbiirv, 

1471. 



1453 Henry VI. 33^ 

of the English than the French attacked Guienne, a district which had 

been connected with the English crown for nigh three hundred years 

and which was the centre of a flourishing trade. Somerset, however 

proved unequal to its defence ; and in 1451 Bordeaux and 

Bayonne were both lost. To look on while the ancient Bordea^ 

dominions of the realm were being sacrificed by an incom- ^"'^ 

Bayonne. 
petent rival was more than York could bear. The lower his 

own fortunes grew^ the more assiduous was Somerset in plying the kino- 
with doubts of York's loyalty. Finally in 1452 York made a move, and, 
repeating his action of 1450, approached London, protected by a formid- 
able force. On Blackheath his troops were confronted by those of the 
king. Neither side, however, wished to fight ; and, after York's com- 
plaints had been heard, Henry agreed to arrest Somerset, 
with a view to a thorough sifting of York's charges. On between 
this, York dismissed his followers, and himself visited the Somerset 

' _ ' and York. 

royal camp ; but on arrival found Somerset still in power, 
and was himself placed in virtual arrest. Somerset, however, knew too 
well the truth of the duke's charges of peculation, corruption, and incom- 
petence in his French administration to face an open investigation. His 
one wish was to stop York's mouth ; and this he efi'ected by compelling 
York to swear himself a loyal subject, and then treating the incident as 
at an end. For the moment York had been outmanoeuvred, and retired 
to his estates ; but Somerset's ill-luck was constantly providing fresh 
matter for complaint. In 1452, a chance of retaking Guienne had pre- 
sented itself through the dissatisfaction of the Gascons with French rule, 
and a force of five thousand men was despatched by Somerset to 
Bordeaux, under the command of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury. For 
a time they carried all before them ; but on July 17, 1453, Talbot was 
enticed into attacking a strong French force at Castillon, Battle ot 
with inferior numbers. The French were strongly posted and Castillon. 
well supplied with artillery ; and after terrible slaughter, in which Talbot 
and his two sons perished, the English were utterly routed. 
Three months later, Bordeaux again fell into French hands, losTof^ ^ 
and it seemed only too likely that the whole force of France polse'ssions. 
would be concentrated for a decisive attack on Calais. 

Meanwhile, York had been sounding his friends and preparing for 
fresh action. His chief reliance was placed on his brother-in-law, 
Pvichard, earl of Salisbury, the head of the younger branch Richard 
of the Neville family. This powerful and numerous clan, Eid^r, Earl 
who for many generations had strengthened themselves by of Salisbury. 
SL series of fortunate marriages, at this time held among its members 



340 House of Lancaster 145S 

and connections some dozen out of the thirty -six peerages that at 
that date existed in England. Its head was the earl of Westmor- 
land ; but a feud had existed for some time between the descendants of 
the two wives of the late earl ; and Richard Neville, the eldest son of the 
second, was a more powerful man than the head of his house. His 
mother left him the castles of Sheriff Hutton and Middleham, and other 
estates in Yorkshire ; from his wife, the daughter of that earl of Salisbury 
who was killed at Orleans, he derived his seat in the House of Lords, and 
„ . , , considerable estates in the south-western counties. Richard 

Richard 

Neville the Neville the younger, his eldest son, was an even more powerful 
Earl of ' man than his father, for his marriage with Anne Beauchamp, 
arwic . ^j^^ heiress of the earldom of Warwick, had made him the 
largest landholder in England ; for in his hands were accumulated the 
property of the Despensers and Beauchamps, amounting to some hundred 
and fifty manors, and some fifteen strong castles. Warwick came of age 
in 1449, and as he was as energetic and vigorous as his father was 
cautious and calculating, their alliance with the duke of York was of 
first-rate importance. One of Salisbury's sisters married John Mowbray, 
earl of Norfolk, and a brother William married the heiress of the barony 
of Falconbridge. 

Hardly had the news of Castillon been received when it became 
known that the king was seriously ill. Probably he inherited a taint of 
The King's madness from his gTandfather, Charles vi. ; possibly, as has 
illness. been suggested, the defeat of Castillon may have unnerved 

him ; but it was soon evident that his mind was completely unhinged, 
and in a couple of months he was practically an imbecile. The news of 
the king's misfortune was followed by the intelligence that Queen 
Birth of a Margaret had given birth to a son, which occurred on 
Prince. October 13 ; but by that time the king's mind was so far 
gone that he knew nothing of what had happened, and did not even 
notice the child when it was presented to him. These two events com- 
pletely changed the position of affairs. Since the death of Humphrey of 
Gloucester, the childless marriage of the king had fostered hopes in the 
mind of York that he would succeed to the throne in the natural course 
of events ; and in 1451 a proposal had even been made in the House of 
Commons to declare him heir to the throne. Now, however, it was 
probable that the succession would be continued in the direct line, and 
York's enemies would no longer be inspired by a cautious fear that in 
attacking him they might be making an enemy of their future sovereign. 
On the other hand, the mimediate effect of the king's malady was to 
destroy the foundation of Somerset's power, for even the lords of the 



1455 Henry VL 341 

council refused to identify themselves with so unpopular a statesman. 
In the diflSculty all eyes naturally turned to York ; and as a parliament 
had fortunately been summoned, York acted as the king's representative 
and virtually assumed the reins of government. 

The inevitable attack on Somerset was begun by York's brother-in- 
law, the earl of Norfolk, who reiterated the old charges of treason and 
peculation ; and in December the council, as a precau- Attack on 
tionary measure, committed him to the Tower. Next year Somerset, 
further changes were made. The death of the chancellor, Cardinal 
Kemp, made it absolutely necessary to appoint some provisional govern- 
ment ; and the lords, disregarding Margaret's claim to have the direction 
of affairs, named York protector, reserving, however, most york made 
carefully, the rights of the little Prince Edward, to whom Protector. 
York stood godfather. The new protector, who is described as ' a man 
of low stature, with a short square face, and somewhat stout of body,' 
at once took energetic measures to reform the administration, and began 
by filling the chief offices of state with men on whom he could rely. 
The earl of Salisbury became chancellor ; Warwick was made a member 
of tlie privy council ; Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, was lord treasurer. 

Under York's guidance the condition of the country rapidly improved, 
and his influence was strong enough to put a stop to a private war which 
had broken out in the north between Thomas Percy, earl of Egremont, 
assisted by the duke of Exeter and some of the elder Nevilles, against 
the younger branch of that family, headed by John Neville, afterwards 
Lord Montague. Meanwhile, Somerset was lying in the Tower, for in 
the king's state it was a dangerous and difficult task to bring him to 
trial ; and so long as he had no influence, he could do no further harm. 
Unfortunately for the country, in December the king began Henry 
to show symptoms of recovery, and in January 1455 he was 
again himself ; and the first use he made of his power was to release 
Somerset and restore him to his ascendancy in the royal councils. 

For York this turn of afiliirs was most serious. Not only had he to 
resign the protectorate, but he lost all his other posts ; and his friends 
Salisbury, Warwick, and Tiptoft were also cashiered. In fork's 

May a council was held, to which York and his friends were friends 

J ' 11 J ^. dismissed, 

not summoned, and by its advice a parliament was called at 
Leicester, ' for the purpose of providing for the safety of the king's person 
against his enemies.' Who were meant by the king's enemies, York had 
no doubt ; and seeing that the moment for action had come, he called out 
his retainers, summoned Salisbury and Warwick to his aid, and marched 
straight on London, announcing that they were coming to convmce 



342 House of Lancaster 1455 

the king of 'the sinister, malicious, and fraudulent reports of their 
enemies.' 

No sooner was it known that they were on their road than Somerset 
and the kino: marched to meet them with a small force of three thousand 
men, hastily collected by the court peers, of whom about twelve were 
j)resent, including the dukes of Somerset and Buckingham, the earls of 
Pembroke, Dorset, Wiltshire, Stafford, and Devon. The two armies 
Battle of ii^et at St. Albans ; and, after some parleying and the refusal 
St. Albans. q£ York's demand that the king would ' deliver up such 
persons as he might accuse to be dealt with like as they have deserved,' 
the town was stormed by the Yorkists. The slaughter among the 
soldiers was slight ; but the Lancastrian leaders suflFered severely, as 
their heavy armour made flight difficult. Henry himself was wounded 
by an arrow ; Somerset, the earl of Northumberland, and Lord Clifford 
were killed ; Buckingham, Stafford, Devon, and Dorset were wounded 
and taken ; Pembroke and Wiltshire escaped. 

The result of the fight at St. Albans was to sweep away Somerset and 

his friends much as Suffolk and his ministers had perished in 1450. It 

Results of Isft York practically supreme, and his first act was to restore 

the battle, j^jj. friends to power. Bourchier, archbishop of Canterbury, 

a clever but somewhat time - serving prelate, was left undisturbed 

as chancellor ; and his brother. Lord Bourchier, was made treasurer. 

Somerset was succeeded by the duke of York as constable, and by 

Warwick as captain of Calais ; and Salisbury was made steward of the 

duchy of Lancaster. These appointments were confirmed by parliament ; 

and an opportune recurrence of Henry's illness in October 

Henry's ^ ^ . „ 

second restored York to the position of protector. However, in 

January Henry again recovered, and the old game of 

intrigue was renewed ; for Margaret of Anjou had now definitely stepped 

forward as successor to Somerset's influence, and was bent on regaining 

power at all risks. So infatuated indeed was she, that, for 

takes the the purpose of discrediting York's administration, she sug- 

Yo?k^^^'"^* gested to the French an attack on Sandwich ; is believed 

to have had a hand in a Scottish raid ; and actually 

admitted to a friend, that ' if the great lords of her own party knew what 

she was doing, they would be the first to rise to put her to death.' 

On the whole York's government was successful. Warwick, too, 
particularly distinguished himself by his successful captaincy at Calais, 
Warwick at '^^^^^ ^^^ wou iiiuch reputation and popularity by the energy 
Calais. j-^Q threw into the defence of the narrow seas, in which he 

distinguished himself in several hand-to-hand fights with Spanish, French, 



1459 Henry VI . 343 

and Hanseatic sailors. These exploits, though not exactly in accord with 
modern ideas of international law, made him the darling of the sailors 
and of the merchants of London and of the southern ports ; and he 
became, next to York, the most conspicuous and popular fitmre in the 
country. Under York's rule the country seemed again to be settlino- 
down ; the popular songs of the time show that there was a widespread 
expectation of better times ; and so sanguine was Henry himself that in 
1458, he planned a great function of reconciliation at St. Paul's, g 
in which the chiefs of both parties went in procession, two ^t. Paul's, 
and two, to pray for the souls of those who had been killed at St. 
Albans. 

Margaret, however, had far different thoughts, and was working 
steadily to oust York and his friends, and little by little she succeeded. 
The king's recovery terminated York's protectorate ; then 
the Bourchiers were both dismissed ; Salisbury lost his post attacks 
as steward ; and the government was reorganised, under the 
direction of the queen, in the hands of Wiltshire, Beaumont, Shrewsbury, 
and Exeter. At length, in 1459, Margaret felt herself strong enough to 
renew the attack on York, which had been defeated in 1455. York was at 
Ludlow, Salisbury at Middleham, Warwick at Calais, when in September 
the queen, acting in the king's name, assembled an army in the Midlands ; 
and, deciding to deal with Salisbury first, had a summons sent him to come 
u]3 to London. Salisbury, however, was too wary to fall into the snare, 
and, instead of obeying, collected a force of 3000 men and made his way 
towards Ludlow ; at the same time sending word to Warwick to come to 
his assistance. The queen's plan, however, w\as so far successful that a 
force of her adherents, headed by Lord Audley, intercepted Salisbury at 
Blore Heath, on the borders of Shropshire and Staifordshire ; Battle of 
but in the battle that followed, Audley was defeated and ^lore Heath, 
slain, and Salisbury efiected his junction with York without further 
molestation ; while Warwick, bringing with him six hundred tramed 
soldiers under Sir Andrew Trollope, also joined them. Both sides then 
called on their followers ; but whereas the queen, with all England at 
her back, was able to raise 50,000 men, the Yorkists, cooped up in the 
Severn valley, and cut off from many of their estates by the royal army, 
were only able to raise 20,000. The result was that their followers lost 
heart ; and when the two armies confronted each other at Ludford-on-the- 
Teme, a panic spread through the insurgent host, Sir panic at 
Andrew Trollope went over to the enemy, and the whole army 
broke up in confusion. York made the best of his way to Ireland ; 
while Salisbury, Warwick, and Edward, earl of March, York's eldest son, 



344 House of Lancaster 1459 

reached the coast of Devon, and there taking ship, were indebted to 
Warwick's practical skill as a sailor for a safe voyage to Calais. 

For the moment Margaret was completely successful ; but the use she 
made of her victory was not calculated to conciliate her opponents. A 
parliament was hurriedly summoned to Coventry ; so hurriedly indeed, 
Parliament *^^'^^ through want of time for the due formalities of election, 
of Coventry. ^\^q X/ancastrian sheriffs were able practically to nominate 
the members ; while the choice of Coventry as the meeting-place instead 
of London was also a check on Yorkist influence. The great object 
of the session was the punishment of the insurgent leaders. By a 
salutary act, passed in 1404, 'aj)peals in parliament,' such as had been 
common under Eichard 11., had been declared illegal ; but an even readier 

Yorkists weapon was now devised by the queen's friends in the shape 

attainted, ^f j^^ts of Attainder. A Bill of Attainder is a bill brought 
into parliament for attainting, condemning, and executing a person for 
high treason. The meaning of the word attaint is to ' corrupt ' the hloocl, so 
that an attainted person can neither possess property, nor transmit it to 
his heirs. His property, therefore, is forfeited to the crown. An attaint 
may follow upon either an Act of Attainder or upon a sentence of death 
in a court of law for treason or felony. The king had the power to remit 
part of the penalty ; and sometimes attainted j)ersons lost their lives, but 
were allowed to transmit their property. To reverse an Act of Attainder, 
a bill for its repeal had to be passed through parliament, just as much as for 
the repeal of any other law. This terrible miplement of punishment was 
used for the first time in the Coventry Parliament of 1459 against York, 
Salisbury, and Warwick. Their property and their lives were forfeited ; 
and the natural result was that the struggle, which had hitherto been for 
the power of directing the king's government, became one for life and 
death. 

Meanwhile, the attainted lords were collecting their forces to renew the 
contest, and a simultaneous landing of York in Wales and of the earls in 

_ . Kent was arranged for the following June. York, however. 

The Earls . ^. '^ ' ' 

land in was behind his time ; so the first step was taken by the earls. 
As Warwick's ships had command of the Channel, they were 
able to cross without molestation ; and the Lancastrians, who did not 
expect them in Kent, had no force to oppose them between Sandwich and 
London, which the earls entered without fighting, and were enthusi- 
astically received by the citizens. Everywhere they declared that the 
cause of their coming was the restoration of good government, and that 
they were personally loyal to the king. Once in London, the earls found 
themselves joined by numerous adherents. In the late struggle they had 



1460 Henry VI. 34-5 

stood almost alone ; but the queen's severity had decided the waverers 
and throughout the south-eastern shires their friends were in a decided 
preponderance. Leaving Salisbury to besiege the Tower, Warwick and 
March advanced to Northampton, where they found a Lan- 
castrian force under the command of Henry himself, assisted Northamp- 
by the duke of Buckingham. After vain efforts to obtain an *°"' 
interview with the king, Warwick ordered an attack, and the Yorkists 
aided by treachery, stormed the trenches and put their opponents to utter 
rout. Margaret and her son made good their escape ; but Henry was 
captured. As at St. Albans, the slaughter of leaders was dispropor- 
tionately great compared to the total loss, and included Buckingham. 

The result of the battle of Northampton was to make the Yorkists 
supreme in southern and middle England ; so, without troubling to pursue 
Margaret, Warwick and March, taking Henry with them, York claims 
returned at once to London. There, in Henry's name, a ^^^ Crown, 
change of government was effected like that which followed St. Albans. 
Salisbury was made lieutenant of the six northern counties ; George 
Neville, bishop of Exeter, chancellor ; John Neville, chamberlain ; and 
Lord Bourchier, treasurer. In October parliament met ; and, having been 
elected under Yorkist influence, repealed the Acts of Attainder passed 
at Coventry in 1459. On the third day of the session York arrived in 
London. On his journey up he had ventured to assume royal state, and 
on reaching Westminster forced his way into the palace, and compelled 
Henry to vacate the royal apartments. Next day he appeared before the 
lords and openly claimed the crown as the heir of Eichard 11. This 
action, however, proved to be going too far even for his most sturdy 
followers. The lords made no sign of assent, while Warwick openly 
avowed his disapproval of a step which violated all the oaths of fidelity 
they had taken to Henry, and was in complete defiance of 
every declaration of Yorkist policy. The result was a com- ciared heir 
promise, York was not crowned ; but was declared heir to ^hJong^ 
the throne, and given the titles of Protector and Prince of 
Wales, and this arrangement was accepted by Henry and confirmed by 
Act of Parliament. 

Whether, however, it would be of effect depended on the relative strength 
of the adherents of York and Margaret. The latter was in Wales, but her 
friends were rallying in the north under the earl of Northum- ^^^ north- 
berland and Lord Clifford, sons of those who had fallen at St. ern Lancas- 
Albans, and Lord Neville, brother of the earl of Westmor- 
land, and they were soon joined by Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, 
the duke of Exeter, and other noted Lancastrians. To watch them, York 



3'46 House of Lancaster ueo 

and Salisbury advanced with six thousand men to Sandal Castle, near 

Wakefield, and were there awaiting reinforcements, when, on December 

„ , , 30, a clever ruse of Clifford drew York into a rash encounter 

Battle of ,' , 

Wakefield, with superior numbers, in which he himself was killed and 

De ths of Salisbury captured. Eutland, York's second son, a fine 

York and lad of seventeen, was slain in the pursuit. The unlucky 

Salisbury was promptly beheaded at Pontefract ; and his 

head with that of York, the latter adorned with a paper crown, was 

barbarously set upon the gates of York. 

The victory of Wakefield seemed to give Margaret such a superiority 

that the men of the north flocked to her standard by thousands, and she 

, was soon at the head of 40,000 men ; but her very success 

Margaret s ' . 

southern was her danger, for the rumours of the intentions of the 

msfch 

ruder northerners, who claimed to plunder at will south of 

the Trent, roused a feeling of desperation in all the southern shires, and 

made the campaign that followed a national war in a sense it had never 

been before. Hitherto the chief fighting had been borne by the retainers 

of the nobility, but now, for the first time, the towns came into the field, 

and the interference of the men of the northern moorlands was met by the 

appearance of peaceful citizens and agriculturists, who saw in the victory 

of the Yorkist cause the only guarantee for peace and good government. 

Four leaders were soon in the field. Margaret and her northerners 

advancing by the Ermine Street on London, and plundering on their way 

Grantham, Stamford, Peterborough, and Huntingdon ; War- 
Disposition ' ' * ' . 
of the wick, with 30,000 men, was at St. Albans, blocking the line 

of Margaret's advance on London. The earl of March, with 

a force of 10,000 men, raised from the Mortimer lands on the marches, 

was in the Severn valley ; and Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke, who had 

gathered a body of Welshmen to reinforce the queen's army, was 

threatening March's rear. March was only nineteen, but with the 

instinct of a general he saw that it was little use to cross the Severn 

while Pembroke's force was intact ; so, turning upon his foe 
Battle of . > > » 1 

Mortimer's he delivered a crushing attack at Mortimer's Cross, near 
Wigmore, on February 2, 1461. Pembroke was utterly 
routed, and his aged father, Owen Tudor, was put to death on the field. 

From Mortimer's Cross Edward hurried to join Warwick ; but he had 

barely reached Oxfordshire, when, on February 1 7, Warwick was defeated 

at the second battle of St. Albans. This was due partly to 
Second i i- 

battle of bad management, partly to treachery. Warwick's Ime was 

too extended for quick concentration. By some error of 

his scouts no warning was given of the Lancastrian attack ; and when 



1461 Henry VI, 347 

the fight began a body of Kentishmen deserted, and let the Lancastrians 

through the line. Inextricable confusion followed ; the Yorkists were 

driven from the field ; and Warwick, with difficulty keeping together a 

few thousand men, joined Edward at Chipping-Norton, leaving the road 

to London completely open. 

The cpieen now seemed to have the game in her own hands ; King 

Henry had been recaptured at St. Albans, and nothing remained but to 

march on London. At this crisis, however, Margaret failed. 

Time was lost, and when the Londoners heard that Warwick decla^^s 

and Edward were still in the field and marching to their ?f^^"^^ ^ 

* Margaret. 

assistance, they plucked up courage to stop the provision 
carts which were carrying stores to Margaret's army, and next day War- 
wick and Edward again entered London. 

Next morning a cowp d'etat was carried out. Four months before, 
York's proposal to seize the crown had met with universal disapproba- 
tion ; but so far as southern England was concerned, Wakefield and St. 
Albans, and above all the plundering by the northern men, had swept 
away all feelings of loyalty for Henry ; and it was felt that, blameless as 
was the king's personal character, his wife's conduct had made his further 
reign impossible. So long as he had stood aloof from party, men like 
Warwick would have been content to leave him the shadow while they 
retained the substance of power ; but his wife's folly had identified 
Henry with a faction, and by so doing had made him impossible. Accord- 
ingly, on Sunday, March 9, in Clerkenwell Fields, Bishop Edward, 
George Neville of Exeter addressed the soldiers and set forth Earl of 

^ • 1 • 1 March, 

Edward's claim to the crown. His speech was received with chosen 

applause ; and Warwick, having secured the assent of Arch- '"^' 

bishop Bourchier, of John Mowbray, earl of Norfolk, his brother William 

Neville, Lord Falconbridge, and a few others, held a meeting of the 

notables of the Yorkist party, and went through the form of electing 

Edward king, and he was accordingly proclaimed as Edward iv. 



CHIEF DA TES. 

A.D. 

Siege of Orleans, 1*29 

Death of Bedford, 1*35 

Deaths of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort, 1447 

Cade's Rebellion, 1*^^ 

Wars of the Roses hegin, .... 1*55 



CHAPTER IV 
EDWARD IV.: 1461-1483 

Born 1441 ; married 1464, Elizabeth Woodville. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS 

Scotland. France. 

James iii., d. 1488. Louis xi,, d. 1483. 

Battle of Towton and Suppression of the Lancastrians — Edward's Marriage — 
Warwick intrigues for Power — Restoration of Henry — Battles of Barnet and 
Tewkesbury — Death of Henry — Expedition to France — Power of Edward. 

No regular coronation was attempted ; for no one could tell how soon 

Margaret's standards might be seen on Highgate Hill ; and great was 

, the ioy when it was rumoured that her army was in retreat. 
Retreat of -^ "^ i i i 

the Lan- Hope 01 j)hinder had drawn the northerners southward ; but 

the first use Henry made of his liberty was to issue a pro- 
clamation forbidding it altogether. The disgust of Margaret's men knew 
no bounds. Some set out to plunder on their own account, others hurried 
north to secure what they had already won ; and even those who 
remained with their standards were so discontented that the lords declared 
a retreat inevitable ; and, on the very day of Edward's election, Margaret 
and her husba.nd reluctantly turned their faces north. 

No time was lost in pursuing them. On the 10th the main body 
left London, and on March 26 Edward was at Pontefract. His army 

_ . amounted to 48,000 men, led by Warwick and his uncle, 

Pursuit . 

of the Lord Falconbridge, Norfolk, and himself. Every southern 

shire was represented in their ranks, for the northerners had 

been merciless, and every southerner who had anything to lose felt that 

plunder must be stopped once for all and at whatever cost. The men 

of Coventry were there under their ' Black Earn,' and those of Bristol 

under the standard of the ' Ship.' After passing the lines of the Trent 

and the Don, the northern army had turned to bay between the Aire 

and the Wharfe, and were encamped on a comparatively high plateau, 

known as Towton Field, about four miles south of Tadcaster, where the 

348 



1461 



Edward IF. 



349 



roads from Castleford and Ferrybridge-on-Aire meet on their way to 
Tadcaster. By a rapid movement Edward seized the passage of the Aire • 
but tliough the crossing at Ferrybridge was retaken by\ord Clifford' 
Lord Falconbridge successfully crossed at Castleford, and had the o-ood 
luck to intercept and kill Lord Clifford when he attempted to retreat on 
Towton. 




Next day, March 29, which happened to be Palm Sunday, Edward, 
Warwick, and Falconbridge, with a large force, attempted to storm the 
plateau, relying on the aid of Norfolk, whom they left ill at Battle of 
Pontefract, but who promised to be up in time for the great towton. 
fight. At the beginning of the battle the Yorkists were nmch aided by 
a blinding snowstorm which Falconbridge cleverly used to deceive the 
Lancastrians into discharoing most of their arrows at a useless distance, 
but the real struggle was hand-to-hand. For some hours neither side gained 
any advantage ; but when Norfolk came up, his attack on their loft wing 
proved fatal to the Lancastrians, whose right rested on a steep ravine. 
Hennned in thus, but fighting furiously, the northern men were gradually 
borne backwards, and at length, after ten hours' fighting, were pushed 
down the steep bank, at whose foot flowed the Cock Beck, then in flood. 



350 House of York 1461 

This disaster completed their destruction. Thousands perished in the 
stream ; and it is said that no less than 37,000 corpses were buried in the 
field. During the battle Henry and Margaret were at York, and after it 
took refuge in Scotland. 

From Towton, Edward advanced by York to Durham ; and then, find- 
ing that the Lancastrian army had broken uj), he returned to London, 
Conquest of leaving to Warwick the business of capturing the great 
the North, pg^^y castles of Aluwick, Dunstanborough, and Bamborough, 
and of resisting any invasion of the Scots which Margaret might be able 
to organise. The reduction of these strongholds proved a formidable 
task, and the castles were taken and retaken several times before they 
finally remained in Yorkist hands. The bulk of the fighting fell on 
Warwick and his brother, John Neville, created earl of Montagu in reward 
for his services at Towton. Anger and thirst for revenge had destroyed 
the last vestige of Margaret's patriotism. The Scots were bribed by the 
surrender of Berwick, and even Calais was offered to the French as the 
price of their aid. At this terrible price both Scots and French gave 
some assistance to the Lancastrians. Several times the Scots crossed the 
border, and 2000 troops were landed by Louis ; but at length, in the winter 
of 1462, a successful raid in Scotland brought the Scottish regents to reason, 
and deprived Margaret of her footing in that country. The French were 
confined to the Percy castles ; and in 1463, a final attempt at fighting, 
made by the duke of Somerset, was defeated by Montagu at Hedgeley 
Moor in April 1464, and again near Hexham on May 13, after which 
fight Somerset and other leaders were summarily put to death. In the 
summer the three castles surrendered, and this brought the war in the 
north to a conclusion. In Wales a few isolated castles still held out : 
among others Harlech, in which was being educated and cared for the 
little Henry, son of Edmund Tudor and Margaret Beaufort, who was 
afterwards destined to reign as Henry vii. In 1465 Edward's safety was 
assured further by the capture at Waddington Hall, near Clitheroe, of 
Hemy vi., who, since the flight of his queen and his own expulsion from 
Scotland, had wandered aimlessly about among the tenants of the duchy 
of Lancashire in Craven and Eibblesdale. 

King Edward took little personal share in the pacification of the north, 

but for the most part remained in southern England ready to deal with 

^ ^ ^ , the even more serious danger of a French invasion. The 

Edward s . ... 

personal king's character is one which is not easy to define. In 

person he is described as the handsomest man of his time, — 

tall, strong, and stately in his bearing. His capacity for war was great, 

and in politics he showed himself from boyhood a master of the intrigue 



1464 Edward IV. 



351 



which in that day passed current for statesmanship ; affable and pleasant 
in his address, he knew well how to gain both the ear of his friends and 
the applause of the multitude, while his personal fearlessness and oood 
humour ensured a w4de popularity. With these qualities, however, he 
united others, which recalled neither his father nor the Nevilles so much 
as his great-grandfather, Edmund of York. He was self-indulgent in no 
small degree, put no restraint upon the gratification of his passions, and, 
though capable at times of acting with conspicuous energy and vigour, 
allowed himself in general to sink into idleness. Of statesmanship in 
the higher sense of the word he appears to have had little conception, as 
was clearly shown by his treatment of foreign affairs. 

In this department of politics, the question of the day was that of our 
attitude towards France. On this matter a statesmanlike and clear view 
was held by Edward's great supporter, the earl of Warwick. 
Warwick, who had grown to manhood since the days of the towards 
struggle for Normandy, believed the prolongation of the 
war to be impolitic for two reasons : (1) because the conquest of France 
by England was impracticable, and the war only served to exhaust our 
resources without advantage ; and (2) because so long as we were at war 
with France its court was open for Lancastrian refugees, and French 
assistance was forthcoming to aid in keeping England divided by civil 
strife. He, therefore, advocated peace with France, and wished to see a 
treaty cemented by a marriage between Edward and a French princess. 
To this policy Edward offered no open resistance, and allowed Warwick 
first to negotiate a truce and then to make the preliminary arrange- 
ments for a formal embassy and proposal of marriage ; but at the 
very last moment, on September 28, 1464, within a week of the day 
fixed for the meeting between Louis and Warwick, he suddenly announced 
that the whole negotiations were a farce, for since May 1 of that year 
he had been married to Lady Elizabeth Grey. 

This lady was the daughter of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, duchess of 
Bedford and her second husband, Eichard Woodville or Wydville, 
Lord Rivers. As a girl she had married John Grey or Elizabeth 
Ferrers, of Groby, who had been killed on the Lancastrian Woodville. 
side at the second battle of St. Albans, and in 1464 was a widow of 
thirty-one, with two boys of thirteen and eleven respectively. As a, 
Lancastrian and a person who brought to the king no addition of political 
strength, Elizabeth was a most undesirable match; but Edward was 
perfectly infatuated about her, and married her secretly at Grafton on 
May 1, 1464. Once married, however, Edward saw his way to turn his 
action to account ; and determined, by raising up the relations of his 



352; House of YorJc 1469 

wife, to create a- counterpoise to the powerful Neville clan, and so 
reduce Warwick's influence. The history of the next seven years, there- 
fore, is little more than that of a duel between Warwick, the astute 
warrior of middle age, and the young but clever king whom he had 
designed to keep in leading strings. 

The game began by Edward's maiTying every marriageable member of 
his wife's family — to the number of some half-dozen — to various members 

of the peerage ; making his father-in-law first lord treasurer. 
Promotion ro> o ,„_,,^ ^ . ^. 

of Queen's then an earl, and finally constable of England; and, m direct 

defiance of Warwick's advice, giving his sister, Margaret of 
York, to Charles, count of Charolais, the eldest son of the duke of 
Burgundy, and the lifelong enemy of Louis xi. Meanwhile, Warwick 
Discontent bided Ms time, and prepared a counterblow by a marriage 
of Warwick, between his elder daughter Isabel — who would have half his 
lands — and George, duke of Clarence, the king-'s younger brother. This 
match, however, was peremptorily forbidden by Edward ; and Warwick 
then engaged in a series of plots, which, though by no means completely 
unravelled, are believed to have been at the bottom of the disturbances 
that broke out in 1469. 

In April of that year Warwick moved his wife and two daughters to 
Calais ; and in June a rebellion broke out in the neighbourhood of York, 

led by Robert Huldyard, otherwise known as Robin of Redes- 

Rebellionof , "^ \ . -, •,. . , „ . 

Robin of dale. This outbreak, which was directed m the first instance 
against a piece of local maladministration, was put down by 
Warwick's brother, John, earl of Montagu, and Huldyard was put to death ; 
but his place and name were immediately taken by Sir John Conyers, the 
husband of one of Warwick's nieces, and other members of the Neville 
family joined the insurgents. Thus led, the rebels made their way south. 
Battle of ^^^ ^* Edgecote, near Banbury, they encountered Edward's 
Edgecote. troops Under Herbert, who had just been made earl of Pem- 
broke for a victory over Jasper Tudor, and defeated him on July 26. 
Herbert was put to death" after the battle ; and a few days later. Rivers 
and his son were seized at Chepstow, and beheaded at Coventry. As 
Herbert and the Woodvilles were the personal enemies of Warwick, his 
hand is thought to appear in their deaths ; and it is certain that no sooner 
was Edward called north by the insurrection than Clarence slipped across 
to Calais, and, on July 11, was married to Isabel Neville. That done, 
^ , J . Warwick and his son-in-law hurried to Kent, raised the 

Edward in _ _ _ ' 

Warwick's Neville faction, and, marching north, took advantage of the 

power . • 

discomfiture of Edward's forces at Edgecote and the desertion 
of many of his followers, to seize his person. Seeing that for the moment 



1470 Henry VL 353 

resistance was out of the question, Edward submitted with a smile aoreed 
to all Warwick's demands, and accompanied him in a sort of honorary 
confinement to Warwick, Coventry, and Middleham. Edward, however 
was too popular to be treated as a prisoner ; and in October, Warwick, after 
making the best terms for himself and Clarence, allowed the kino; to o-o free. 

Next year, however, disturbances broke out in Lincolnshire ao'ain 

probably by Warwick's contrivance. This time Edward acted with great 
promptitude, marched himself against the rebels, and defeated 
them on March 12, at Casterton, near Stamford, in a fight in Lincoln- 
popularly known as Losecoat Field, from the precipitation ^ ^^^' 
with which the fugitives flung away their coats and bado-es. 

Battle of 

This success turned the tables on Warwick, who had no Losecoat 
mind to encounter Edward at the head of a victorious army. 
He therefore fled the country, and, taking Clarence with him, made for 
Calais. There, however, his friend Sir John Wenlock, possibly by 
arrangement, refused to receive him, and he therefore landed plight of 
in France as the guest of Louis xi., who was still at war Warwick, 
with Edward. 

In Warwick's arrival Louis saw a great opportunity, and used all his 
immense fund of diplomatic skill to bring about an alliance between 
Warwick and Margaret of Anion, who, with her son .... 

■^ J 7 7 Alliance 

Edward, now seventeen years of age, was also an exile in between 

1 ^^ ■^^ Warwick 

his dominions. His success was greater than could possibly and Mar- 
have been expected, and an agreement was entered into by 
which Edward was betrothed to Warwick's second daughter Anne ; and 
an expedition was to be made for the purpose of dethroning Edward of 
York and replacing Henry vi. Of the two parties to this strange treaty, 
Margaret probably regarded the scheme as a last desperate chance of 
regaining the throne ; and Warwick may well have considered that as he 
had now utterly broken with Edward, the best method of securing the 
ascendancy of the house of Neville— his one permanent political aim— was 
to restore the Lancastrian dynasty. To Clarence, however, the whole 
arrangement must have been utterly distasteful ; and secret communica- 
tions were at once opened between him and his brother, by which Clarence 
agreed to desert Warwick as soon as they had landed in England. 

The treaty between Margaret and Warwick was completed in July, 
1470. Proclamations announcing Warwick's return were scattered 
throughout England, and an arrangement was made for a Warwick's 
rising in the north to draw Edward out of the way. So 
long, however, as the ships of Edward's brother-in-law, the dnke of 
Burgundy, were guarding the Channel, the passage was impossible ; but 

z 



354 House of York 1470 

in September the Biirgundian fleet was driven into harbour by the 
equinoctial gales ; and on September 25, Warwick landed unopposed at 
Dartmouth, accompanied by Clarence, Jasper Tudor, the earl of Oxford, 
and other Lancastrians. Meanwhile, Edward, as designed, had been 
drawn north to Doncaster ; so Warwick was able to gather his friends 
unmolested. On October 6, however, Edward had returned to the 
neighbourhood of Nottingham, when he found that Warwick's brother, 
John Neville, marquess of Montagu, on whose fidelity he had placed 
absolute reliance, had declared against him, and that'his army was honey- 
combed with treachery. Aghast at his position, Edward 
flight to immediately fled, and taking with him his young brother 
an ers, j^j^hard, and his friend Lord Hastings, and his brother-in- 
law. Lord Scales, he made the best of his way to Lynn, and thence 
taking ship, landed almost destitute in the dominions of the brother-in- 
law of Burgundy. 

The very day of Edward's flight Warwick reached London, which 
opened its gates with alacrity ; and, immediately riding to the Tower, 
King Henry ^^ released King Henry, and took him in state to St. Paul's, 
reinstated. where the jDOor broken man was again placed on a throne 
and treated with royal honours. It was, however, made clear that the 
restoration was rather that of the Nevilles than of the Lancastrians, and 
til at Warwick meant to keep the reins of government in his own hands. 
In short, in the view of the great kingmaker, the king was to reign but not 
to govern. Warwick himself was to be the king's lieutenant, captain of 
Calais, and admiral ; his brother the bishop was to be chancellor ; and 
other offices were handed over to the members or adherents of the Neville 
clan ; an arrangement much facilitated by tlie fact that Margaret and her 
son had not yet left France. The duke of Clarence was relegated to the 
distant post of lord-lieutenant of Ireland. The revolution thus accom- 
plished was almost bloodless ; the only man put to death being Tiptoft, 
earl of Worcester, a stout adherent of Edward, who combined a cruelty to 
political opponents, which gained him the curses of his countrymen, with 
a taste for learning and literature, which won him the applause of Europ,e. 
Warwick's first use of power was to negotiate the long-needed peace with 
France ; and he prepared to act vigorously against Louis' enemy the 
duke of Burgundy. 

The rapid success of Warwick, and the absence of Edward in the north, 
had made it impossible for Clarence to carry out his scheme of deserting 
Discontent ^^ ^^^^ ^^ Edward ; but he was no better satisfied than 
of Clarence, before, and kept himself in constant communication with his 
brother with a view to a counter-revolution. The duke of Burgundy 



1471 Henry VI. 



355 



was no less anxious to put a stop to a state of affairs so favourable to his 
French rival ; but his resources were far too much taxed by his own 
struggle with France to be able to give much aid. Accordingly, Edward 
found it needful to act for himself ; and, following the example of Henry of 
Bolingbroke, he landed at Ravenspur on March 15, 1471 with 
a band of 1500 English exiles and 300 German hand-gun men, Snd's^S 
lent him by the duke of Burgundy. For the defence of York- ^^^enspur. 
shire, Warwick relied on his brother Montagu, who lay at Pontefract 
Castle, and the young earl of Northumberland. Edward, however, acted 
with great subtlety. Giving out that he was come merely to claim the 
lands of his father, he mounted the Lancastrian badge, and actually swore 
at York ' that he would never again take upon himself to be king of 
England.' Still, however, he marched steadily on ; and— Montagu, having 
with quite unaccountable folly allowed him to pass Pontefract — made his 
way into the Midlands. In this way he turned Warwick's defensive 
position, and Edward's followers from the north and west were able to 
join him without opposition. On March 22, Edward reached Notting- 
ham, where, finding himself at the head of five or six thousand men, he 
threw off all pretence and had himself proclaimed king. His position, 
however, was most perilous. Oxford was marching against him from 
Norfolk, Montagu was in his rear, Archbishop Neville was guarding 
London and King Henry, the kingmaker was at Warwick, and Clarence 
in Gloucestershire. But Edward's energy was now fully roused. With 
a sudden rush he drove Oxford back, and then hurried south to Leicester. 
Warwick was at Coventry, and a battle seemed imminent ; but both sides 
were waiting for reinforcements, and Warwick knew that both Clarence 
and Montagu were not far off. Now was the moment for _, 

'^ . Clarence 

Clarence to carry out his long-arranged plan. On April 4 joins his 
he joined Edward ; Warwick, of course, was still more deter- 
mined to wait for his brother, so Edward and Clarence marched on 
London. There George Neville was doing all he could to organise 
resistance, but utterly failed to rouse the citizens ; and on -^^^^^^ 
April 10 Edward marched in unopposed. There he found enters 
the queen and his eldest son, who had been born during his 
absence, and was joined by Bourchier, earl of Essex, and by so many others 
of the south-country Yorkists as raised his force to about 20,000 men. 

His entry was made on the Thursday before Good Friday ; and on 
Saturday he marched out to fight the earl of Warwick, who was advanc- 
ing along the Watling Street with about an equal force. The Battle of 

• • Barnet 

two armies met on the farther side of Barnet, on the rising 

ground by Monkton Hadley church ; and after lying all night within 



356 House of York 1471 

cannon-shot, Edward's troops made their attack in the early morning of 
April 14, while the view was still obscured by the mist. In Edward's 
army Eichard, though only eighteen, led the right, Hastings the left ; 
while Edward placed Clarence's men in the centre, and took the com- 
mand of them himself. On the other side, Montagu and Oxford were on 
the right, Warwick and Exeter the left ; Somerset had the centre — an 
arrangement which placed Yorkists and Lancastrians alternately along 
the line. Owing to the impossibility of seeing more than a few yards, 
great confusion ensued. Oxford and Montagu were victorious on their 
wing ; Warwick was holding his own ; Edward and Clarence were gaining 
ground, when some of Oxford's victorious men were mistaken for 
Yorkists, and shot at by their own side. The accident arose from 
Oxford's badge, ' the star with rays,' being mistaken for the ' sun with 
rays ' of York ; but the result was completely disastrous for Warwick. 
The cry of treachery ran down his motley line. No man would trust 
another, and no leader could make himself obeyed. The result was 
a complete rout, in which Warwick and Montagu were both slain. 

Edward had been as fortunate as Warwick was unlucky. Margaret 
had been ready to sail for seventeen days, but had been kept back by a 
north wind, and it was only on the very day of Barnet that 
lands at she was able to land at Weymouth. Had the wind changed 
eymou , ^ ^^^ days earlier, Margaret could easily have reached Lon- 
don before Edward, the result of the campaign might have been whoUy 
different, or Edward's death in battle might have made the restoration 
permanent. As it was, the victory of Barnet left Edward free to deal 
with Margaret at his leisure. She had two courses open to her : one to 
fight her way to London and rescue Henry ; the other, to slip across the 
Severn into Wales and prolong the war by the aid of the Welsh and 
northerners. Edward, therefore, marched to Windsor, ready for either 
event. After some hesitation Margaret, having been joined by Edmund 
duke of Somerset, his brother John Beaufort, and other fugitives from 
Barnet, decided for Wales ; but before she reached the Severn, Edward 
was close on her track. During the whole war the towns had, as a 
rule, been Yorkist, and at the critical moment the citizens of Gloucester 
refused to allow Margaret to cross the river. 

Thus disappointed, she was obliged to make for Tewkesbury, and 
there, before the crossing could be effected, Edward appeared. The 
Battle of Lancastrians ready to cross were posted in enclosures ; and, 
Tewkesbury. -^}^gj^ Edward attacked them in the early morning of May 4, 
his troops had a difficult task before them. The van, however, was led 
wdth great spirit by young Richard of Gloucester ; and the Yorkists at 



1475 Henry VL 35^ 

length fought their way through the hedges and gained a decisive victory. 
Young Edward, who was a year younger than Gloucester, had fought 
gallantly ; but was killed in the flight, either fairly or in cold blood- 
probably the latter. Margaret was soon afterwards captured. The victory 
was sullied by the treacherous slaughter of fifteen Lancastrians, including 
Somerset and his brother, who left sanctuary on Edward's express promise 
that their lives should be spared. From Tewkesbury, Edward returned to 
London ; and on the day of his entry Henry died, not, as Death of 
the official account gave out, 'of pure displeasure and ^^^^y- 
melancholy,' but by the hand of an assassin, and almost certainly under 
Gloucester's direction. So long as his son was living, Henry's life was of 
importance. Now that Edward was gone, the death of his father would 
destroy the last descendant of Henry iv. The line of the Beauforts, 
however, was not extinct ; for though Henry, Edmund, and John had left 
no children, the family was still represented by Margaret and her little 
son Henry, now aged fourteen, whom his uncle Jasper at Henry 
once hurried off to a safe asylum in Brittany. Warned by '^"'*°'^- 
experience, Edward made every exertion to destroy his dangerous 
enemies. Tewkesbury was followed by a wholesale and treacherous 
slaughter of prisoners. George Neville was imprisoned at Guisnes ; 
John Holland, duke of Exeter, who had taken sanctuary, was seized and 
privately put to death. To others less dangerous he displayed a con- 
ciliatory temper, especially to John Morton and John Fortescue, lord 
chief-justice, both of whom had so far been consistent Lancastrians, but 
who in 1472 and 1473 were allowed to return to England. 

So successful was Edward's policy, that in 1475 he found himself 
strong enough to leave England for a great expedition to France. 
On this the English placed great expectations. The Expedition 
duke of Burgundy, who was to act in alliance with *° France. 
Edward, seemed to be at the height of his power; and it did not 
seem likely that Louis would be able to offer much resistance in the 
field to a warrior so celebrated as the English king. Accordingly, 
money was readily voted, and a host of English nobles and gentry im- 
poverished themselves to provide a suitable outfit for the war. The 
event, however, was most disappointing. Before the English expedition 
could sail Charles had spent all his resources ; exhausted his army in a 
fruitless siege of Neuss on the Khine ; and he arrived almost unattended 
at Edward's camp, to the huge disgust of his allies. Louis, on the other 
hand, was determmed to leave no stone unturned to get rid of the 
English without fighting ; for, as Philip de Comines, his counsellor, tells 
us, ' he would do anything in the world to get the king of England out ot 



358 House of York 1475 

France, except putting any of his towns into his possession ; rather than 
do that he would hazard all.' Accordingly, well gauging the character 
of his opponent, he industriously plied him with flattering messages and 
ofiers of favourable terms ; and, when he at length won Edward to his 
will, he made a lavish distribution of money to the leading nobles, giving 
pensions to Dorset, Hastings, Howard, and others ; and provided a 
magnificent supper for the rank and file. In the end the two kings met 
Treaty of on the bridge at Picquigny, on the Somme, and there 
Picquigny. i^i^itually agreed on a seven years' truce ; and that in con- 
sideration of the payment of 75,000 crowns down, and a pension of 
50,000 a year, Edward was to return to England and release Margaret 
of Anjou ; while Louis also promised that the dauf)hin, afterwards 
Charles viii., should marry Edward's eldest daughter Elizabeth, after- 
wards queen of Henry vii. Though a statesman might think that a 
pension of 50,000 crowns was a good exchange for a war which experi- 
ence had shown could never be permanently successful, the nation as a 
whole was indignant at the peace, and decidedly sympathised with young 
Richard of Gloucester, who had expressed his disapproval of it without 
reserve. 

To Edward, however, the discontent of his subjects, so long as it did 
not show itself in open rebellion, was tolerably indifi'erent ; and of this, 
now that the main line of the Lancastrians was destroyed, there was no 
great danger. He would, no doubt, have been glad to get young Henry 
Tudor into his hands, but his negotiations for this purpose proved 

_ , , abortive. Edward, indeed, was afraid of trouble within 

Troubles , ' ' 

with his own family. In 1471, sorely against Clarence's will, 

Richard had married Anne, the second daughter of War- 
wick, who had been betrothed to Edward of Lancaster, and, of 
course, claimed half the lands of Earl Richard as her dowry. The 
result was a succession of bitter disputes between the brothers ; and 
Edward, who liked and trusted Gloucester, while he held a deservedly 
poor opinion of Clarence's trustworthiness, had had much ado to prevent 
them from coming to open blows. At length, in 1478, he found an 
opportunity to rid himself of anxiety on this score. In a parliament 
which met in January of that year, Edward himself charged his brother 
Clarence with treason, chiefly on the ground of his action in 1471, 
but also in general terms with a series of actions calculated to discredit 
his brother's rule. A bill of attainder passed through both houses, 

Death of ^nd on it Clarence was put to death, but by what method 

arence. -^ uncertain. Some said he was drowned in a butt of 

Malmsey wine. Gloucester was present in parliament ; but it is certain 



1483 Henry VI. 359 

that Edward himself took the prominent part in the proceedinos anainst 
his brother, and that Gloucester openly, at any rate, opposed the kino-. After 
Clarence's death, English afiliirs during the remainder of the reign were 
unimportant. Gloucester distinguished himself by retaking Berwick 
after it had been held by the Scots for twenty-one years, in the course of 
an invasion of Scotland, in which he took part as the ally of the duke of 
Albany, who had been banished by James iii. In 1482, when Louis xi. 
violated the treaty of Picquigny by betrothing his son to Margaret of 
Austria, granddaughter of Charles the Bold, there was some Death of 
talk of another French war, when the scene was wholly Edward, 
changed by the death of Edward, after a few days' illness, in April 1483, 
at the age of forty-two. 

On the whole, the condition of England improved under Edward iv. 
What England wanted at that stage of her social and political develop- 
ment was a strong and resolute government, capable of 

^ . , ® , , . , ' ^. , Need for a 

enforcmg law and order, and securmg the weak agamst the strong 
aggressions of the strong. Of this, so long as each great 
baron had at his call an army of household retainers, backed by a 
reserve of his neighbours, sworn to fight in his quarrel and to wear his 
badge, there could be no possibility ; and the correspondence of the 
Paston family, happily preserved throughout this period, shows us how, 
even in Norfolk, then one of the most flourishing districts in England, 
honest men had much ado to come by and keep their own. Fortunately 
the prolonged agony of the civil wars, the rebellion of Warwick, and the 
expenses thrown on the fighting classes by the French campaign of 1475, 
materially diminished the power even of the surviving nobility to maintain 
the military retinues of their predecessors, and this by itself made for 
peace. Moreover, the fact that, except during the Towton campaign, the 
fighting had almost entirely been done by retainers, and that sacking of 
towns had been unknown, had allowed the mercantile and industrial 
classes to pursue their ordinary avocations almost undisturbed, while the 
cessation of foreign war had as usual been followed by a period of revived 
prosperity. Of these circumstances Edward iv. reaped the benefit ; and 
though he personally showed little political insight, except so ^^^^^^,^ 
far as to cherish the goodwill of the middle classes as the best reliance on 
support for his crown, his reign may be taken as the starting- hisses, 
point of a new period, distinguished by the existence of a 
strong and popular monarchy, resting for its support on the nuddle 
classes, and bent on curbing by every means the overweening power ot 
the turbulent nobles. Edward, however, was well aware that such a rule 
as his could not afford to make itself unpopular by heavy taxation, and 



360 



House of York 



1483 



he therefore devised the ingenious expedient of asking his rich supporters 
Benevo- ^^ oblige him from time to time with gifts of money. These 
lences. gjf^g Avere called benevolences, and, if legal in form, were in 
spirit a violation of the principle of taxation by parliamentary consent 
only ; but those who paid them had neither the wish nor the power to 
invoke the strict letter of the law, so long as the government, on the 
whole, gave them the peace and security which they considered it to be 
its chief function to afford. On the other hand, a system of this kind 
brought with it many ill and dangerous practices. For the 
first time in the history of England torture was systemat- 
ically used as an engine for extorting confessions ; an odious spy system 
was set on foot, which undermined the very foundations of social trust and 
fidelity ; while the rare meetings of parliament tended to 
free the king from the salutary check of the organised public 
opinion of the community. 



Torture. 



Espionage. 



CHIEF DATES. 



Battle of Towton, 
Edward's Marriage, 
Battle of Barnet, 
Treaty of Picquigny, 



A.D. 

1461 
1464 
1471 
1475 



GENEALOGY OF THE WOODVILLES. 



John, Duke of = Jacquetta of 
Bedford, Luxembourg. 



Richard Woodville, 
created Earl Rivers. 



Antony, Lord Rivers, Richard, Edward Elizabeth, 

executed 1483. executed 1469. Woodville. m. Edward iv. 



Edward v. 



Elizabeth, 
m. Henry vii. 



Katharine, 
m. Sir W. Courtenay. 

I 

Henry Courtenay, 

Marquess of Exeter, 

executed 1529. 



Edward Courtenay, 



CHAPTER V 

EDWARD v.: 1483 
(9th April to June 25th.) 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 

Scotland. France. 

James iii., d. 1488. Louis xi., d. 1483. 

Charles viii., d. 1494. 

Richard of Gloucester becomes Protector, and eventually Edward is dethroned. 

Edward iv. died on April 9, and the council at once recognised his 
son Edward as his successor. Tlie new king was only thirteen years of 
age, and, consequently, the government would have to be Dangers of 
carried on in his name as in the early days of Eichard ii. and ^ minority. 
Henry vi. In England, such minorities had uniformly been unfortunate, 
and the truth of the proverb, ' Woe to thee, land, when thy king is a 
child,' had been forcibly impressed on the English mind by bitter experience ; 
while the story of the evil that befell the mice, or the commonalty, when 
the cat, or king, was too young to keep down the rats, or nobility, which 
appears in Langland's Vision of Piers Ploughman, pointed out exactly 
the sort of evils which invariably followed the accession of a weak 
sovereign. It is little wonder, therefore, that the accession of so young a 
king excited more fear than hope in the nation, and prepared the way for 
his dethronement. 

During Edward's lifetime his determined character and ruthless punish- 
ments had kept in check the elements of discord which existed at court ; 
but no sooner was he dead than a struggle began for the state of 
possession of the reins of power, and the different sections at parties, 
once stood out in clear relief. First of all in prominence, but not m real 
power, were the WoodviUes, who had been raised to position and wealth 
by Edward as a counterpoise to the Nevilles, but who were The Wood- 
still regarded by old Lancastrians as renegades, and by the 
ancient nobility as upstarts. Their leaders were the queen, her brothers, 

■^ ^ 361 



362 House of York 1483 

the accomplished Anthony, Earl Rivers, and Richard and Edward Wood- 

ville, and her sons by her first marriage, Thomas Grey, earl of Dorset, 

Official '^^^ Sir Richard Grey. Next to them stood the lords of the 

nobility. council, who had been the friends and advisers of the late 

king, chief among whom were William, Lord Hastings, a tried warrior 

and honourable man, who held the post of captain of Calais ; Thomas, 

Lord Stanley, third husband of Margaret Beaufort, who had great estates 

in Cheshire and Lancashire, steward of the household ; and John Howard, 

created Lord Howard in 1470 ; and two clergymen, Thomas Rotherham, 

archbishop of York, and John Morton, bishop of Ely. Outside the 

official circle stood Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham, grandson of the 

duke killed at Northampton. This young nobleman, as great-grandson of 

The old Anne, daughter of Thomas duke of Gloucester, son of 

nobility, Edward iii., and also a Beaufort through his mother, was 

not only a prince of the blood royal, but also heir of half the lands of the 

Bohuns of Hereford, and wielded great influence in the Severn valley. 

Another representative of the ancient nobility was John de la Pole, duke 

of Suffolk, son of the old minister of Henry vi., and husband of Edward's 

sister Elizabeth, by whom he had a numerous family, of which John de la 

Pole, earl of Lincoln, was the eldest. Lastly, Henry Percy, earl of 

Northumberland, son of the earl who fell at Towton, who had been 

restored to his honours in 1469, and was now warden of the Scottish 

Richard of marches. While aloof from all these, but most important, 

Gloucester, ^^^g Richard of Gloucester, the ablest son of Richard, duke 

of York, whose reputation as a warrior was known far and wide, and who 

was also esteemed in the north as an excellent administrator of civil 

affairs. 

As to the ability of Richard of Gloucester there can be no two 
opinions ; and in matters where his own personal interest was not con- 
cerned, he was not without kindliness of heart ;. but where the interests 
either of his house or himself were at stake, he knew no scruples what- 
ever. It cannot, however, be proved that he was the actual murderer of 
Henry vi., and if he took part in the death of Prince Edward at Tewkes- 
bury, he was only one among others. His whole early training must 
have made him think lightly of the guilt of such crimes as these, which 
were so obviously for the advantage of his house. His personal courage 
was unquestioned, and though there is evidence that one of his shoulders 
was slightly higher than the other, it did not hinder his efficiency as 
a soldier. In private life his manner and address seem to have been 
exceptionally winning, and to have given no indication of the darker 
crimes with which he is credited. His successes in Scotland, and 



1483 Edward V. 363 

excellent rale on the border, coupled with his patriotic disgust with the 
French peace, had caused him to stand high in the opinion of his country- 
men. 

At the moment of Edward's death, the queen, with her brothers 
Edward and Richard, and her son the earl of Dorset, and the lords of the 
council, were in London ; Earl Rivers and Sir Richard Grey- 
were at Ludlow, in attendance on the Prince of Wales ; possession"'" 
Buckingham was on his estates ; and Gloucester in York- ° ^'"&- 
shire. The differences between the lords of the council and the Wood- 
villes at once showed themselves, for the queen claimed the guardianship 
of the young king, while Hastings, supported by Buckingham, and in 
accordance, it is believed, with Edward iv.'s own intentions, wished to 
fall back on the precedent of 1422, and to make Gloucester protector. 
At the same time the council positively forbade the Woodvilles to send 
an escort of more than 2000 men to conduct the king to London. Mean- 
while, Gloucester was marching south, and at Northampton, on April 
29, found himself within ten miles of the king, who, under the escort of 
Rivers and Richard Grey, had left Ludlow on the 24th and had just 
passed through Northampton to Stony Stratford. The same evening 
Rivers and Grey were sent back by the young king to convey his greetings 
to Gloucester, and Buckingham also joined the party. The four passed 
the evening together, but next morning Rivers and Grey were seized, and 
sent under guard to the north ; and the two dukes, taking the little king 
with them, marched forward to London. They were preceded, however, 
by the news of the arrest of Rivers and Grey ; and on hearing it, the 
queen at once took sanctuary at Westminster, accompanied by her 
second son, Richard, a boy of eleven, and her hve daughters, the eldest of 
whom was Elizabeth, now aged about eighteen. Dorset and Edward 
Woodville, who had hitherto been engaged in raising an armed force, 
took to flight. In this way the Woodville party was shattered before the 
king reached London ; and on his arrival there, Hastings and the council 
declared Richard, duke of Gloucester, protector. So far, Richard's 
conduct seems to have met with general approval, and he was very well 
received by the citizens. Little sympathy was felt for the fallen Wood- 
villes. 

Richard assumed the protectorate on May 4. The coronation 
was fixed for June 22, and a parliament was summoned for June 25. 
The interval was used by Richard of Gloucester to advance j^j^^^^^ 
his plans a step further. Having gained the goodwill of ^"J^^^?;^j^^^^^^ 
Buckingham, and brought up a sufficient number of their 
retainers to put down any resistance, they proceeded to attack the lords 



364 House of Yorh 1483 

of the council. On June 13, at a council meeting in the Tower, 
Execution of Grloucester suddenly brought against Hastings an accusation 
Hastings. ^f plotting with the Woodvilles — which may very well have 
been true — and insisted on his immediate execution, while Eotherham 
and Morton were thrown into prison. At the same time, Eichard 
subjected to public disgrace Jane Shore, Hastings' mistress, formerly 
mistress of Edward iv., who, it is probable, had acted as intermediary 
between Hastings and the Woodvilles. On the 16th, Gloucester gained a 
further point by employing the blandishments of the aged time-server, 
Cardinal Bourchier, archbishop of Canterbury, to induce the queen to 
allow her son Richard to join his brother in the Tower. Everything 
being now ready, and all serious opponents dead or in prison, the corona- 
tion and parliament were put off, and a sermon was preached at St. 
Paul's Cross by Dr. Shaw, a brother of the lord mayor, in which 
the theory was advanced that Edward iv.'s marriage with Elizabeth 
Woodville was illegal in consequence of a pre-contract to Lady Eleanor 
Butler ; that the right of Clarence's children was barred by their 
father's attainder ; and, therefore, that the true right to the crown lay 
„. ^ J in the duke of Gloucester. This startling announcement 

Richard . *=> 

claims the — wliich may or may not be really true — failed to win the 

applause of the congregation ; but two days later the duke 

of Buckingham repeated the same arguments in a speech to the citizens 

at the Guildhall, some expressions of applause emanating from the 

followers of the two dukes were taken for consent, and next day 

Gloucester, no doubt by pre-arrangement, was waited on by Buckingham 

at the head of ' many and diverse lords, spiritual and temporal, and other 

nobles and notable persons of the commons.' They asked him to take 

the crown ; and, with some show of surprise and hesitation, he graciously 

consented. On or about the same day Rivers and Richard Grey were 

publicly put to death at Pontefract ; and on the 26th Richard went to 

^ , . Westminster Hall, seated himself, as Edward had done 
End of , ' 

Edward's before Towton, in the marble chair, and declared his right 
to rule as an hereditary and elected king. The reign of 
Edward v. was reckoned as having closed on June 25. 



CHAPTER VI 



RICHARD III.: 1483-1485 
Born 1452 ; married, 1473, Anne Neville. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 
Scotland. France. Arragon and Castile. 

James ill. Louis XL, d. 1483. Ferdinand and Isabella, 

diaries viii. 

Murder of the Princes— Morton's Conspiracy— Benevolences condemned- 
Conspiracy of Henry Tudor— Boswortli. 

Though the revolution which placed Eichard on the throne was the 
work of a small clique, it does not appear to have excited any great 
indignation among the people at large. Edward v. was too 
young and too little known to excite personal enthusiasm ; acceptance 
a.nd the advantages of avoiding a long minority, and substi- ° ^'^ ^'^ • 
tilting for it the rule of a distinguished soldier and administrator, were too 
obvious to be overlooked by practical men. Of the importance of laying 
stress on his claims to sujDport on this ground Eichard was perfectly 
aware ; and throughout his short reign did all in his power to exhibit him- 
self as a dispenser of justice, and the stern upholder of public morality. 

The first care of the new sovereign was to reward his followers. 
Buckingham ^ was made constable, and received shortly afterwards the 

1 GENEALOGY OF THE STAFFORDS. 

Edmund, = Anne, daughter of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, and 
fifth Earl of granddaughter of Edv/ard ill. 

Stafford, 

Humphrey, 
created Duke of Buckingham, 
killed at Northampton, 1460. 



I 
Humphrey, Earl of Stafford, 
killed at St. Albans, 1455. 

I 
Henry, Duke of Buckingham, 
beheaded 1483. 

Edward, Duke of Buckingham 
beheaded 1521, 



Sir Henry Stafford, m. Margaret, 
Countess of Richmond, 
motherof Henry VII. 
by her first 
husband. 



365 



366 House of York 1483 

chief part of that moiety of the lands of the Bohuns which had passed to 

the descendants of Henry iv. (see page 279). Stanley was retained in 

his office of lord steward. Lord Howard was advanced to 

first the rank of duke of Norfolk, and became earl marshal. 

measures, j^j^^j^r^p^j'g j^gxt step was to make a progress through that part 
of the country where he was less known, with a view to extending the 
favourable impression of himself which undoubtedly existed in the 
north. Setting out from London, he and his queen visited Oxford, 
Woodstock, Gloucester, Worcester, and Warwick ; and then turning 
north made their way by Leicester, Nottingham, and Pontefract to York, 
where he gratified his friends by again going through the ceremony of 
coronation on September 8. This journey produced a very favourable 
impression, especially the king's refusal of money gifts offered by the 
citizens. 

During this progress, however, a crime is believed to have been com- 
mitted, which in the end lost Eichard his crown. Ever since his deposi- 
Murder of tion, Edward and his brother Eichard had disappeared from 
the Princes, ^j^g public gaze within the walls of the Tower ; but a rumour 
now spread that they had been put to death, and though the truth of 
the report could not be proved, for many years the whole subject was 
involved in a mystery which has not yet been wholly dispelled. It is 
certain, however, that early in the autumn of 1483, a rumour asserted 
that they had been murdered, and that this report was taken as true ; 
but no details were known for nearly twenty years, when, in 1502, Sir 
James Tyrrel confessed that, during the king's progress, he had been 
employed with two of his servants. Forest and Dighton, to strangle the 
princes and bury them secretly in the Tower. This confession was made 
when Forest was dead and Tyrrel was under sentence of death for 
another crime ; but it was supported by the evidence of Dighton, and in 
1674 received further confirmation by the finding of two skeletons corre- 
sponding to the size of the two princes. 

According to Tyrrel's story, the murder took place about the middle of 
August 1483 J but before that date a widespread conspiracy for dethroning 
Morton's Eichard was on foot. The originator of this was John 
Conspiracy. Morton, bishop of Ely. He had been thrown into the 
Tower by Gloucester, as a friend of Hastings, but had been subsequently 
entrusted to the care of Buckingham, by whom he had been taken to 
Brecknock Castle. Morton had been a Lancastrian as long as that 
dynasty seemed to have a chance of success, but made his peace with 
Edward iv. after Tewkesbury. He was, however, no friend to Eichard ; 
and the ingenious prelate so far won the confidence of his gaoler 



1483 Richard III. 3^^ 

that he induced Buckingham to enter into a conspiracy for his overthrow- 
The first design of Morton and Buckingham was to restore Edward v. '; 
but the news of his death changed their plans, and Morton then induced 
the duke to enter into an entirely new political combination, based on a 
marriage between Henry Tudor, earl of Eichmond, and Elizabeth 
of York, who, if her brothers were dead, had become the representa- 
tive of the house of York. Accordingly, negotiations were opened 
between Margaret Beaufort, now Lady Stanley and the queen- 
dowager for the marriage of their children. Henry also gave his 
consent, and aided by Edward Woodville, set about organisino- an 
expedition in Brittany, which was to land on October 18, on which 
date Buckingham and Morton were to be ready to rise in Enoland. 
Eventually it was settled that simultaneous outbreaks were to occur 
on that day at Maidstone, Newbury, Salisbury, and Exeter, so that 
Richard would be distracted by the number of his enemies ; while 
Buckingham and his Welsh followers were to cross the Severn in force 
and give coherence to the movement. 

The scheme was well planned ; but sufficient allowance was not made 
for the uncertainty of the weather, and an inoiDportune storm of wind 
and rain wrecked the whole. So violent was the gale in the scheme 
Channel, that Richmond's fleet was dispersed, and when he ^^^^^• 
himself at length reached Poole with a single ship, he found the coast 
guarded, while a Severn flood, higher than had been known for years, 
and long remembered as 'Buckingham's great water,' rendered all the fords 
impassable ; and since, just as at Tewkesbury, the bridges 
were either destroyed, or held for the Yorkists, Buckingham ham's 
was quite unable to cross, and his soldiers, j^inched for '^ 
subsistence, rapidly deserted. The English rising, thus unsupported, came 
of course to nothing. Thus baffled, the leaders took refuge in disguise 

and flight. Morton had the good fortune to reach Flanders ; ^ . ^ 
* •11 Execution of 

but Buckingham was betrayed by a retainer he trusted, named Bucking- 
Ralph Banaster, and was 23romj)tly put to death at Salis- 
bury. His office of lord high constable was conferred on Lord 
Stanley. 

Encouraged by his good luck, Richard now thought himself secure, and 
after celebrating Christmas with great pomp, assembled a parliament in 
January 1484, of which Sir William Catesby, who had Meeting of 
betrayed Hastings to Richard, was chosen speaker. This ^^ ^^^ntn . 
body confirmed the petition by which Richard had been requested to 
assume the crown, and embodied it in an Act of Parliament. An act of 
attainder was passed against the late duke of Buckingham, Richmond, 



.368 House of York 1484 

Pembroke, Dorset, Morton, and ninety-five others. On the other hand a 
variety of useful enactments were carried, the most important of which was 
a condemnation of benevolences as 'new and unlawful inventions.' 
Condemna- An oath was also taken by the members to secure the 
d""! °L succession of Richard's only child Edward, Prince of Wales, 

lences. "born in 1476. Unluckily for Eichard, the Prince of 

Wales died in April the same year, leaving him childless ; and he 
then recognised as his successors, first Clarence's son, 
Richard's Edward, Plantagenet, and afterwards John de la Pole, earl 
^°"' of Lincoln, the son of his eldest sister.^ 

The greater part of the year 1484, however, was taken up by Richard's 
efforts to counteract the plans of Richmond. With great adroitness he 
made friends with the duke of Brittany by promising to 
against defend him against the king of France ; and he also threw 

T^dT ^^^^ ^^^ alliance with the duke of Albany, and became 

friendly with king James in. An embassy also was sent to 
the pope, promising ' that filial and catholic obedience which was of old 
due and accustomed to be paid by the kings of England to the Roman 
pontifi's,' a proceeding very much on the lines of those of King John. 
These measures had some success, and in particular Landois, the duke of 
Brittany's minister, was induced to consent to a plan for seizing Rich- 
mond and handing him over to Richard. Richmond, however, was 
warned, and escaping in disguise, received a good reception in France ; 



1 THE DE LA POLES. 

William de la Pole of Kingston-upon-Hull. 

I 
Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, 
minister of Richard ir., d. 1388. 

Michael, second Earl, 

restored to his earldom in 1399, 

died at Harfleur, 1415. 



Michael, third Earl, William, first Duke of Suffolk, 

killed at Agincourt, 1415. ■ minister of Henry vi., impeached 

and murdered, 1450. 
^1 

John, second Dnke of Suffolk, = Elizabeth, sister of Edward iv. 
d. 1491. 



John, Earl of Lincoln, killed Edmund, third Duke of Richard de la Pole, 

at Stoke, 1487. Suffolk, surrendered title of killed at Pavia, 

Duke and that of Earl, 1525. 
1493, executed 1573. 



1485 Richard III. 



369 



while the duke of Brittany provided funds for the other English exiles to 
join him in his new retreat. 

Meanwhile, Richmond's position had been strengthened in other ways. 
No sooner had he got back from his first expedition to England, than he 
summoned a meeting in Brittany of Dorset, Sir Edward 
Woodville, Edward Poynings, and his other friends, at Tudofs 
which he swore to marry Elizabeth of York, and they to be ^°"^P>^acy. 
true to him and to each other, while a new expedition to England Avas 
unanimously resolved upon. For this purpose his expulsion from 
Brittany was no disadvantage, for France could give more effective 
assistance, and was not so likely to be coerced into deserting him as a 
small duchy might have been. 

Richard's apprehensions, therefore, in no way diminished, and he went 

steadily on with his preparations ; gave great attention to the fleet, and 

organised a system of horsemen, posted twenty miles apart, 

on all the chief roads, by which letters could be sent two prepara- 

hundred miles in two days. Moreover, in the course of 1484, *^°"^- 

Richard contrived to come to terms with the queen-dowager, and Avhen 

his wife Anne died in March 1485, he proposed to checkmate Richmond's 

scheme by marrying Elizabeth himself, and had probably made 

PI ^ . , ,. . .„ Proposal to 

some overtures lor the purpose durmg the Imgering illness marry 

of his late wife. More strange still, there is some evidence 
to show that Elizabeth herself was not averse to the plan, and her time- 
serving mother certainly made a show of considering it. When, however, 
the matter came to the ears of Richard's own counsellors, Sir Richard 
Ratcliffe and Sir William Catesby, they told him plainly that such a 
marriage would outrage the feelings of the country, and must not be 
thought of. Richard, therefore, gave it up ; and, summoning before him 
the lord mayor of London and a number of aldermen, solemnly assured 
them that such a step had never even been contemplated. 

By this time Richmond was nearly ready. With the assistance of the 
ministers of Charles vm. he had collected a small fleet at the mouth of 
the Seine, and was at the head of a small force including all Henry's 
his former friends, except Dorset, whom his mother's adherents, 
influence had withdrawn ; also Fox, an able priest, who was destined 
to play a great part in England ; and, above all, John de Vere, earl 
of Oxford, who had escaped from his prison at Hammes, and brought 
many soldiers with him. 

These preparations filled Richard with natural alarm ; and when he 
heard that Richmond was at Harfleur, and ready to sail, he issued a pro- 
clamation declaring him to be illegitimate, both on the side of his father 

2a 



370 House of York i485 

and his mother, and, therefore, without claim to the crown, and accused 

him and his followers generally of every kind of vice and treachery, and 

especially of an intention to restore Calais to the French in 

Richard's , o ,^ • • m ^ ■ -, ^ • ir.-i 

proclama- payment lor their present assistance, i o lurnish himseli with 
^°"' supplies he called on his richest supporters to lend him money, 

promising to repay all in a year and a half ; and, stationing himself at 
Nottingham, sent orders to the nobility and gentry to join him in force 
on the first news of the landing of Richmond. So numerous, however, 
were the defections which had recently taken place, that the king was 
filled with constant apprehensions of treachery ; and he particularly dis- 

The trusted Lord Stanley and his brother, Sir William Stanley, 

Stanleys, chamberlain of Wales. As husband of Margaret, Stanley 
might be expected to sympathise with Eichmond, but he was too acute 
a politician, and had too much at stake, to associate himself prematurely 
with what might be the losing side. He therefore made no sign, and 
he and his brother were entrusted with the general defence of North 
Wales, Cheshire and Lancashire. 

Meanwhile, Henry had sailed from Harfleur on August 1, and 
reached Milford Haven on August 7. Landing there, he found himself 
Henry lands in the midst of his own people ; and though he brought with 
in Wales. j^^j^^ ^^^ 2000 men, the accessions of Welshmen who were 
drawn to his standard by the presence of Jasper Tudor soon raised his 
numbers. Passing slowly through central Wales, he reached Shrewsbury, 
and there passed the line of the Severn ; while Sir William Stanley, 
so far from crushing him, maintained an attitude of neutrality. Alarmed 
at this, Richard summoned Stanley to Nottingham. Stanley, however, 
contented himself with sending his son George, Lord Strange, whom 
Richard retained as a hostage for the good conduct of his father. 
Consequently the Stanleys were compelled to pretend fidelity ; but though 
they marched on Nottingham, they kept at a respectful distance from 
Richmond's army. In this way Richmond's force, followed by the 
Stanleys, advanced through Lichfield and Atherstone, while Richard 
moved from Nottingham to Leicester. There the armies were within 
striking distance, and at a secret interview with the Stanleys, Henry was 
assured of their support in the coming battle. 

Thus encouraged, he determined with his inferior force of 5000 men 
to attack Richard. The night before the battle Henry's small army 
Position of was camped about four miles from that of Richard, which 
the armies, ^^g composed of about twice the number ; but besides the 
king's and Richmond's troops, there were also in the field 5000 men 
under Lord Stanley, posted near the king and ostensibly on his side, and 



1485 Richard III. 3'7I 

3000 under Sir William Stanley, who was somewhat nearer to Richmond 
but on his other flank. Richmond had with him the Duke of Norfolk 
and his son Lord Surrey, and the Earl of Northumberland, besides 
Ratcliffe, Catesby, Francis, Lord Lovel, Sir James Tyrrel, Sir Robert 
Brackenbury, and other faithful followers. 

In the morning the two main armies encountered one another on 
Redmoor Plain, about three miles south-east of Market Bosworth. Henry 
had at first the better position, being drawn up between a Battle f 
morass and a stream ; but he advanced to the attack, and as Bosworth. 
soon as he was clear of the morass Richard ordered his men to fall on. 
The advantage seemed all on his side, when Lord Stanley threw ofi" his 
disguise and advanced to aid Lord Oxford, while Sir William hurried 
up to save Richmond, who was being attacked by Richard in person 
with such violence that for a moment his followers despaired of his 
safety. At the same time the earl of Northumberland, as was likely 
in one of a Lancastrian house, held his followers aloof. Norfolk was 
killed ; Surrey taken prisoner ; and the whole brunt of the attack 
fell on the king. Scorning to fly, Richard turned fiercely Death of 
to bay ; but at length, pierced with many wounds, he fell ^''^hard. 
dead, and the crown which he had worn in the field was placed by Sir 
William Stanley on the head of his rival. 

CHIEF DATES. 

A.D. 

Murder of the Princes, .... 1483 
Buckingham's Rebellion, .... 1483 



Book VI. 
THE HOUSE OF TUDOR 



Arthur, 
d. 1502. 



XIV.— THE HOUSE OF TUDOR. 



Henry VII., 1485-1509, 

great - great - grandson 
of John of Gaunt, by 
his mother, Margaret 
Beaufort. 



Henry VIIL, 

1509-1547. 



Margaret, 
m. James iv. 
of Scotland. 



Elizabeth of York, 
daughter of 
Edward iv. 



Mary = (1) Louis xii. of France, 
d. 1515. 
(2) Charles Brandon, 
Duke of Suffolk. 



Mary, Elizabeth, Edward VI., 
1553-1558. 1558-1603. 1547-1553. 



Frances, = Henry Grey (great-grandson of Elizabeth 



d. 1559. 



Woodviile by her first husband), Duke 
of Suffolk, executed 1554. 



Lady Jane Grey, m. Guildford Dudley (see p. 433). Katharine, m. 

executed 1554. executed 1554. (1) Lord Hastings. 

(2) Lord Herbert. 



XV.— THE KINGS OF SCOTLAND, 1460-1603. 
James III., 1460-1488. 



(1) James IV., = Margaret Tudor = Earl of Angus. 
1488-1513. 



James V., 
1513-1542. 



Margaret = Earl of Lenox. 



Mary, Queen of Scots, : 



1542-1567. 



Lord Darnley, 



Charles, 



murdered 1567. Earl of Lenox. 



James VI. of Scotland 

and I. of England, 

1567-1625. 



Arabella Stuart. 



374 



XVL— THE KINGS OF FRANCE, 1483-1603. 



Chaeles VIII., 1483-1498, great-grandson of Charles vi. 

Succeeded by Louis XII., 1498-1515, great-grandson of Louis, Duke of 

Orleans, brother of Charles vi. ' 



Claude = Francis I., 1515-1547, also great-grandson of 
Louis, Duke of Orleans, brother of 
Charles vi. 

Henry II., = Katharine de Medici. 
1547-1559. 



Francis II., 


Charles IX., 


Henry III.. 


Francis, 


1559-1560, 


1560-1574.' 


1574-1589,' 


Duke of 


m. Mary, 




suitor of 


Alencon, 


Queen of 




Queen 


suitor of 


Scots. 




Elizabeth. 


Queen 

Elizabeth, 

d. 1584. 



Margaret, m. Henry 
IV., 1589-1610, de- 
scendant of Robert, 
the son of St. Louis, 
and heir to French 
throne, all the inter- 
mediate branches 
being extinct. 



375 



CHAPTEE I 

HENRY VII. : 1485-1509 
Born 1456 ; married, 1486, Elizabeth of York. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 

France. Scotland. S2Min. 

Charles VIII. , d. 1498. James iii., d. 1488. Ferdinand (d. 1517) 

Louis XII., d. 1574. James iv., d. 1513. and Isabella. 

Policy of Henry vii. — Rebellion of Simnel and Perkin — Ireland — Strengthening 
of the Crown — Foreign Affairs. 

Henry Tudor assumed the position of king on the field of Bosworth ; 
and, after marching by easy stages to London, entered the capital in 

royal state on September 3, the second Saturday after the 
assumes the battle. Any formal statement of his claims would have been 
position of inconvenient and dangerous, so Henry merely apjDealed to 

the silent logic of accomplished facts, arranged for his 

coronation on October 30, and sent out writs as king for the election of 

His first a parliament. When this met on November 7, Henry 

Parliament, informed the members in vague terms that he held the 

crown by just right of inheritance, and by the judgment of God as shown on 

tlie field of battle. They in the same spirit declared, by act of parliament, 

' that the inheritance of the crowns of England and France be, rest, remain, 

and abide in the person of our now sovereign lord, King Henry the Seventh, 

and in the heirs of his body.' At the same time Richard iii.was declared to 

have been an usurper, and those who fought for him at Bosworth traitors. 

No executions, however, followed, for it was Henry's policy to put a 

stop to the slaughters and executions which had been lately the rule, 

and a general pardon soon restored confidence. So far nothing had been 

publicly said about Henry's promise to marry the Lady Elizabeth, on which 

his Yorkist supporters had relied ; but at the close of the 
Marriage . ^ ^ . 

with session' both houses joined in a request that Henry would 

'deign' to marry her, and to this he consented at once. 

The marriage took place in January 1486 ; and as a son, Arthur, the 

376 



1485 Henry VII. 377 

first of many children, was born the same year, the union between the 
two houses, the crafty device of Bishop Morton, was secured. Henry 
however, was determined to rest his position on his own claims, and not 
on those of his wife ; so, though treated kindly in private, the queen was 
for some time kept in the background. 

The character of Henry has been abeady shown by his actions. He 
was cool, wary, and persevering, a fair soldier, and a born diplomatist. 
There was also something about him which distinguishes him p^ 
from former kings, and makes him well fitted to be the first character, 
modern sovereign of England. His portraits show him to have been 
eminently a thinker and reasoner, and his features have an expression 
which shows what was meant by saying that his face had in it somewhat 
of the ' ecclesiastic' His queen, on the other hand, was of the true 
Yorkist type, full-faced and rather voluptuous, as became the daughter of 
Edward iv. 

As befitted his character, Henry, throughout his reign, trusted to 
diplomacy rather than force ; and though, when it was necessary, he showed 
no want of ability for warfare, preferred to outwit his enemies rather 
than meet them in the open field. The two main objects of his policy 
were, first, to secure the throne to himself and his family by _. . 

' ' 11 Objects of 

rooting out all rivals ; and, secondly, to strengthen the power Henry's 
of the crown itself by curtailing that of the nobility ; and ^° ^' 
to these he afterwards added a third, viz. that of taking an active part 
in European j)olitics:, and strengthening himself by matrimonial alliances. 
These three objects Henry handed down as of cardinal value to his 
successors, and the circumstances of the period were such that with some 
variations they form the basis of the policy of all the Tudors. Such a 
policy, however, could only be attempted by popular sovereigns, for in 
the absence of a standing army the king, in time of rebellion, could rely 
only upon the goodwill of law-abiding citizens. It, therefore, became the 
policy of Henry and his successors to court the favour of the gentry and 
middle classes, by rigidly enforcing the laws for the security of life and 
property. On the one hand, they put down the retainers of the great 
nobles, whose existence had made civil war possible ; and on the other, 
they dealt sternly with all forms of theft and violence. In this way 
a sense of security was created which had hitherto been unknown. Men 
ceased to wear arms as a matter of course, and the industrial classes, pro- 
fiting by the increased facilities for trade, gave a steady support to the 
government. 

In pursuance, therefore, of a consistent scheme, Henry's first care was 
to secure the persons of his rivals. Kichard iii. had, at diflerent tunes, 



378 House of Tudor 1485 

named as his heir Edward Plantagenet, eldest son of the duke of Clarence, 
who, on the death of his grandmother, would be earl of Warwick, and 
Imprison- John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln, eldest son of his sister 
Edward Elizabeth and John de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. Of these 

Plantagenet. Edward Plantagenet was brought from Sheriff Hutton in 
Yorkshire and placed in the Tower ; but Lincoln was permitted to make 
his peace with the king, and remained at court. These precautions, 
however, did not prevent rebellions. In 1486, during a tour which 
Henry made in the north, outbreaks occurred in Worcestershire and 
Level's Yorkshire, and Henry narrowly escaped capture by the 
Plot. Yorkshire insurgents under Lord Lovel. The same year 

Eichard Simon, a priest, trained a lad named Lambert Simnel to 
personate Edward Plantagenet. The impostor made his appearance in 
Simnel's L'eland, where the house of York had always been popular, 
Rebellion. ^^^ ^j^g crowned without opposition ; and his story gained 
additional credence when Lincoln suddenly left the court and fled to 
Flanders, spreading a report that he had himself aided Edward to escape, 
and had spoken with him on the way to Ireland. In Flanders he met 
Lovel, and received the best assistance of Margaret, the widow of Charles 
the Bold. With her aid, a band of 2000 trained Germans was hired 
under Martin Schwarz, and the expedition reached Ireland in May 1487. 
Picking up Simnel and an Irish contingent, Lincoln crossed into 
England, and landing at Bardsea-in-Furness, made his way into York- 
Battle of shire. There, however, they met with little favour ; and. 
Stoke. turning southward, they encountered Henry himself at Stoke- 

upon-Trent, near Newark, and were routed, after a battle far more bloody 
than that of Bosworth Field. Lincoln and Schwarz fell with many of their 
followers ; Lovel disappeared ; Simnel and Simon were taken prisoners. 
The latter was hanged, the former was made a scullion in the royal 
kitchen. Had the rebellion been successful, in all probability Lincoln 
would have made himself king. As it was, the overthrow 

Coronation « , ^ , , , 

of the of such a formidable force added to Henry's reputation ; but 

' he recognised the advisability of gTatifying the Yorkists by 

carrying out the long-delayed coronation of the queen. 

For five years the Yorkists remained quiet ; but in 1492 there appeared 

in Ireland an impostor whose real name was soon ascertained to be 

Perkin's Pcrkin Osbeck or Warbeck, but who gave out that he was 

Conspiracy, really Eichard, duke of York, who had escaped from the 

Tower when his elder brother was murdered. The imposture took its 

rise in Ireland, and seems to have been almost forced on Perkin by the 

people of Cork, who, seeing a well-dressed and unknown stranger in their 



1492 Henry VII. 379 

streets, insisted that he must be a prince of some kind, and Perkin fell in 
with their whim. Though Perkin's origin was soon ascertained, his 
imposture gave Henry considerable trouble, because he was unable to 
prove the death of the princes, about whose fate nothing certain was 
known till after Perkin's conspiracy. From Ireland, Perkin went to 
France in September 1491, and was well received by Charles viii., with 
whom Henry was then at variance ; and when the conclusion of a peace 
compelled him to leave France, he passed into Flanders, where he was 
well received by Margaret of York, who pretended to recognise him as her 
nephew. For three years he remained with her; but Henry knowing 
that the real policy of Flanders was dictated by the burghers, whose 
trade depended on English wool, interdicted all commerce with Flemish 
ports, and the burghers were soon glad, through their young duke, 
Philip the Handsome, to enter into a commercial treaty with England, 
and as the price of the expulsion of Perkin obtained from Henry com- 
mercial advantages, which placed their trade on an excellent footing. 
This treaty is known as the magnus inter cur sus, or great . Magnus 
intercourse. From Flanders, after an abortive attempt to Intercursus.' 
land in Kent, Perkin returned to Ireland and thence on to Scotland, 
where he was kindly received by James iv,, who was glad of an oppor- 
tunity to make his power felt by Henry. Accordingly, Perkin in 
whether James really believed in Perkin or not, he kept Scotland, 
him in Scotland about two years, and even allowed him to marry 
Katharine Gordon, a relative of his own. Once, indeed, James and 
Perkin crossed the border, but the harrying of Northumberland peasants 
seems to have been distasteful to Perkin, and the expedition soon 
returned. At last James grew tired of his guest, so Perkin and his wife 
sailed for Cork under the escort of the celebrated seamen, Andrew and 
Eobert Barton. In Ireland he found small assistance, for the country 
was settling down under Henry's wise rule ; but while there he heard of 
events in Cornwall which led him to think that something might be 
effected there. 

Before Perkin left Flanders, however, Henry decided to show by a 
terrible example that he would brook no playing fast and loose with 
loyalty. Evidence was forthcoming that his chamberlain, sir William 
Sir William Stanley, who had placed the crown on his head ^*^" ^^• 
at Bosworth, had been repeating the double-dealing which had deceived 
Richard iii. Henry had him promptly arrested, tried, and put to death ; 
and this fearful proof that no nearness to the throne could secure im- 
munity for disaffection, put a stop to Perkin's hope of creating an 
English party in his favour. 



380 House of Tudor 1497 

In 1497, to defend the northern counties against another inroad of the 
Scots, parliament granted a subsidy of ^120,000, and a loan of ^40,000 
Cornish "^^^ ^•'^^ collected. These imposts aroused the wrath of 
Rebellion, ^}jg Cornish men, who grumbled at having to pay so much 
for ' a little stir of the Scots soon blown over.' Their discontent took 
form under Thomas Flammock, a lawyer, and Michael Joseph, a Bodmin 
blacksmith, and under their lead a strong body of insurgents set out to 
march on London. At Wells they were joined by Lord Audley, under 
whom they marched to Kent. They reached Blackheath, but were 
Battle of there attacked by an overwhelming force of horse, foot, 
Blackheath. ^-^^ artillery under Henry in person. The leaders were 
put to death, but their followers were treated with such lenity that 
some thought Henry was too frightened to be severe, and sent over to 
Perkin to tell him that if he would land in Cornwall he would find 
plenty of supporters. Perkin accordingly landed at Whitsand Bay, and 
Perkin lands "^^^ joined by 3000 followers. With them he made an un- 
in Cornwall, successful attempt upon Exeter, and then passed on to 
Taunton ; but by that time all Henry's friends were in arms, and 
Perkin, seeing that all hope of raising a serious insurrection had vanished, 
left his army, and took sanctuary in the Abbey of Beaulieu. On promise 
of his life he soon surrendered, and Henry, who was glad to get a full 
confession of his imposture, ordered him to be paraded through the 
streets of London, and then placed in security. Katharine, his wife, was 
made an attendant on the queen. On the flight of their leader, Perkin's 
followers at once submitted. A few were hanged ; but Henry punished 
most of them by levying fines in proportion to their pro- 
imprison- perty, thus showing the western men that he was not afraid 
ment and ^f exacting their money. After his disgrace, Warbeck 

execution. ° -^ T 

was retained about the court, but a futile attempt to 
escape led to his being imprisoned in the Tower. There he was able 
to communicate with his unlucky fellow-prisoner, the earl of Warwick, 
and in 1499 the two formed a plan to escape. Detection followed. 
The afi'air, mainly to get rid of Warwick, was treated as treason, and 
that ill-fated nobleman was beheaded on Tower Hill at the age of twenty- 
four, fourteen years of which he had passed in confinement. Perkin was 
hanged at Tyburn. 

The death of Warwick destroyed the last Yorkist representative in 

the male line ; but Henry was still apprehensive of danger from the 

The De la younger brothers of the earl of Lincoln — Edmund de la 

Poles. Pole, earl of Suffolk, and his brother Eichard — and in 1501 

they escaped to the continent. In connection with this, Sir James 



1497 Henry FIT. 381 

Tyrrel, governor of Guisnes, was accused and convicted of treason, 
and it was between his sentence and his death that he made the con- 
fession of his share in the murder of the little princes, on which all 
subsequent versions of that incident are based. Suffolk remained 
abroad till 1506, when he was surrendered to Henry by Philii3, duke of 
Burgundy, but on condition that his life was spared. Henry kept his 
promise to the letter ; but in 1513 Suffolk was put to death by Henry viii. 
His brother, Richard de la Pole, succeeded him as earl, and lived on the 
continent till his death at the battle of Pavia in 1525. Warwick's only 
sister Margaret, countess of Salisbury, married Sir Richard Pole, and 
became the mother of a family which played an important part in sub- 
sequent events. 

The support which both Simnel and Perkin had received in Ireland 
attracted Henry's attention to the condition of this country, where the 
people were so prone to revolt, that as Henry remarked condition of 
to some of them, ' My masters of Ireland, ye will crown Iceland. 
apes for kings.' The state of Ireland at his accession was not mate- 
rially different from what it had been at any time since the so-called 
conquest. The country was parcelled out among great chiefs, some of 
whom, like the O'Neals and O'Briens, were at the head of native clans ; 
others, like the Geral dines of Kildare, the Bourkes of Connaught, and 
the Butlers of Ormond, were representatives of great Norman families. 
The usual English machinery of government had been introduced, and 
Ireland had its parliament, council, courts of king's bench and common 
pleas, chancellor, justiciar, and treasurer; but these officials had no 
authority worth mentioning outside the immediate neighbourhood of 
Dublin andthe counties of Kildare, Dublin, Meath, and Louth, which were 
known as the Pale ; for the Norman lords were palatines in their own 
districts, and the Irish clans were ruled according to their own laws. 
In this way a state of society grew up much more analogous to the 
feudalism of France and Germany than anything that had ever existed in 
England. The chief efforts of the government were directed to prevent- 
ing the Norman settlers from relapsing into the barbarism of the native 
Irish, and becoming, as was said, ' more Irish than the Irish themselves.' 
Two typical statutes display the state of affairs. In 1367 was passed the 
statute of Kilkenny, which made it high treason for an English settler 
to adopt Irish customs, to speak the Irish tongue, or to marry an Irish 
woman. In 1465 parliament declared it lawful for any freeman to kill a 
thief, or suspected thief, and deliver his head to the government. In 
such a country as this the very rudiments of political and social well- 
being were wanting, and Henry vii. set himself seriously to deal with it. 



382 House of Tudor 1497 

For some years, however, he found it practically impossible to get rid 
of the earl of Kildare, who, in spite of manifold treasons, was so power- 
ful that it was impossible to oust him from his post of deputy. 'All 
Ireland,' it was said, ' could not rule him.' So perforce, as Henry him- 
self put it, 'he had to rule all Ireland.' At length, however, Henry 
felt himself strong enough to act, and in 1494 he gave the post of deputy 
Poynings *^ ^^^ trusted friend Sir Edward Poynings, who had been 
Acts. }iig companion in exile. Poynings arrested Kildare, and 

summoned a parliament at Drogheda, in which was passed a series of 
memorable statutes known as the Poynings Acts. 

These statutes dealt with many matters, but the chief enactments 
were three : first, that no parliament should be summoned in Ireland 
without the consent of the king of England and his council ; second, that 
no bill could be considered by an Irish parliament unless it had pre- 
viously been approved by the English council ; and third, that all laws 
recently passed by the English parliament should be of binding force in 
Ireland. These enactments were designed to make a fresh start in the 
government of Ireland. They were aimed at controlling the great 
English settlers, and hardly touched the native Irish at all. Moreover, 
although they indicate a state of parliamentary government very far 
removed from ideal, the actual state of the English parliament was not 
materially difierent from that which existed in Ireland, for under 
Henry vii. the real initiative of legislation lay with the king and his 
council. 

During all his dealings with the difficulties created by pretenders, 
Henry had steadily been pursuing his design to strengthen the power 
of the crown. In this, his right-hand man was John 
Morton, formerly master of the rolls and bishop of Ely, 
whom he had advanced, on the death of Archbishop Bourchier, to be 
archbishop of Canterbury. Morton was a man of great experience and 
ability, a representative of the official ecclesiastic of his time, who 
devoted himself heart and soul to the king's business ; and, till his death 
in 1500, he must be regarded as the king's leading minister and most 
trusted adviser in all constitutional matters. Henry saw clearly that 
the one real guarantee of order was the abolition of retainers ; and, having 
obtained from Parliament an enactment making it penal to grant 
liveries or enter into ' engagements of maintenance,' he set himself to 
devise a means to make this statute a reality instead of the dead letter 
which all its predecessors had been. 

With this end in view he devised a new court which should be 
independent of popular control, and which should not be liable to failures 



1497 Henry VII. 333 

of justice, either through the goodwill of jurymen to the offender, or 
their intimidation or corruption by some powerful or wealthy magn'ate. 
The new court was constituted by act of parliament, and New Court 
was composed of the lord chancellor, the lord treasurer the °f Justice, 
keeper of the privy seal, a bishop, a lord of the council, and the two 
chief justices. Their orders were to deal with such offences as livery 
and maintenance, jury packing, inciting to riot, and other offences 
difficult to deal with in the ordinary courts. Of these, livery and main- 
tenance were the chief. Livery is a word whose meaning 
is now restricted to the clothes which a nobleman or gentle- Mafnten" 
man gives his servants ; but in its original sense it in- ^"^^" 
eluded the allowances of food which in every mediaeval household were 
measured out to all its members. The political signification of the word 
implied the practice of the magnates of keeping in their household as 
large and ostentatious a retinue as their wealth permitted, and usino- it 
either to fight their quarrels in war or to support their interests in peace, 
not always by peaceful means. Maintenance was the practice of great 
men taking up the quarrels of poor ones, as was done by John of Gaunt 
in the case of Wyclif, and by appearing at their side, or filling the court 
with men wearing their livery, to intimidate judge and jury into giving 
a false decision. Such a system was liable to the grossest abuse, 
maintainer and maintained even going shares in dividing property so 
wrongfully obtained ; and as the two practices were at the very root of 
the power possessed by the fifteenth century barons, Henry was deter- 
mined to put them utterly down. The method of the court was astute ; for 
on conviction it fined the culprit so severely as to put it out of his power 
to offend again. Even Henry's most intimate friends were not spared. 
As he had beheaded Sir William Stanley to show that past services could 
not condone treason, so he made his old general, the earl of Oxford, an 
example that the keeping of retainers could no longer be permitted. 
One day when leaving the earl, after a visit, Henry passed Earl of 
through two rows of gentry and yeomen wearing the earl's ^^^°^^- 
badge. ' These are your servants,' said the king. ' No,' said Oxford, ' I 
am too poor for that. They are my retainers assembled to do you 
honour.' 'I thank you for your hospitality,' Henry replied; 'but I 
cannot have my laws broken in my sight.' Oxford was summoned before 
the new court and fined ^15,000, equivalent to at least £150,000 of our 
money. Such an example was effective ; and complaint began to be 
made that the retainers who were turned adrift became thieves and 
robbers. 

The court which dealt so effectively with these elements of disorder 



384 House of Tudor 1497 

was new, but in reality its constitution did not materially differ from a 
revival of the criminal jurisdiction of the privy council. Since the reign 

The Privy of Henry III., by which date the chief judicial func- 

Council. tions of the council had been exercised by special courts 
the council had been chiefly an advising body ; sometimes, under weak 
kings, like Henry iii., Edward 11., or Richard 11., specially constituted 
by parliament as a check on the royal authority ; sometimes, under such 
powerful sovereigns as Edward i. and Edward iii., dropping out of sight 
altogether. Under Henry iv., however, and the Lancastrian sovereigns, it 
began to have a more permanent character, and to be really an advising 
body, trusted and used by the king both for consultative and executive 
business. Its importance grew rapidly during the minority of Henry vi., 
and by degrees the phrase ' king and council ' showed that it had come 
to be considered as having a sort of co-ordinate authority with the king. 
Edward iv. tried to increase its representative character by introducing 
commoners as well as nobles ; and whether it was due to deliberate 
intention, or merely to the weakness of parliament, the Tudors made it 
a chief instrument of government. 

The weakness of parliament here alluded to is one of the most striking 

facts of the reigns of Edward iv., Henry vii,, and the first part of the 

reign of Henry viii. It was due to a variety of causes. 

of Pariia- Chief among these was the decline of the nobility, to whom 

™^" ■ the commons had always looked for the armed support on 

which their power to attack a king's favourite or to resist an unpopular 
proposal necessarily depended. It was also due to the circumstance that, 
on the whole, the Tudors carried out the policy of those classes to whom 
members of parliament belonged. At any rate, under Edward iv. and 
Henry vii., parliament did little except pass without question acts which 
had been prepared by the king and his council, and vote supplies. 

Among other important statutes passed by direction of Henry vii. was 
one designed to give greater security to those who held office under a 

De Facto l^i^ig of doubtful title who might ultimately be dispossessed. 

statute. ipjjj^g ^^g passed in 1495, and enacted that 'no person 
attending upon the king and sovereign lord of this land for the time 
being, and doing him true and faithful service, shall be convicted of high 
treason, by act of parliament or other process of law, nor suffer any 
forfeiture or punishment ; but that every act made contrary to this 
statute shall be void and of none effect.' Thus a distinction was made 
between a king de facto and a king de jure, and the temptation to take 
part in Yorkist plots with a view to being safe in every eventuality 
was diminished. 



1490 Henry VI I. 335 

Another great enactment was the statute of fines, copied from an act 
of Richard iii. The immediate object of this act was to provide a ready 
way of settling the ownership of estates. Numbers of statute of 
disputes had arisen during the confusion of the late war, ^i"^^- 
and as a consequence of the extensive forfeitures which had taken place. 
For this purpose it was enacted that if a decision in a disputed case had 
been given, and a fine levied with proclamations in a public court of 
justice, then, after five years, except in a few special cases, no further 
claim to the lands could be raised. The indirect results of this act were 
wider than its immediate efi"ects, for the lawyers discovered in it an 
ingenious device for breaking the entails created under the statute 
de clonis conditionalibus. This device was extremely welcome to many 
of the ancient landowners who had become impoverished through ex- 
travagance or war, and in consequence many entailed estates came into 
the market and were bought by rich merchants of the towns. 

The direct taxes voted by parliament under Henry vii. were not 
numerous, and he had ample means to know their unpopularity. Besides 
the Cornish rebellion already referred to, taxation caused The Bene- 
an outbreak in Yorkshire at Topcliffe, one of the Percy ^° ^"'^^^• 
manors, where the earl of Northumberland was murdered by some of 
his own tenants who objected to pay towards an expedition to Brittany a 
subsidy of one-tenth of the annual value of lands, and about one-sixth of 
the value of goods and chattels. Henry therefore relied on indirect 
means to fill his treasury. Among these was the collection of bene- 
volences. The first of these was collected in 1491, and received the 
sanction of a great council or assembly of notables, a substitute for a 
parliament, of which Henry was somewhat fond. Cardinal Morton is 
said to have drawn up directions to the collectors to the effect that ' if 
they met any who were sparing, they must tell them they must needs 
have, because they laid up ; and if they were spenders they must needs 
have, because it was seen in their port and manner of living.' This 
ingenious method of approach gained the name of Morton's Fork. This 
benevolence was afterwards sanctioned by parliament, and all arrears 
were ordered to be paid. 

Even these exactions, however, did not make Henry so unpopular as 
those which are associated with the names of Sir Richard Enipson and 
Sir Edmund Dudley, barons of the exchequer. The method Empson 
of these men was to rake up all the ancient customs and ^"'^ Dudley, 
obligations of feudalism which, in the rise of a new civilisation, were 
either obsolete or rapidly becoming so, and to have before their court all 
who wittingly or unwittingly had infringed the rights of the crown. 

2b 



386 The Tuclm's 1492 

The offenders were then mercilessly fined ; and so great was the anger 
aroused by such an oppressive perversion of law, that the names of the 
two barons still retain an evil notoriety as examples of such as strain the 
law for the benefit of a king. In spite, however, of the grumbling of his 
people, Henry contrived to grow rich. He spent little on himself, and, 
at the close of his reign, left property, chiefly in the shape of jewels, 
estimated in our money at no less than £18,000,000 sterling. 

We must now turn to foreign affairs. Eather from necessity than 
choice, Henry found it needful to mix more in the general politics of 
Foreign ^^® Continent than any of his predecessors, and in this 
Affairs. respect his reign forms a turning-point in English history. 
During its early years Henry was drawn into a war in Brittany. That 
duchy, the last of the great fiefs of France to be absorbed by the crown, 
was, in 1490, by the death of the duke, left in the hands of Anne, a girl 
of eleven years. The prospect of seeing Brittany become 
any. ^^ integral part of France, and her harbours and seamen at 
the disposal of the French king, was naturally distasteful to Englishmen ; 
and Henry, who himself was under much obligation to the late duke, 
had the sympathy of his subjects in trying to protect the dominions of 
the little duchess. In doing so he had some expectation of assistance 
from Ferdinand of Arragon and from Maximilian of Austria, the latter 
of whom was designed to be the husband of Anne ; but Ferdinand was 
too busy, and Maximilian too poor, to be of much assistance so far from 
home ; and, though Henry sent soldiers to help the duchess, it was 
impossible to defend Brittany permanently against France without sacri- 
fices much greater than either he or his subjects were willing to make. 
Eventually the matter was settled by the French invading Brittany, 
and Anne agreeing to marry Charles viii., the young king of France, 
since which marriage Brittany has become a part of the French monarchy. 
The way in which Henry had been thus outwitted led to war with 
France ; and in the autumn of 1491 Henry, having entered into an 
War with alliance with Ferdinand and Maximilian, led an English 
France. army to the siege of Boulogne. The expedition, however, 
proved to be the counterpart of that of 1475. Charles showed himself 
as anxious as his father had been to get rid of the English without fight- 
Treaty of i^g- He opened negotiations at once, and agreed by the 
Etaples. treaty of Etaples to repay the English the expenses they 
had been at in sending troops to Brittany, and also two years' arrears of 
the annual sum promised at Picquigny. The whole sum is calculated 
at from three and a half to four million pounds of our money, and was 
to be paid in instalments amounting to one hundred and fifty thousand 



1494 Henry VII. 3g'r 

pounds a year. Such a peace, though doubtless a good thing for both 
countries, was most unpopular in England, where many nobles and 
gentlemen had half-ruined themselves to provide an outfit for the 
expected campaign. 

Henry's next alliance arose out of a wide European complication. 
The new unity which had been given to France by the policy of Louis xt. 
and to which the annexation of Brittany had given the kev- ^u , ,,, 

, . , , . ■^ unarles VIII. 

stone, marked an epoch in the history of Europe. Hitherto ^" Italy. 
as a rule, French kings had concerned themselves mainly with the 
affairs of France ; now an opportunity was given for engaginc^ in 
enterprises abroad, and the energy of the French people, which had 
hitherto spent itself either in civil broils or wars with the English was 
eagerly on the look-out for a new outlet. Such an opportunity was found 
by Charles viii. in the revival of claims which had come to him from the 
last count of Anjou to the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily. To prosecute 
this claim, Charles allied himself with Ludovico Sforza, the uncle and 
guardian of the little duke of Milan, with the Genoese, the Florentines, 
and the pope, and in 1494 marched an army into Italy, and with little 
or no fighting occupied the kingdom of Naples. His presence, however, 
soon roused the national feeling of the Italians, and a great league was 
formed, with the Venetians at its head, to intercept his homeward march. 
The plan, however, failed ; for Charles' soldiers, who were much better 
fighters than the Italians, brushed away the army of the league at Fornovo, 
and regained France in safety. 

This expedition created the utmost consternation among the other 
European powers, especially at the court of Maximilian, the emperor, 
who regarded himself as sovereign of Italy, and at that of 
Ferdinand and Isabella, who, having completed the con- L^Igue^" 
quest of the Moors of Granada in 1492, were also prepared p^^j^jfj; 
to take a larger share than before in European affairs. The 
consequence was the projection of a great European alliance to keep 
France in check, and ' for the mutual preservation of states, so that the 
more powerful might not oppress the less powerful, and that each should 
keep what rightly belongs to him.' As a renewal of the English inva- 
sions would probably be the most effective check on the Italian designs of 
the French, it became a great point to secure the assistance of the king of 
England. Henry, however, was not prepared to give his assistance for 
nothing. Maximilian had lately been aiding Perkin Warbeck, and Henry 
would do nothing till this was withdrawn. Ferdinand and Isabella, 
however, were most anxious to secure Henry's aid, and were willing to 
put pressure on Maximilian ; so Warbeck was dismissed, and negotiations 



388 The Tudms 1494 

entered on for the marriage of Henry's son Arthur with Katharine of 
Arragon, third daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. On this, Henry- 
entered the league and sent a peremptory letter to Charles requiring him 
not to disturb the peace of Europe. By this means France was com- 
pletely isolated, Charles, however, died in 1498 ; but as his successor 
Louis XII. not only succeeded to his claims on Naples, but had claims of 
his own to the duchy of Milan, the need for a great anti-French alliance 
was no less than before. 

Accordingly, the league was placed on a more permanent basis by a 
series of marriages which had the most important results upon the history 
Matrimonial ^^ Europe.^ Already the marriage of Maximilian of Austria 
Alliances. ^ith Mary of Burgundy, the heiress of Charles the Bold, 
had brought the Netherlands under the rule of the House of Austria ; 
while that of Ferdinand of Arragon and Isabella of Castile had brought 
under one crown the whole of the Spanish peninsula with the exceptions 
of Portugal and Navarre. In 1496 Joanna, the second daughter of Fer- 
dinand and Isabella, married Maximilian's only son Philip the Handsome; 
and as her only brother died childless, Joanna became the heiress of the 
dominions of Ferdinand and Isabella, and passed her rights on to her 
eldest son Charles, afterwards the celebrated emperor, who was born in 
1500. In 1501, Arthur, Prince of Wales, at the age of fifteen, was 
married to Katharine of Arragon, but died in April of the next year ; 
upon which negotiations were immediately opened for her marriage with 
Henry's younger son Henry, born in 1491 ; and in expectation of this 
the girl-widow still remained in England under the guardianship of her 
father-in-law. One European country, Scotland, still remained the ally 
of France ; but both Ferdinand and Henry exerted themselves to the 
utmost to detach the Scots from their hereditary alliance, and in 1502 
this was thought to have been effected by the marriage of Henry's elder 
daughter Margaret to the Scottish king, James iv. 

Henry's queen died in 1503, and various negotiations were carried on 

Death of ^^^ ^ second marriage connected with the great alliance, 

Henry. \^^\^ ^11 Came to nothing ; and in 1509 he died, leaving 

his kingdom in peace and prosperity, and with a European position 

1 GENEALOGY OF CHARLES V. 

Maximilian of = Mary of Ferdinand, = Isabella of 



Austria, Emperor, 
d. 1519. 



Burgundy, king of Arragon, 1 Castile, 

d. \m. d. 1516. d. 1504. 



Archduke Philip of = Joanna, Katharine, = (1) Arthur, d. 1502 

Austria, lord of the d. 1552. (?) d. 1536. (2) Henry viii. 

Netherlands, king of 
Castile, d. 1506. 

Charles V. 



1509 Henry VII. 359 

and importance far beyond anything she had held since the days of 
Henry v. 

In many respects the reign of Henry vii. forms a turning-point in 
English history, either as the beginning of a new epoch or the end of an 
old one. This was due partly to the domestic causes which , 

■^' The Rc- 

had enabled Henry to do so much for civilisation by ridding naissance 
the country of retainers, and by enforcing a higher standard ^" ^^ ^' 
of law and order, and partly to causes which affected, in a greater or 
less degree, the whole of the civilised world. This great movement, 
which is known sometimes as the Eenaissance — renascence, or new birth — 
sometimes as the revival of learning, according as it is regarded in its 
more general or special aspect, is so complicated and many-sided that it 
is impossible to do more than glance at its broader facts. Its birthplace 
was Italy, where a variety of causes had created the possibility of a 
higher standard of civilisation than had been possible elsewhere. Much 
attention had early been paid to the study of painting and sculpture ; 
and when in 1453 the taking of Constantinople by the Turks had 
dispersed Greek-speaking scholars into Europe, and made possible the 
acquisition of thousands of precious manuscripts of classical authors, 
which had long mouldered unread in the libraries of Byzantine monas- 
teries, an immense stimulus was given to classical study, and so 
enthusiastic did the Italian scholars become in the pursuit of the new 
learning that the ideas of Plato and Aristotle were almost worshipped 
by their new votaries. 

From Italy the movement spread to other lands. Tiptoft, earl of 
Worcester, was an enthusiastic Latin scholar ; in 1492 Groceyn taught 
Greek at Oxford, and a little later was aided by Linacre. ^^^ ^^^^^ 
John Colet, afterwards dean of St. Paul's, lectured on the ment in 

, -, 1 • • n England. 

Greek Testament at Oxford in 1496, and used his mfiaence 

in after life to promote education in the new modes of thought. Hardly 
of less influence in England was Erasmus, a Fleming, who came to Eng- 
land in 1498, became the friend of all English scholars, and by his ready 
wit and keen satire influenced the thoughts of Englishmen. Painting, too, 
gradually made its way north, and the new mode was made familiar to 
Englishmen by Holbein, who lived here some years after 1526. 

Learning and the fine arts, however, were only one side of the move- 
ment. Immense strides were made in geographical discovery. Early 
in the fifteenth century Henry the Navigator, nephew of our Geographical 
Henry iv., had directed the Portuguese to the advantage of Discoveries, 
seeking new outlets for trade by investigating the west coast of Africa. 
Later on, the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, and the closing 



390 The Tudors 1509 

of the old trade-routes from the Levant to the east compelled merchants 
to seek a new road to India, and gave rise to the speculations and voyages 
which ultimately, in 1492, resulted in the discovery of the New World. 
This event naturally roused the Portuguese to further exertions, and in 
1497 Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope and reached 
Calicut. Nor was England much behind. In the very first year of his 
reign Henry had assured the Bristol merchants of his sympathy and assist- 
ance ; and in 1497 the merchant adventurers of that city manned a 
British ship with British sailors, and sent it on a voyage of 
discovery, under the command of John Cabot, a Venetian, 
and his son Sebastian. This ship was the first European vessel to reach 
the mainland of North America. 

These discoveries not only changed men's ideas in geography, but 
made a great alteration in the relative political importance of the nations 
Influence on ^^ ^^^ world. Hitherto, these which had had the most 
Politics. ready access to the Mediterranean Sea had taken the lead 

in civilisation and commercial activity ; now, however, men's thoughts 
turned to the ocean, and Cadiz, Lisbon, Bordeaux, Bristol, London, and 
Antwerp became the natural harbours for the traflac of the world. 

Side by side with these discoveries stand the two great inventions 
of printing and gunpowder. Printing, or, to speak more correctly, the 
art of printing with moveable types, is said to have been invented by 
Gutenberg in 1440. The improvement was due to the desire to copy 
books more rapidly than by hand in response to the greater demand 
created by the growing thirst for knowledge ; but when it had been 
made, the greater cheapness of the copies multiplied by the new method 
gave an immense stimulus to the spread of learning. Printing was 
introduced into England by William Caxton in 1471, and the first 
new book printed and published in England was The game and playe of 
J , the Chesse, which appeared in 1474. Gunpowder was first 

tion of employed for artillery about the time of the battle of 

unpow er. Q^ecj, but it was slow in coming into use ; for so 
efficient were the continental crossbows and the longbows of the 
English, and so destructive were the siege implements in use, that it 
was long before the new cannons and hand-guns could really compete 
with them. When, however, equality in efficiency was reached, the old 
weapons speedily became obsolete, for their use required a longer train- 
ing than the new, and cannons were less difficult to transport than the 
old catapults, rams, and mangonels. The effect of the new weapons on 
society was perhaps greater than that on the art of war, for with the 
disappearance of the armoured knight, whose mail was no defence 



1509 



Henry VI I , 



391 



against the new projectiles, passed away a class distinction which had 
made warfare a comparatively safe amusement for the rich. Hence- 
forward the same danger confronted the noble and the plebeian soldier. 
Moreover, the introduction of gunpowder was of enormous moment in 
the conquest of the New World. Without the advantage given by its 
possession it is difficult to see how the exploits of Cortez and Pizarro 
could have been performed, or the rapid conquest of vast territories in- 
habited by semi-civilised but brave people have been accomplished by 
such handfuls of Europeans as were then able to cross the ocean. 

The discovery of America and of the new route to India, the conquest 
of Constantinople by the Turks, the revival of learning, and Modern 
the inventions of printing and gunpowder, are the great Europe, 
events which mark the change from mediseval to modern Europe, and 
their influence began to make itself felt in the reign of Henry vn. 



CHIEF DA TES 

Battle of Stoke, 

First appearance of Parkin Warbeck, 
Discovery of the West Indies, . 
Charles VIII. 's Expedition to Italy, . 
Cabot discovers the American Mainland, 
Vasco da Gama reaches Calicut, 
Capture of Parkin Warbeck, 
Death of Prince Arthur, 



A.D. 

1487 
1492 
1492 
1494 
1497 
1497 
1498 
1502 



CHAPTEE II 

HENRY VIII.: 1509-1547 



Born 1491 ; married- 



^1509, Katharine of Arragon, divorced 1533, d. 1536. 

1532, Anne Boleyn, executed 1536. 

1536, Jane Seymour, died 1537. 

1540, Anne of Cleves, divorced 1540, died 1557. 

1540, Katharine Howard, executed 1542. 
^1543, Katharine Parr, survived her husband. 



CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES. 

Scotland. France. Spain. 

James iv., d. 1513. Louis xii., d. 1515. Charles i., 1516-1556. 

James v., d. 1542. Francis i. , d. 1547. 

Mary, deposed 1567. 

Emperors. Popes. 

Maximilian, d. 1519. Julius ii., d. 1513. 

Charles V. , d. 1558. Leo x., 1513-1522. 

Clement VII., 1523-1534. 

Foreign politics — Flodden — Wolsey's career— The Divorce question leads to the 
fall of Wolsey and the separation from Rome — Changes in the Church — 
Dissolution of the Monasteries — Resistance to these changes — Henry's 
domestic life — Later foreign policy. 

The death of Henry vii. gave the crown to his son Henry, a young 
man of eighteen. In appearance there was little in Henry to recall his 
Character of father. His figure was cast in the Yorkist mould — tall, 
Henry. strong, and stoutly built, with round, fair-complexioned 

face and a profusion of reddish flaxen hair. His temperament was 
jovial, and delighted in all manner of games and sports in which his 
personal courage and agility enabled him to display himself to advantage. 
At the same time it must not be supposed that his addiction to such 
pursuits was allowed to interfere with his business as king. From his 
very accession Henry showed himself as determined as his father, not 
only to reign, but to govern. The reports of ambassadors were made 
directly to him. Each day he made time to despatch a vast quantity of 
business, and both his own letters and those written to him fully prove 

392 



1509 Henry VIII . 393 

that he considered no detail of government as beneath his notice. Like 
his father lie was a good judge of character, and probably was a greater 
adept at reading the thoughts of the masses ; and his ready wit and easy 
manners gained him, from the very outset, a popularity so well established 
that no subsequent actions, however arbitrary or cruel, appear to have 
seriously diminished it. 

No change of importance was made in the composition of the council, 
of which the chief members continued to be Eichard Fox, bishop of 
Winchester, a painstaking and able ecclesiastic, who had The Mini- 
succeeded to much of Morton's influence ; Thomas Howard, ^^^^^• 
earl of Surrey, son of the duke of Norfolk who fell at Bosworth, a man 
of courage and determination, who represented the ideas of the nobility ; 
and Archbishop Warham, a man of no great force. Thomas Wolsey, 
a young and able ecclesiastic, was acting as secretary to Fox. Under 
these men the quiet and orderly domestic government of Henry vii. was 
continued, and was broken chiefly by the disgraceful treat- Empsonand 
ment of Empson and Dudley, who were sacrificed by the ^"^^^^y- 
young king to appease the popular outcry. It was no easy matter to 
find a legal charge, for their acts, though harsh, had come within the letter 
of the law, and had been fully provided for in their commissions ; so an 
absurd charge of treason was brought against them, accusing them 
of plotting to get the young king into their hands, and usurping the 
government. On this, Dudley was convicted in London, Empson at 
Northampton, and the whole iniquitous transaction was confirmed by an 
act of attainder. For some time their lives were spared, but at length 
Henry, exasperated by the constant complaints of their extortions, 
ordered them to be put to death. At the same time some attempt was 
made to compensate their victims. 

In foreign afi'airs the king showed his intention of following his 
father's policy by marrying Katharine, with whom he declared himself 
so well satisfied that if he had to choose again he would take Katharine 
her. Katharine was then twenty-four, and, though not beau- ° "^e°"- 
tiful, was a very attractive person, and is described as being ' of a lively 
and gracious disposition.' She danced well, was a good musician, wrote 
and spoke English excellently, and, above all, was perfectly devoted to 
her husband. 

Though Henry vii. had joined the anti-French alliance, he had taken 
no active part in foreign aflfairs, in which he had been little more than a 
dependant of Spain. Since the death of Charles viii. Italy had been the 
chief centre of aflfairs. In 1499, Louis xii., with the aid of the Venetians, 
had taken Milan ; and in 1501, contrary to the general policy ol the 



394 The Tudors 1509 

League, Ferdinand had entered into alliance with him and made an 
attack upon Naples, which, since the expulsion of the French, had again 
fallen into the hands of a branch of the house of Arragon. Next year, 
however, Louis and Ferdinand quarrelled about their plunder, and the 
French were again expelled from Naples. However, by 1508, the French 
and Spaniards had again patched up their quarrels, and, under the 
nominal leadership of Pope Julius ii., had formed the League of Cambray 
for the purpose of partitioning the territories of the Venetians, the only 
power in Italy which might possibly have rallied the smaller states to 
keep out both French and Spaniards. In the war that followed the 
French acted with such vigour that they secured most of the Venetian 
territory on the main land ; and so alarmed was Julius ii. at this exhibi- 
tion of French power that he immediately set on foot what was described 
as a Holy League for the defence of the pope and the expulsion of the 
French from Italy, and in 1511 requested Henry viii. to join it. As his 
father-in-law, Ferdinand, was one of the leading members, Henry had no 
objection, and planned a joint campaign in the south of France, by which 
it was hoped that England would reconquer Guienne and Ferdinand 
acquire Navarre. The temptation to attack Guienne was great ; for its 
trade was extremely valuable, and the possession of a piece of territory, 
driven like a wedge between France and Spain, would give the king of 
England a great advantage in dealing with their respective sovereigns. 
Expedition However, when the English troops, under the marquess of 
to Guienne. j^Qj-get, landed in Guienne, they found Ferdinand quite un- 
prepared. After six weeks of inaction, their commander, under the 
impression that Ferdinand meant to use his own troops against Navarre, 
brought his soldiers back to England. This expedition was a great dis- 
appointment to Henry. Accordingly, great preparations were made for 
the campaign of 1513, and it is in these that Wolsey first made a 
reputation with the king. 

Thomas Wolsey, who is perhaps the greatest of the long line of ecclesi- 
astical statesmen from Lanfranc to Laud, was born at Ipswich in 1471. 

His father was a burgher of wealth and position, and gave 
Wolsey. . . r J » 

his clever son the best education in his power. He entered 
Oxford as a boy and took his degree of bachelor of arts at fifteen, and 
became fellow and bursar of Magdalen College. While there, the beauti- 
ful tower of the college was being built, but it does not appear that 
Wolsey had any thing special to do with it. His next post was that of 
master of Magdalen College School, and while there he made the acquaint- 
ance of the marquis of Dorset whose sons he had taught. Dorset 
presented him to the rectory of Lymington. He next became chaplain 



1513 Henry Fill. 395 

to Deane, who succeeded Morton as archbishop of Canterbury, and he 
acquired a knowledge of administrative life as assistant to Sir Richard 
Nanfan, deputy-governor of Calais. By him he was recommended to 
Henry vii., and became a royal chaplain about 1506. At court Wolsey 
attached himself to Fox, possibly as his secretary, and was employed on 
several diplomatic missions for the king. The accession of Henry viii. 
was favourable to his advancement, for Wolsey was full of energy and 
had ideas that suited the young king much better than the wary maxims 
and cautious traditions of the statesmen of Henry vii. It was not, how- 
ever, till the preparations were begun for the French war that Wolsey 
was able to find an adequate field for his energies, but he then threw 
himself heart and soul into the task of providing an efficient force, and 
this brought him to the notice of Henry himself. 

The campaign which followed was on the whole successful ; Admiral 
Sir Edward Howard attacked the French fleet with such violence in open 
boats that, though he lost his own life, and his men were invasion 
beaten off*, the French did not venture to impede the passage °^ France, 
of the English fleet to Calais. From Calais Henry, with Wolsey in 
his train, advanced to the siege of Therouenne, and, while before it, 
was joined by Maximilian as a volunteer. During the siege an action 
was fought at Guinegaste with a French relieving force which attempted 
to throw supplies into the town. It was a mere cavalry Battle of 
affair, and the French fled so soon that the fight was Guinegaste. 
jocularly known as the Battle of the Spurs. Therouenne surrendered, 
and soon afterwards the important town of Tournai ; but Henry did not 
pursue his advantage further, for he found that both Ferdinand and 
Maximilian expected him to encounter the dangers while they reaped the 
profits of the war, and he made the excuse of being wanted at home to 
return to England. 

There, in his absence, great events had happened. Contrary to the 
expectations which had been founded on the marriage of Margaret 
and James iv., the hereditary friendship of the Scots for Scottish 
France had proved too much for the honour of James, and 
when Henry crossed to France he invaded Northumberland with a 
large army. Henry had left Katharine in charge at home, and she, 
perhaps remembering Philippa of Hainault and Neville's Cross, threw 
herself most energetically into the work of defence, attended council 
meetings, prepared banners with her own hand, and addressed the 
leaders who were setting out for the north. The chief command was 
entrusted to the earl of Surrey and his son. Sir Thomas Howard, who 
had succeeded his brother as admiral. They mustered their forces at 



396 



The Tudors 



1513 



Newcastle, and, marching north, learned that James had taken up a strong 
position on Flodden Edge, a spur of the Cheviots lying at right angles to 
the river Till, a tributary of the Tweed, which there forms the boundary 
between England and Scotland. On Sunday, September 4, Surrey, 
after the fashion of chivalry, sent a challenge to James to fight a pitched 
battle on the following Friday. This James accepted ; but when Surrey 
suggested that he should leave his strong post and fight on even ground, 
James politely but firmly declined. 




THE FLODDEN DISTRICT 

In these circumstances, Surrey adopted the advice of his son to turn 
James' position by blocking his retreat to Scotland ; and, accordingly, on 
Surrey's Thursday he crossed the Till at Wooler, and, marching 

Manoeuvres, parallel to the river but at such a distance from it as to be 
concealed by the rising ground, made his way to Twisel Mill close to the 
junction of the Till and Tweed. There he stayed till Thursday night, 
and at daybreak on Friday recrossed the Till and marched straight to 
Coldstream as though about to invade Scotland. The ruse was com- 
pletely successful. When James, from Flodden Edge, saw Surrey making 
for Scotland he broke up his camp, burnt his tents, and hurried off in 
hot pursuit. On this, Surrey returned to meet him ; and the two armies, 
concealed from each other by the smoke of the blazing tents, met one 
another on Brankston Moor, the Scots still having the advantage of 
being on higher ground. The Scottish forces, who are thought to have 
numbered 30,000, were drawn up in dense masses. On the right were 
the Highlanders, with target and claymore ; next the king, at the head 
of a mass of 7000 spearmen ; on the left, the Borderers under Huntly 
and Home. With the Scots were seventeen pieces of artillery. The 



1513 Henry VIII. 39/^ 

English also arranged their forces in three divisions— Sir Edward 
Stanley led the left, Surrey the centre, and the admiral and Sir Edmund 
Howard the right. The chief reliance of the English soldiers, who were 
gathered from all parts of the northern counties, was placed in their long- 
bows ; but for close quarters they used a most formidable weapon, the 
bill, which consisted of a double-headed hatchet with a six-inch spike 
projecting between the blades and wielded with both arms at the end 
of a stout handle nearly six feet long, so that it could be used either for 
hacking or thrusting. Surrey, too, had artillery. 

When the fight began the English guns soon silenced those of the 
Scots, and did so much execution among the spearmen that James 
hurried to get to close quarters, and ordered a general charge. Battle of 
On his left the earls of Huntly and Home beat Sir Edmund Fiodden. 
Howard on the extreme right ; but the English right centre, under Sir 
Thomas Howard, though hard pressed, held its own ; Surrey presented 
a stout front to the king, and the Lancashire men, under Sir Edward 
Stanley, not only foiled every attempt of the fierce Highlanders to break 
their ranks, but even advanced in their turn and drove the clansmen off 
the field. By this time Sir Thomas Howard, to whose aid the reserve 
had been sent, had also routed the Scots opposed to him, and so he and 
Stanley, wheeling inwards, were able to charge the king's forces in flank 
and rear, while they were engaged with Surrey in front. This manoeuvre 
was decisive. James himself was transfixed by an arrow, and received 
a deadly blow on the head from an English bill ; but his countrymen 
fought furiously round his corpse, and only the fall of night separated 
the maddened combatants. James' body, found among a heap of slain, 
was fully identified ; and his blood-stained plaid was sent over by 
Katharine as a trophy to her husband. With James perished the 
flower of Scottish chivalry. No less than twelve Scottish earls lay dead 
on the field ; and there were few noble families in Scotland which had 
not to mourn the loss of some of their members. 

The political results of Flodden were as decisive as its circumstances 
were dramatic. It showed Europe that England could not be 
intimidated by an attack on her borders ; and so far as Results of 
Scotland was concerned it removed all danger of trouble for ^ ^ 
many years. James' successor was his posthumous son James v., and 
the government of the country fell into the hands of his widow Margaret. 
Within a few months, however, she made the mistake of marrying the 
earl of Angus, and this alliance, by introducing a new element of discord 
among the Scottish lords, served still further to weaken the country. 

In spite, however, of his successes at Therouenne and Flodden, Henry 



398 The Tudors 1513 

had no mind to carry on the war as the cat's-paw of Maximilian and 
Ferdinand ; and in this he was ably seconded by Wolsey, whose para- 
Peace with mount influence seems to date from Henry's return from 
France. France. Wolsey's great gift was for diplomacy, for which 

Fox had no liking, and was glad to leave it in his hands. He held also 
most patriotic ideas as to the real place which England ought to hold in 
continental affairs, and was as eager as Henry to see her secure an 
independent position. To effect this Henry and "Wolsey determined to 
make an alliance with France, a combination which would be most 
dangerous to the schemes of Maximilian and Ferdinand, and would show 
them that England must be treated at its proper value. Accordingly, 
with great secrecy negotiations were opened, and it was arranged that 
Henry's sister Mary, a beautiful girl of seventeen, should repudiate her 
engagement to Charles of Burgundy, and marry Louis xii., aged fifty-two, 
who had lately become a widower through the death of Anne of 
Brittany. For the moment this alliance effected all that Henry and 
Wolsey expected from it ; but unluckily, at the beginning of 1515, 
Louis died. His successor was Francis i. of Angouleme, who married 
Louis' daughter Claude, the heiress of Brittany. Mary of England 
immediately married Henry's favourite comrade, Charles Brandon, 
created duke of Suffolk. She was the grandmother of Lady Jane Grey. 
To Wolsey Henry's gratitude knew no bounds. For his services in 
France he made him bishop of Tournai, and in 1514 bishop of Lincoln. 
Wolsey's I^ 1515 he was further promoted to be archbishop of York, 
Promotion. ^^^ ^^ j^^j^j ^j^g secular office of chancellor. Henry would 
have been glad to see Wolsey a cardinal, but Pope Leo x. objected, and 
it was not till 1517 that Henry found himself sufficiently influential with 
the pope to secure his wish, and also to have Wolsey appointed papal 
legate in England. This plan of paying his secular officials by clerical 
preferments was cheap for the king, but was most injurious to the 
Church ; for by making its nominal leaders into mere statesmen the 
whole institution tended to be demoralised, and in few of the leading 
bishops of this time can any traces of religious feeling be discovered. 

Wolsey, however, himself was far from being a mere official. So keen- 
sighted and practical a man as he was could not fail to be struck with 
Wolsey's uiauy disorders in the Church, and to see that the stir 
Policy. which the Renaissance was creating; in men's minds 
necessitated reform either from within or without. Of these the most 
The Monas- crying was the condition of the monasteries. Since the 
^^^^^^- coming of the friars at the beginning of the thirteenth 

century few monasteries had been founded in England. Their number. 



1516 Henry Fill. 399 

however, had not diminished, and they had been growing more and more 
out of accord with the spirit of the age. The cessation of civil wars 
had deprived them of their claim to be the sole places where men of 
peace could live secure. The printing of manuscripts had taken the place 
of copying by hand. The rise of the universities had taken from them 
their at one time well-founded boast that they were the guardians of 
learning. Above all, the new learning, which was attracting the attention 
of scholars and directing into new channels the thoughts of Europe, had 
found no welcome within monastic walls. In these circumstances it was 
difficult to see on what general grounds the monasteries could justify 
their existence. They had come to be merely bodies of wealthy landed 
^proprietors, reaping the harvests which their predecessors had created, 
and no doubt doing charitable deeds among their poorer neighbours, 
but in few if any cases living up to the standard of life prescribed by 
their early founders. Scandal, too, declared that this was not by any 
means the whole case against the monks ; and the condition of the 
smaller monasteries, as proved by an inquiry held under Henry vii. and 
other episcopal visitations, left much to be desired. 

Wolsey, however, proposed to remove the evil by a method at once 
practical and judicious — namely, by dissolving such of the monasteries as 
were shown to be disorderly, and devoting their wealth to Foundation 
the creation of foundations like that of William of Wyke- of Colleges, 
ham, consisting of a school or college in the country which sent on its 
best scholars to a college at the university. He himself set the example 
by obtaining leave to dissolve certain small and unsatisfactory founda- 
tions and establish a school at Ipswich and a college at Oxford, which 
he called Cardinal College, and which still flourishes under the name of 
Christ Church. It is also certain that Wolsey had at one time an idea 
that he might have been made pope, in which case it is possible that he 
might have carried out his reforms on a more extended scale ; but his 
scheme was never realised, for his laborious life as a diplomatist left him 
little time for anything else. 

The new king of France was as ambitious as his predecessor, and being 
a young man of twenty-one, he was far more energetic in carrying out his 
plans. At his accession he found the French entirely driven Policy of 
from Italy, and his first exploit was to reconquer the duchy Francis 
of Milan. Ferdinand and Maximilian had trusted that the Swiss, who 
had been hired by the duke, would have been strong enough to repel the 
French ; but at Marignano, in September 1515, they were completely 
routed by the gallantry of the French horsemen in a battle which deserves 
to be remembered as the last triumph of medieval chivalry. This victory 



400 The Tudors 1516 

gave Francis a European reputation : and the diplomacy of Europe was at 
once called into action to neutralise the new danger, and in this Wolsey 
took his full share. However, in 1516 Ferdinand died, and this event, 
by uniting under Charles of Burgundy Spain, the Indies, Sicily, Naples, 
and the Netherlands, with reversion of the duchy of Austria and of 
Austrian influence in Germany, created an entirely new situation. 
Again Wolsey found the best solution of the European problem in an 
alliance between England and France ; and accordingly it was arranged 
that Henry's only daughter Mary should marry the baby Dauphin, and 
that Tournai should be restored for a sum of 600,000 crowns. Scotland 
also was included in the peace ; and great was Wolsey's triumph when 
the pope, the emperor, and the king of Spain also agreed to join, so that 
England appeared as the negotiator of a universal peace, in which the 
pope and the emperor, who had long been the heads of all European 
combinations, appeared in a secondary position. 

The scheme, however well planned, did not last long, for in January 
1519 the situation was again changed by the death of Maximilian, and 
the necessity for electing a new emperor. Three not 
of the unlikely candidates presented themselves. First, the Elector 

inperor. ^£ Saxony, who represented the idea of Germany for the 
Germans, but who was too weak to give the military aid necessary in 
defending the empire against the Turks. Second, Charles of Spain, who 
was already lord of the Netherlands and king of Naples and Sicily, whose 
elevation would be disliked both by Francis and the pope, but who had 
strong claims as head of the house of Austria and as an efficient aid 
against the Turks. Third, Francis, who, though he had no real claim, 
put himself forward on the plea that Germany might as well be connected 
with France as with the Netherlands and Spain. Between these candi- 
dates Wolsey wished England to be neutral, and to affect to further the 
cause of everybody. But the vanity of Henry viii. prompted him to 
become a candidate, though his chance of election was of course 
Election of infinitesimal. Ultimately the matter was settled by the 
Charles. election of Charles, who became emperor as Charles v. 
The emperor was elected by seven persons — the archbishops of Mainz, 
Koln, and Trier ;i by the Electors of Bohemia, Saxony, Brandenburg, and 
the Palatinate. These chose a king of Germany who had a right to 
demand coronation at the hands of the pope ; and when he had received 
this he was looked on as the successor of the Roman emperor of the 
West. 

Wolsey had now to deal Avith two forces, viz. Charles and Francis, 
1 The French spelling of these towns is Mayence, Cologne, and Treves. 



1527 Henry VIII. 4Q2 

instead of with three as heretofore ; and between the two he determined 
on a policy of neutrality, friendly to each, but committed to neither. 
With this view he negotiated interviews between Henry and Neutr r 
each of the others. In May, Charles visited Henry informally °^ England, 
at Canterbury. On his departure Henry crossed to Calais, and held a 
conference with Francis in such formal state that the site of their interview 
was known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. At Calais 
however, on the road home, he had another interview with cloth of ^^^ 
Charles, so that England was flattered by seeing the two ^°^'^' 
greatest potentates on the continent vieing with each other for the 
friendship of Henry. It was impossible, however, even for Wolsey's 
ingenuity to maintain this position long. War between Charles and 
Francis was inevitable, and England was soon drawn to take a part. At 
first, Henry's relationship to Charles, and the commercial connection 
between the English and the Flemings, inclined him to the side of 
Charles, and Wolsey had perforce to carry out his wishes. Two abortive 
campaigns, however, served to disillusion the English, and Wolsey was 
again able to return to diplomatic methods. It was during this alliance 
with Charles that the possibility of Wolsey being made pope 
seemed for a short time real. Years before, both Francis and the 
and Charles had sought to win his friendship by promising ^P^'^y- 
their influence with the cardinals. Wolsey, however, was too great a man 
to swerve from his duty for any such personal considerations. His 
primary idea was to serve Henry and England, and if he could do so 
more eff'ectively as pope, he was willing to do so ; but he placed himself 
quite in the hands of Henry, and Charles had no serious intention of 
securing his election. After the expedition of 1523 England withdrew 
from active operations ; but it was not till 1525, when Francis had been 
defeated and taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia, that Wolsey was able 
to make much progress towards a third alliance with France, which he 
regarded as the best policy for the country. Independently, moreover, 
of English interest, Wolsey thoroughly appreciated the danger of allow- 
ing such a sovereign as Charles v. to acquire a dominant power in 
Europe, and with some difficulty he persuaded Henry to agree to his 
views, and enter into a treaty with Francis. In 1527 Charles allowed 
his troops, under the renegade duke of Bourbon, to storm Eonie and 
imprison the pope, an act of lawlessness that shocked Europe, and 
confirmed Henry, who was still a pious son of the Church, in the new 
alliance. 

Wolsey, however, was perfectly aware that his policy of peace with 
France was a very dangerous one for himself. From the very beginning of 

2 c 



402 The Tudors 1527 

his career he had had to face the hatred with which the old nobility had 
from time immemorial regarded all upstart advisers of the king. His 
Unpopu- policy, too, was itself distasteful to the nobility, who were 
larity of the strongest exponents of the ancient feeling of hostility to 
Peace France, and who also saw in Wolsey a check on the warlike 

° ^^^' activity of the king. The late expeditions, useless and expen- 
sive, also had made him unpopular with the commons, for though under- 
taken contrary to his policy, Wolsey had to bear all the odium of trying to 
raise money to pay the debts incurred, and in 1523 he had given mortal 
offence both to the House of Commons and the citizens of London by the 
haughtiness of his demands. His magnificence and display, though 
perhaps due in his opinion to his high office, had also tended to give 
offence. Altogether, he was well aware that a crowd of enemies were 
ready to fall on him the moment the king's favour was withdrawn. 

It was in this state of affairs that a new problem arose calculated to 
try Wolsey's skill to the uttermost. Henry and Katharine had been 
The Divorce married eighteen years, but all their sons and daughters had 
Question. ^^^^ \^ infancy except Mary, a delicate girl, who, by the last 
treaty with France, had been affianced to the duke of Orleans. The 
state of the succession, therefore, gave rise to very serious apprehen- 
sions. If Henry died without children, the crown would go, first, to 
Margaret's son, James of Scotland, then a lad of thirteen, and next, to 
her daughter by Angus, and it was doubtful if either of these would be 
accepted in England without dispute. The children of his other sister, 
Mary, were all daughters. On the question of the succession, Henry 
was as apprehensive as his father had been. In 1513 he had put to 
death the duke of Suffolk, and in 1521 he had had the duke of Bucking- 
ham beheaded. The duke was the only son of that earl of Buckingham 
who had perished under Kichard iii., and his direct descent from Edward 
III., through Thomas duke of Gloucester, made him a possible claimant 
for the throne. The duke seems to have talked incautiously of his royal 
descent, and Henry instantly had him tried for treason and put to death. 
In 1525, at the battle of Pavia, fell Eichard, the last male representative 
of the de la Poles ; so that as far as claimants outside the Tudor family 
were concerned Henry might feel secure ; but it was impossible to doubt 
that if the legality of his own marriage were disputed, very difficult times 
would follow. At the time of his marriage, every precaution had been 
taken to procure a Papal Bull providing for every eventuality ; but Henry 
now began to profess to have doubts in his own mind. Undoubtedly his 
apprehensions had been excited by the deaths of his sons : but the actual 
cause which moved him, in 1527, was a passion he had conceived for a 



1528 Henry Fill 4Q3 

young lady, named Anne Boleyn, a granddaughter on the mother's 
side of that earl of Surrey who had defeated the Scots at Flodden, 
whom, as she refused to be his mistress, he determined to make his 
wife. With this view he broached the matter to Wolsey, who saw 
no other course open but to further his master's views to the best of his 
ability. (See page 422.) 

In such matters the popes had long established their authority, and of 
late years had granted divorces to several sovereigns for purely dynastic 
reasons : as, for example, to Louis xii., in order that he 
might marry Anne of Brittany, the widow of Charles viii. Jndthe^^ 
Since the ill-omened precedent of the divorce of John ^^^°'''=^- 
from Avice of Gloucester, England had seen no case of the kind 
in the royal flimily, and it was not likely that such a divorce and 
re-marriage could be carried out without a decided shock to the 
moral sense of Englishmen. In ordinary circumstances, however, it is 
not likely that much difficulty would have been raised by the pope ; 
but at the moment the raising of the question placed the pope in a 
position of great embarrassment. The reigning pope, Clement vii., 
was Giulio de Medici, nephew of Leo x., and his interests were 
divided between those of the papacy and those of his own family. Ever 
since Wolsey had adopted the system of creating alliances, into which 
the pope entered not as a principal but as a subordinate, the papal power 
had seriously diminished, and it had also been subjected to a rude shock 
by the preaching of Luther in Germany, which had led to a virtual 
schism in some districts of that country, and was spreading also to 
Denmark and Scandinavia. In these circumstances the pope was bound 
to walk warily, especially as Katharine was the aunt of the emperor, who 
might easily take mortal offence at any slight put upon his relative. 
Henry, however, was determined to push on. His passion for Anne 
Boleyn grew by being thwarted. Moreover, his relations with Katharine 
had become more strained since the negotiation of the French alliance, 
for she had always been an ardent supporter of her nephew Charles. 

Various embassies were despatched to the pope to entreat him to let 
the case be tried in Wolsey's legatine court, and to confirm beforehand 
the decision there come to ; but Clement refused to let his campeggio's 
hand be forced, and in 1527 sent over Cardinal Campeggio, Mission, 
an Italian well known to the English court, and bishop of Salisbury, 
to act as Wolsey's colleague. Campeggio's movements, however, 
were slow ; and it was not till July 1528 that the court sat, and 
Englishmen beheld for the first time the extraordinary spectacle of 
their king and queen cited by name to appear before a pair of 



404 The Tudors 1528 

cardinals, nominated by a pope whom of late years they had been 

, , learning to despise. Katharine appealed directly to Rome ; 

appeal to but the court overruled her plea, and was beginning to 

°"^^' take evidence, when Campeggio announced that, following 

the practice of the Roman law courts, the court would adjourn till 
October. 

This delay was more than Henry could bear, for it meant, of course, 
indefinite delay ; and his wrath vented itself upon Wolsey, who was in no 

Fall of """^y responsible for what had happened. Accordingly, in 

Wolsey. October 1528 Henry directed his attorney to sue for a writ 
of Prcemunire (see 'p-Age 268) against Wolsey, on the ground that he had 
violated that statute by acting as papal legate. Such an act was most 
unfair, for Wolsey had obtained his legatine authority by Henry's 
special request ; but Henry was now determined to quarrel with the 
pope, and struck his first blow at the papacy through the person of its 
legate. Wolsey well knew that he was ruined, and determined as far as 
possible to propitiate his master by submission. He therefore signed a 
document confessing his guilt in acting as legate, and declaring all his 
goods forfeited to the king, and himself liable to perpetual imprisonment. 
By this obsequiousness Henry was somewhat mollified, and Wolsey 
soon received assurance of pardon. His two best servants, Stephen 
Gardiner, who had acted as his messenger to the pope, and Thomas 
Cromwell, who had given Wolsey valuable if not disinterested assistance 
since his fall, passed into the service of the king. 

After his fall, Wolsey's career was not prolonged. On February 12 
1530 he received a full pardon from the king, but was compelled to 
resign the bishopric of Winchester and the abbey of St. Albans, and to 
live within the archbishopric of York, at a distance from the court. 
There for a few months he occupied himself with his ordinary episcopal 
duties and with dispensing hospitality. Nevertheless it is not easy for 
one who had so long played a great j)art in the world's aifairs to quit the 
stage, and he still continued a clandestine correspondence with Francis, 
which he conducted through his physician, a certain Doctor Augustine, 
who revealed all the letters to Wolsey's enemy, the duke of Norfolk, and 

,,r , , Norfolk laid the matter before the king. The result was 

Wolsey's ° 

Arrest and Wolsey's arrest on November 4, 1530 ; and he was being 
conveyed to London under the charge of the earl of 
Northumberland, when he died at Leicester Abbey on November 30. 
Had he lived to reach London a trial for high treason awaited him. 

With the fall of Wolsey, the government of England by clerics comes 
practically to an end. Since the institution of the office, the chancellor- 



1529 Henry FIJI. 4Q5 

ship had been held, with but few exceptions, by a bishop. Since 1529 
it has been held by five ecclesiastics only. This change marks one of the 
most striking results of the revolution carried out by Henry viii. and 
gives a key to the meaning of one side of the Eeformation movement, 
namely, that it was an uprising of the laity against the over-inter- 
ference of the clergy in civil affairs. 

The new chancellor was a layman, Sir Thomas More, one of the most 
typical men of his time. Son of one of the judges, and born in 1478, he 
made the acquaintance at Oxford of Colet and Erasmus, sir Thomas 
and drank deeply of the critical spirit of the English ^°^^- 
Renaissance. Refined, witty, and humorous, he had a keen eye for 
detecting the abuses of the time, and holding them up to censure in a 
literary form. In modern times his reputation rests chiefly upon his 
Utopia, a Latin work consisting of two parts — the first an exposition of 
the evils of the time, and the second a description of an ideal common- 
wealth. The book illustrates the strength and weakness of More's char- 
acter. In the first part he showed clearly that competition and extravag- 
ance were at the bottom of much of the evil of the time ; in the second 
his proposed reformation was based upon the extirpation of both, which 
meant a complete revolution in human nature. To his contemporaries 
he also became known as an excellent lawyer, who had shown great 
boldness by confronting Wolsey as Speaker of the House of Commons. 
As a practical politician More showed to much less advantage, and a 
speech which he delivered at the opening of parliament, in which he 
attacked Wolsey, is a lasting monument of the errors in taste into 
which a literary man may fall when he tries to adapt his language 
to the standard of politics. 

Henry was now committed to a contest with the papacy, not, how- 
ever, purposely sought by him. He had two objects in view : first, to be 
legally married to Anne Boleyn ; second, to get a decision ^j^^ Divorce 
from the pope which would enable him to be so ; and when P^'^^^^^^j.'^ 
to his surprise the two objects became incompatible, he 
pursued the first at the cost of a break with the papal power. To do so 
was a bold step ; and it is not likely that Henry would have ventured 
upon it had not Wolsey taught him to regard England as a first-rate 
power whose importance was at least as great as the antiquated pre- 
tensions of the empire and the papacy. Henry, however, was well 
aware that in order to successfully defy the pope, he must carry the 
nation with him. One of his first acts, therefore, after the dismissal of 
Wolsey, was to summon a great council of the nobility and citizens of 
London, and to explain to them the reasons of his conduct with regard 



406 TheTudors 1529 

to the divorce. Having thus appealed to public opinion, he summoned 
a parliament to meet on November 3, 1529. 

This parliament, which in some respects may be regarded as the first 
modern j)arliament of England, sat, not like most of its predecessors 
The Reform ^^^ ^ single session of a few weeks, but for repeated sessions 
Parliament, extending over seven years. This tended to give it a cor- 
porate feeling, and it carried out by legislative means what amounted to 
a religious revolution. The Houses were composed as follows : for the 
upper the lay peers numbered about forty, the spiritual peers forty- eight, 
so that the laity were always liable to be outvoted by the clergy, a 
circumstance which had hitherto been greatly to the advantage of the 
king. The lower house was composed of about three hundred members, 
of whom seventy-four sat for counties, and the remainder for cities and 
boroughs, most of which were situated in the south of England ; Wales, 
Chester, and Durham being as yet unrepresented. The mass of the 
members were gentry, citizens, and lawyers, and though the methods by 
which they were chosen were, doubtless, by no means regular, it is un- 
questionable that the two houses represented between them a very fair 
picture of the political life of England, and of the ideas of all those classes 
who presumed to have a voice in the affairs of the country. In appealing 
to such a body as this for support in his quarrel Avith the pope, Henry 
knew that he had nothing t6 fear. The average English layman cared little 
or nothing for papal authority, and, indeed, regarded it with aversion ; 
while he eagerly welcomed an opportunity of attacking the clerical 
abuses and cutting down ecclesiastical revenues, which he would have 
done any time since the days of Wyclif and Chaucer, had it not been 
for the circumstance that the alliance between the king and the upper 
clergy had formed a protection for the Church. 

In using the word Reformation it is extremely important to realise 

the many-sidedness of the movement, and not to use it in too narrow a 

sense. Roughly speaking, the English ecclesiastical reforma- 

the ternf ° ^^0^ of the sixteenth century proceeded along three lines. 

J^eforma- (i) The Separation of the Church of England from the 
Church of Rome. This was mainly Henry's affair, and 
arose out of the divorce, and involved a reconstitution of the church 
government to suit the new state of affiiirs. (2) The reform of 
abuses in the English Church, mainly as they affected the laity, 
and including the dissolution of the monasteries. (3) The changes in 
doctrine which ultimately distinguished the reformed Church of England 
from the Church of Rome. Of these, during the reign of Henry viii., 
the first and second engrossed the attention of the nation, the third was 



1529 Henry VIII. 4O7 

hardly dealt with at all ; but, on the other hand, it forms the principal 

object of interest during the reigns of Edward vi. and Elizabeth. 

The Church of southern England had been connected with the Church 

of Rome since the landing of St. Augustine in 597, and of northern 

England since the Synod of Whitby in 664 : and in course n 

° _ " ' v^onnection 

of time this connection had taken an organised form, with Rome. 
First, the pope was universally acknowledged as the head of the Western 
Church, of which the English Church was a branch. Second, there had 
grown up a system of appeals from the ecclesiastical courts of England 
to the papal court at Rome. The monks were great litigants, and 
although of late years the system had been disliked because it took 
money out of the country for no return, and had been strictly prohibited 
by the parliaments of Edward in. and Richard 11. in the Acts of 
Praemunire, the practice had still gone on. Third, a system of taxa- 
tion had also grown up. A hearth tax of a penny, known as Peter's 
Pence, had been paid almost from time immemorial ; and, since the 
time of Henry in., the clergy had had to pay to the pope the first 
year's income of all ecclesiastical preferments, and an income tax 
of two shillings in the pound afterwards. The income, however, had 
been valued once for all in 1291, and so was often below the real 
value of the living. Fourth, the pope had acquired for himself since 
1215 a most unpopular influence in the disposal of bishoprics and other 
preferments, in spite of the Act of Provisors. Fifth, almost the whole 
of the monastic orders were directly under the authority of the pope, and 
owed no obedience to the bishop of the diocese. Sixth, the authority of 
the pope was represented by a legate, sometimes sent over for a special 
purpose, but usually one of the English bishops like Morton or Wolsey. 
All these links Henry gradually swept away, but without in the least 
intending to deviate from the principles of the Catholic Church. 

In 1528 Wolsey had been compelled to confess that he had incurred 
the penalties of the Act of Proemunire by accepting and exercising the 
legatine authority. Directly after Wolsey's death Henry ^^^^^ 

determined to exact from the clergy who had acknowledged enforces 

"•^ TIT, Prsemunire. 

Wolsey's authority a similar confession. Accordingly lie 

compelled the convocations of Canterbury and York not only to admit that 

their goods were forfeited to the king but that they them- ^^^ ^^^^^ 

selves were liable to be imprisoned at the king's pleasure, cations 

He then exacted from them a fine of Jl 18,000— consider- j^^^^ Henry 

ably over a million of our money— and compelled them l^^l^J^^^ 

to address him as ' supreme head of the church and clergy so 

far as the law of Christ would allow.' After obtaining this concession 



408 The Tudors 1529 

from the clergy, Henry took no further steps for some time in the 

direction of separation, and, indeed, continued his negotiations with the 

pope for several years longer. 

Meanwhile, parliament was engaged in reforming the discipline of the 

Church, and removing those abuses which pressed most heavily on the 

r c laity. In a petition presented to the king at the meeting 

Church of parliament in 1529, these had been defined as the 

obligation of the laity to obey the canon law, the hardships 

caused by ecclesiastical summonses, especially to the poor, the cost of 

Ecclesias- obtaining probate of wills, and excessive fees, and the pre- 

tical courts, sentation of minors to livings. Accordingly in the first session 

the fines and fees connected with the probate of wills were regulated, the 

practice of seizing as a ' mortuary ' the best chattel of a dead 
Mortuaries. -, -, , ii,i.i ii-it 

man, and the upmost cloth ' which covered his body, was 

abolished ; and, by another act, no clergyman was allowed to buy and sell 

for profit, or to hold more than four benefices, and these of 

small value. In the session of 1532, benefit of clergy was 

abolished for all under the rank of deacons, and the fees of the archbishop's 

Benefit of court of arches were reduced. Lands could no longer be 

clergy. saddled with the obligation of paying for masses for the dead 
for more than twenty years ; and at the same time the clergy were com- 
pelled to submit the existing canon law to a mixed commission of laymen 
and ecclesiastics, and to make no new canons without the king's consent. 
In carrying these reforms the House of Commons had been practically 
unanimous, but they were only agreed to with reluctance by the clerical 
majority in the House of Lords. 

During these series of reforms, the chancellorship had been held by 
Sir Thomas More, whose tenure of office is chiefly notable for his per- 
secution of the reformers. It is one of the problems of 

The re- 

ligious Re- the Reformation period how far. any connection can be 

formation traced between the Lollards of the fifteenth century and the 

begun. *' 

Protestants of the sixteenth ; but it is generally considered 
that the connection, if any, was slight, and that the origin of the English 
movement must be looked for in Germany. 

Of its leaders the most notable was William Tyndal, born in 1484, 
who, after studying at Oxford and Cambridge, conceived the idea of 
translating the New Testament, and made a proposal to 
do so to the bishop of London, Tunstall, Meeting no en- 
couragement, however, he went to the continent and joined Luther, and 
under his direction translated the epistles and gospels, printed 3000 
copies of his work, and sent them over to England. There they seem 



1532 Henry VIII. 4qq 

to have been received by an ' association of Christian brothers,' formed 
in London the same year, who distributed them and other relifrious 
works about the country, sowing everywhere the seeds of the Eeforma- 
tion. The bishops were seriously alarmed ; they disapproved of Tyndal's 
translation, but so long as Wolsey continued in power, no personal ill 
usage was inflicted on the ' Christian brothers.' Wolsey himself was 
not inclined to severity, and under him the most serious punishment for 
heresy consisted in carrying a fagot in procession, and in aiding to burn 
heretical books. But after his fall. Sir Thomas More took up the 
business of extirpating heresy with vigour, perhaps with the idea of 
showing that the reform of church discipline was perfectly consistent 
with an unflinching persecution of heresy. More, before becoming 
chancellor, had taken part in a controversy with some of the new thinkers, 
and had answered a tract called ' The Supplication of Beggars,' in which 
the doctrine of purgatory was ridiculed, by another called ' The Supplica- 
tion of Souls,' and had also engaged in disputes with Tyndal More's 
and other Protestants. He now brought the full force of the Persecution, 
law to bear upon his old antagonists, and burnings of heretics at Smith- 
field became numerous. For some time, however. More had been dis- 
satisfied with the way in which events were tending, and particularly 
with the proposed divorce, and in May 1532 he resigned his post as 
chancellor. 

While parliament had been reforming the abuses of the Church, and 
More had been burning the heretics, Henry had never ceased to negotiate 
with the pope on the subject of his divorce, and had brought The Divorce 
every means to bear to influence the papal decision in his negotiations, 
favour. Among these was a plan devised by Thomas Cranmer, a Cam- 
bridge scholar. Cranmer was the son of a Nottinghamshire gentleman, 
born in 1484. He had been a fellow of Jesus College, and cranmer 
afterwards chaplain to Lord Rochfort and tutor to Anne |jegestsan 
Boleyn. Chancing to meet Gardiner, bishop of Win- the Univer- 
chester, he suggested that the king should take the opinion 
of the universities. ' This man has got the right sow by the ear,' said 
Henry when he heard of the plan ; and commissioners were immediately 
sent to all the universities of Europe to obtain their opinion on the 
question. Whether the pope was competent to allow a man to marry his 
deceased brother's widow ? The opinions might have been of some value 
if there had been any pretence of freedom ; but as each sovereign used 
all his influence to control the decision of the universities under his 
power, they were quite valueless, and merely added to the difficulties 
of the situation. In this way 'the king's matter' dragged on for three 



410 The Tudors 1532 

years without any sign of being nearer conclusion. It had now been in 
agitation at least six years, and neither Henry nor England was pre- 
pared to wait indefinitely. Accordingly in 1532, Henry, in order to show 
the pope the pecuniary effect of a breach with England, allowed parlia- 
Suspension ™^^* *^ P^^^ ^^ ^^^ suspending the payment of annates, 
of Annates, firstfruits, and Peter's Pence, but giving Henry the power 

Firstfruits, ' . • , , r. mi • 

and Peter's to put the act mto Operation when he saw fit. This was 
the first step taken by parliament towards the separation 
from Rome. The same year Henry, accompanied by Anne Boleyn, paid 
a visit to Francis, who probably advised him to cut the diplomatic knot 
by marrying Anne, and leaving the pope to do his worst. This advice 
Henry took ; and though the actual day of the marriage is not known, it 
is certain that some time between November 1532 and January 1533, 
the marriage was privately celebrated. Fortunately for Henry, Arch- 
bishop Warham had died during the year, and Henry replaced him by 
Thomas Cranmer, on whose goodwill he could rely. Accordingly, at the 
Appeal to beginning of 1533, parliament passed an act abolishing 

Rome appeals to Rome in all questions of marriage or other sub- 

abolished. . ^ ^ ° . 

jects that came before the ecclesiastical courts. This made 

the archbishop's court supreme, and Cranmer was immediately directed 

to try the question of the legality of the king's first marriage. This was 

f.^ „, done at a court held at Dunstable early in 1533. Katharine 

Cranmer -^ 

declares refused to plead, and Cranmer thereupon, basing his 
marriage decision on the opinion of the universities, declared 
^^^ ■ the marriage illegal. Henry's marriage with Anne was 
immediately made public, and on Whitsunday she was crowned at 
Westminster with the utmost magnificence. When she became queen, 
Anne was twenty-six years of age. Her portraits diff'er very much, but 
leave the impression that she was of dark complexion, with eyes of 
wonderful meaning and vivacity, and she had long black hair of exquisite 
softness. In character Anne must have been greatly wanting in refine- 
ment. The position she had occupied for years with regard to the late 
queen was most ofi'ensive, and her bearing to others besides Katharine 
clearly shows an insolence of behaviour which ultimately raised up bitter 
enemies against her. The magnificent ceremony of the coronation was 
well designed to enlist the feelings of the people in favour of the new 
queen. 

In September the queen bore a child, afterwards the great Elizabeth, 

T-,. ^ ., a-iid an Act of Succession was then passed settling the 
Elizabeth. ^ ° 

crown on the children of Henry and Anne. The Succession 
Act was carefully worded, so as to off'end as little as possible the friends 



1532 Henry VIII. ^\\ 

of Queen Katharine ; but Sir Thomas More and Fisher, bishop of 
Kochester, refused to take an oath to abide by it, and were both sent 
to the Tower. The coronation of the queen, the birth of jhe Succes- 
Elizabeth, and the Act of Succession naturally compelled ^^°" ^'^*- 
the pope to act. Henry was threatened with excommunication, and 
probably nothing but the distracted condition of his own affairs prevented 
the emperor from undertaking a crusade on behalf of his aunt. All hope 
of reconciliation rapidly vanished, and in 1534 Henry had The Act of 
the Act of Supremacy passed. This Act dropped the reser- Supremacy, 
vations made by convocation in 1530, but at the same time declared that 
the king and parliament did not intend by it ' to decline or vary from 
the congregation of Christ's Church in any thing concerning the very 
articles of the Catholic faith of Christendom, and in any other things 
declared by Scripture, and the word of God.' After this Act the king 
was spoken of as ' supreme head on earth, under God, of the Church of 
England.' 

The famous Act of Supremacy brought to a close the series of measures 
which separated the Church of England from the Church of Eome. By 
the rigid enforcement of the Act of Praemunire the pope ^ 

^ . . ^ Separation 

had been deprived, since Wolsey's fall, of his power of inter- from Rome 
fering in the internal affairs of the English Church ; by the ^°^'^ 
Act of 1532 all payments to Kome had been stopped ; in 1533 
appeals had been prohibited, and the Act of 1534 completed the series. 
Some regulations, however, were necessary for the new order of things. 
The authority of the pope was divided between the king and the arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, and in 1535 a proclamation was issued naming 
Cromwell vicar-general. Meanwhile, the annates and firstfruits of the 
clergy were collected as usual, but the king reserved them for his own 
use, possibly at first with the idea of the payment being resumed, but 
afterwards as a regular source of income. The pope was also excluded 
from all voice in the election of bishops (see page 268). The election 
Since the beginning of the fifteenth century the wishes of of Bishops, 
both king and pope had guided the election, sometimes one sometimes 
the other being the more influential ; but henceforward the king's will 
alone was law, and the penalties of Frmnunire were denounced against 
the whole chapter unless a majority of the members voted for the 
king's nominee. There has never yet been an instance of refusal. In 
1535 all the bishops were suspended and restored by Henry, so that the 
real meaning of his supremacy might be clear to everybody. 

As the Act of Supremacy formed the central part of one side of the 
Eeformation, the reception it received formed a test by whicli Henry 



412 The Tudors 1532 

could judge of the loyalty of his subjects. While it was under considera- 
tion he had taken great pains to influence public opinion. Bishops 
Reception of ''^^^ friars were compelled to preach the view, ' that the 
the Act. bishop of Kome hath no more power in England than 

any other foreign bishop.' Mayors and others in authority were 
ordered to express the same sentiments at table, and on all public 
occasions. A circular was even sent to the justices of the peace 
ordering them to see that the clergy eradicated ' the memory of the 
pope,' 'not coldly or feignedly.' On the whole, the reception of the Act 
was favourable. Indeed, it seems to have met with remarkably little 
opposition ; to the average Englishman it mattered little w'hether the 
officials of the church looked to the king or to Rome for their head, 
and even the bishops and abbots accepted the change for the most part 
without opposition. 

Three notable exceptions, however, demanded the attention of the 
government. The monks of the London Charter House, Fisher, bishop of 
Rochester, and Sir Thomas More were known to be hostile to 
thusians. the supremacy, and as they represented respectively the 
Fisher most pious of the monastic orders, the most upright and 
God-fearing of the existing prelates, and the spirit of lay 
culture, it Avas impossible for the government to ignore an 
opposition that was certain to be contagious. Fisher had been confessor 
to Lady Margaret, the mother of Henry vii., and had incited her to 
found St. John's and Christ's Colleges at Cambridge, and the Lady 
Margaret professorships of divinity. He was in high favour at Rome, 
and when the news of his arrest reached the pope, a cardinal's hat was 
foolishly bestowed upon him to the great indignation of Henry. Osten- 
sibly Fisher's only fault was his reluctance to accept the supremacy, 
but it is certain that he had written to the pope advising an armed 
invasion of England — an act of undoubted treason. In the case of all 
these malcontents Henry would certainly have been glad to find a means 
of mercy, but their firmness was inexhaustible, and eventually ten of the 
Charter House monks were hanged. Fisher w^as beheaded on the 22nd 
June 1535, and More on July 6 of the same year. 

In all these proceedings Henry's right-hand man had been Wolsey's 
old servant, Cromwell. Thomas Cromwell, the first great English 
Thomas Secretary of state, is believed to have been born about 
Cromwell. 1485^ and was the son of a smaU ironmaster at Putney. 
He was brought up as an attorney and an accountant, but left England 
in 1504, and for some time took part in the wars in Italy. After 
engaging in business in Antwerp he returned to England and went 



1535 Henry VIII. ^23 

into business in London, combining attorney's work with money- 
lending and speculation in wool. There he attracted the attention 
of Wolsey, and was appointed by him to act as collector of revenues 
in the diocese of York, and was also employed in the dissohition 
of those monasteries whose property was transferred to Cardinal College. 
He also made his mark in the parliament of 1523. After Wolsey's fall 
he attached himself to Henry, who thoroughly appreciated his ability^ 
and for ten years he was the most influential layman in England in 
everything that concerned ecclesiastical matters. 

Side by side with Cromwell stood Hugh Latimer, the son of a 
yeoman farmer of Leicestershire who fought at Blackheath. At four- 
teen Latimer went to Cambridge, and at nineteen became „ 
fellow of Clare Hall, and began his controversial life by Latimer, 
writing against Melanchthon. In 1520, however, he began to attack the 
abuses of the Church as he saw them in England, and as he was an able 
and fearless preacher he soon began to attract attention. The bishop of 
Ely tried to silence him ; but Wolsey, liking Latimer's boldness, gave 
him full licence to preach. After Wolsey's fall, Latimer was fortunate 
in securing a patron in Henry who, appreciating the humour and bold- 
ness of his sermons, made him his chaplain, protected him in 1532 
when the bishops tried to entrap him into a confession of heresy, and in 
1535 made him bishop of Worcester. 

The king's second marriage did not turn out well. The birth of an 
heir was anxiously looked for, and, unfortunately, of Anne's three children 
the two boys were born dead. The last died on the 29th paUofAnne 
of January 1535, and Henry was bitterly disai^pointed. Boleyn. 
Meanwhile, a strong party against Anne had been growing up ; she was 
disliked by the old nobility because of her insolence, and by the Spanish 
party as representing the alliance with France. Her friendliness to the 
Protestants secured her the hatred of the orthodox ; and when Queen 
Katharine died in January 1535, it was seriously asserted that Anne 
had procured her removal by poison. Suddenly, however, in April 1535, 
it was rumoured that she had been accused of adultery, and she and five 
gentlemen were arrested. Anne was tried by her peers, the gentlemen 
by various juries, but all were found guilty and put to death. The 
whole affair remains a mystery, and it is impossible to say whether Anne 
was guilty of the most abominable conduct, or whether she was tlie 
victim of a conspiracy ; it is, however, certain that Henry believed the 
evidence against her. Anne's tragic death only made the succession 
question more complicated still ; but now that she and Katharine were 
both dead, Henry was free to contract a marriage of undoubted legality, 



414 The Tudors 1535 

and accordingly within a few days he married Jane Seymour, by 

Jane whom in 153G he had a son, Edward. Unluckily the 

Seymour, queen died within a few days of his birth, and Henry 

remained unmarried for four years. 

We saw that Wolsey had appreciated the necessity of reforming the 

monasteries. The abolition of the papal authority in England had 

The Mon- brought the monks under the direct jurisdiction of the 

asteries. king, and probably no class resented the change which had 

taken place more than the religious orders, or were more willing to 

engage in seditious resistance. Besides this, the necessity for monastic 

reform had been recognised for years. Morton, Warham, and Wolsey 

had each carried out visitations which revealed widespread corruption, 

but had been unable to cope with it effectively. Accordingly, in 1535, 

. . Henry through Cromwell issued a commission to Legh, Ley- 
Commission . « ) j 

of inspec- ton, and Ap Eice to inspect the monasteries. The commis- 
sioners were young and energetic men, with few scruples, 
and they did their work thoroughly ; and when parliament met in 1536, 
their report, known as the Black Book of the Monasteries, was laid on the 
table of the House of Commons. As all procurable copies of this were 
destroyed under Queen Mary, the report itself has not come down to us ; 
but the letters of the commissioners have been preserved, and these, 
coupled with the reports of previous visitations, leave no room for doubt 
as to the condition of the religious houses. The larger seem as a whole to 
have been fairly well conducted, though, usually, their financial condition 
was very bad ; but some of the smaller houses were in a terrible state, and, 
undoubtedly, were the abodes of abominable vices. The commissioners 
themselves had done a good deal by way of reform ; they had allowed all 
monks under twenty-four, and nuns under twenty-one, who wished to 
leave the abbeys to do so, and they had everywhere insisted that those 
who remained should confine themselves to their monasteries and should 
obey the strict rules of their order. However, when the full report was 
laid before parliament, and the widespread nature of the evil appeared, 
the members concluded that in the case of the smaller monasteries reform 
was hopeless, and with the exception of about thirty abbeys, which had 
been reported free from stain, all the religious houses having 
monasteries an income less than £200 a year — to the number of 376 — 
were dissolved, and theii" incomes given to the king. The 
inmates were allowed either to migrate to a larger monastery or to go 
free, with a pension about equivalent to the income of an ordinary parish 
priest. At that date there was no idea of touching the greater monas- 
teries, though Stokesley, bishop of London, remarked that 'the putrified 



1536 Henry VIII . 415 

old oaks must soon follow.' The houses affected by this change were 
chiefly Benedictine, Cluniac, and Cistercian. The Friaries also were 
included. 

It was not to be expected that Henry's proceedings would fail to rouse 
a strong opposition. The old Spanish party, attached to Katharine and 
the imperial alliance, were naturally aggrieved. The ecclesi- Rise of 
astical changes had aroused a very bitter feeling among the opposition, 
lower clergy, while the dissolution of the monasteries produced a fresh 
crop of malcontents. The first open attempt at spreading disaft'ection 
was connected with the celebrated Nun of Kent. Elizabeth The Nun of 
Barton was a servant girl, subject to fits, who on the strength ^^"*- 
of some religious ravings had been made a sort of oracle and admitted 
into a monastery. Her prophecies had been sent to Wolsey, and she had 
been seriously examined, at one time or another, by Fisher and Sir 
Thomas More. At length it became clear that she was being used as 
the tool of some priests, who taught her to denounce the divorce and the 
separation from Kome. On being examined by Cromwell she made a 
confession of imposture, and she and her confederates were put to death 
in 1534. Throughout 1535 a large amount of intrigue was going on, 
connected with a proposed invasion of England by the emperor, to which 
no less than fifteen noblemen were said to have given their consent. The 
death of Katharine, in January 1536, put a stop to this ; but the spirit 
of disaffection was still widespread, and wanted nothing but a spark to 
cause a considerable conflagration. 

Discontent was particularly strong in the northern counties of England. 
In those days the difference between the England north of the Trent and 
south of it was so marked as to constitute them almost Discontent 
two diff'erent countries. The northerners, hardened by the '" *^^ "°'"*^- 
savage experiences of the Scottish wars and closely attached to the great 
baronial families, regarded the southerners with aversion, and were as 
ready for invasion and pillage as they had been in the Wars of the Ptoses. 
They had, moreover, special causes of grievance. The monasteries were 
much more popular in the north, where they were less out of date than 
in the south. Much annoyance had lately been caused by the hearing 
in London of suits which used to be settled in their own country. The 
Statute of Uses had caused serious inconvenience by practically making 
it impossible for landowners to make charges upon their estates for the 
benefit of their younger sons and daughters. To the nobles it seemed 
disgraceful that an upstart like Cromwell should be called to sit among 
the ancient barons of the realm. Lastly, the substitution of sheep-farming 
for agriculture, due to the great rise in the price of wool, had caused much 



416 The Tudors 1536 

hardship among the poorer classes by diminishing the demand for labour 
and by stimulating the enclosure of commons. Nobles, gentry, and com- 
monalty, therefore, had each their special grievance, and it was a question 
whether they could be brought to act in common against the government. 
Besides these real grievances all sorts of rumours were afloat. Cromwell's 
excellent plan of parish registers was represented as the design for levy- 
ing taxation on weddings and christenings, and it was said that no man 
would be allowed to eat meat in his house without paying a duty to the 
king. The result of all these causes of sedition was a series of outbreaks 
which, beginning in Lincolnshire, spread thence through Yorkshire to 
Cumberland, and kept the north in commotion from the beginning of 
October 1536 till February 1537. 

In Lincolnshire the outbreak was almost confined to the clergy and 

commons. It had no organisation ; and though at one time many thousand 

o tbr k ™®^ ^^^^ ^^ arms, the rebel host melted away before the 

in Lincoln- advance of the duke of SuflTolk. In Yorkshire it was much 

shire 

more formidable, and took the name of the Pilgrimage of 
Grace. The leaders were men of good family. Eobert Aske, its chief 
organiser, was a cousin of the earl of Cumberland, and his chief sup- 
Th p-i porters were Lord Darcy, an excellent soldier, and Sir John 
grimage of Constable, and they were supported by most of the best 
families of the north. Their plans were well laid, and they 
advanced with a picked force to Doncaster, demanding that the religious 
houses should be restored, that villein blood should be removed from the 
privy council, and that heretic bishops should be deprived and punished. 
There they found the river Don guarded by the duke of Norfolk, with 
a much inferior force. Aske, however, wished, if possible, to avoid 
bloodshed ; and Henry, finding it necessary to temporise, authorised 
Norfolk to grant a full pardon to the rebels, and to promise a parliament 
at York. The armies then disbanded, and Henry used all his influence 
to regain the goodwill of the gentry, so as to divide his opponents. 
Meanwhile, a new insurrection had broken out in Cumberland and West- 
morland, where the rebels attacked Carlisle ; and in Yorkshire the 
spread of the belief that, after all, the king had deceived them, caused 
fresh trouble. Of this Henry took advantage to arrest Aske and the 
other leaders. At their trial it was shown that they still had in their 
hands artillery which belonged to the king, and accordingly they were 
convicted of treason. Aske, Darcy, Constable, four abbots — those of 
Fountains, Jervaulx, Barlings, and Sawley — and a few of the other 
leaders suffered death, but except in Cumberland and Westmorland the 
rebels were treated with lenity. The crisis was a most severe one, 



1539 Henry VII I. 4] 7 

and had the rebels been supported by the emperor, or had they been 
able to put at their head a plausible claimant to the crown, the result 
might have been very different. As it was, little or nothing was effected ; 
no parliament was held at York, and the chief permanent result was the 
establishment of the council of the north, which was a com- The council 
mittee of the privy council, and sat for four months of the °^ *^^ north, 
year at York, Hull, Newcastle, and Durham for the purpose of trying 
cases which would otherwise have been taken to London. The president 
of the court acted as the king's representative in the north, and had a 
general responsibility for its government. The Statute of statute 
Uses was still nominally enforced, but in practice the court of Uses, 
of chancery found means to recognise the duties of trustees, and so 
removed the grievance complained of. 

The Pilgrimage of Grace, as the rebels called their movement, served 
rather to accelerate than retard the dissolution of the monasteries. 
Consciousness of treason made many of the inmates anxious to con- 
ciliate the king ; the irksomeness of the stricter life which the commis- 
sioners had enforced made their condition distasteful, and ^ ^ r 

' Surrender of 

probably with the superior monks the liberal provision made the greater 

f,,. - ^ 1 •, • n A. J.- monasteries, 

by the kmg may have had its influence. At any rate, in 

1536 the larger abbeys began, one after another, to surrender their 
property to the king. The first large house to surrender was Furness. 
Other monasteries were cajoled into making what they believed to be 
merely a formal surrender of their property. In some cases the property 
of a monastery was most tyrannically forfeited on account of the treason 
of the abbot ; but in one way or another, before 1539, all had put them- 
selves at the king's disposal. The monks were treated with great liberality. 
At Tewkesbury the abbot received over ^250 a year, the prior ^16, and 
the monks variable amounts ranging from ^13 to £6, 13s. 4d., which 
may be reckoned at about fifteen times the amount in modern coinage 
The goods and chattels of the abbeys were sold, but, except the lead, 
produced very little ; the lands passed into the hands of the king. 

The acquisition of such an enormous amount of property— for the 
monastic revenues were worth in our money i'6,500,000— -gave an immense 
opportunity. Some wished to use it for the purpose of pj^p^gai of 
increasing the number of bishoprics and the foundation of the Abbey 

1 • j?x i- 1 lands, 

colleges and schools; others, for the reduction ot taxation ana 

the fortification of the coast. Henry, however, saw that the most 
practical use to make of it was to use it as a fnnd for securing a party 
for the Eeformation ; and the main part of the land was sold at a low 
price either to the neighbouring proprietors or to Henry's friends at 

2d 



418 The Tudor s 1539 

court. Six new bishoprics were created — those of Westminster, Oxford, 
Chester, Gloucester, Bristol, and Peterborough ; and six great Benedic- 
tine monasteries were refounded as secular chapters for these sees. The 
old cathedral monasteries, such as Christ Church, Canterbury, were 
turned into secular foundations with a dean and canons. Some 
money was spent on the fortification of the coast. The vast 
majority, however, of the land passed into the hands of individuals 
— some of it in huge estates with which Henry and his successors 
rewarded the services of the Eussells, Seymours, Dudleys, Cavendishes, 
and Cecils, but most of it in smaller portions — so that within twenty 
years it was stated that forty thousand families were interested in 
the retention of the abbey lands. The effect of this policy was to 
identify the Eeformation with the material interests of an important 
section of the community, and to erect a most formidable barrier against 
any return to the old ways. The results of the dissolution of the monas- 
teries were many and various ; the removal of the abbots 
of the Dis- from the House of Lords had the effect of placing the 
so u ion. spiritual peers in a permanent minority, and so of increasing 

the relative importance of that house. The distribution of the monastic 
property to laymen created a set of landlords more grasping if more 
active than their predecessors, and increased the evils of pasturage and 
enclosure. At the same time, the abolition of the monasteries deprived 
the poor and sick of the neighbourhood of a charity to which they had 
grown accustomed, so aggravating an evil which had already assumed 
serious proportions. To the reformers, however, the fall of the 
monasteries appeared an unmixed blessing ; as Spenser, the Puritan poet 
of the century, wrote : ' The thirsty land drank up his blood, his corse 
ay on the strand.' 

Though Charles had given no assistance to the Pilgrimage of Grace, 
the fear of an invasion from the Netherlands had been by no means 
Conspiracy removed, and in 1538 the government became aware of a 
of the Poles. ^Qst formidable conspiracy. The centre of this movement 
was Eeginald Pole, the. second son of Margaret, countess of Salisbury 
and daughter of the duke of Clarence, who had married Sir E. Pole. 
Eeginald Pole had been a great favourite of Henry viii., and had received 
a deanery and several canonries before he was nineteen. At first he 
favoured the divorce, but afterwards wrote a pamphlet against it, and a 
Latin treatise on ecclesiastical unity; for which the pope made him a 
cardinal and Henry had him attainted. In 1536 Pole was sent to the 
Netherlands with a commission from the pope calling on Charles to 
invade England. The natural result of Pole's conduct was to throw 



1539 Henry Fill. 419 

suspicion upon his relations. His elder brother, Henry, Lord Montague, 
had married a daughter of Lord Abergavenny, a member of the Neville 
family, and was on terms of close intimacy with Henry Courtqnay, 
marquis of Exeter, the son of Katharine, daughter of Edward iv. The 
power of the marquis of Exeter in the west was as great as that of the 
Howards in Norfolk, or the Percies in Northumberland, and this 
attempt to bring together the Nevilles, the Courtenays, and the line of 
Edward iv., pointed to a very real danger in case of invasion. Cromwell, 
however, was well prepared ; Geoffrey Pole, Keginald's younger brother, 
turned traitor, and on his evidence the marquis of Exeter and Lord 
Montague were found guilty of treason and beheaded in 1539. The 
countess of Salisbury also was implicated and sent to the Tower, but 
was not tried and put to death till 1541.^ 

Meanwhile, as might have been expected, the ecclesiastical changes 
which had been made, and the religious ferment on the continent, were 
rapidly dividing England into two sections — those who. Religious 
while gladly accepting the separation from Kome, were divisions, 
determined to preserve the orthodox belief, and those who were prepared 
to go further in the direction of reform. At the head of the former party 
were Norfolk, Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, and Bonner, bishop of 
London ; while the other was led by Cranmer and Latimer. Henry was 
in favour of the former so far as doctrine was concerned, but agreed with 
the latter in pushing forward a translation of the Bible, and Translation 
Cromwell took much the same line. All copies of Tyndal's °^^^^ ^'^^^^ 
Bible had been as far as possible destroyed ; but in 1534 Cranmer per- 
suaded convocation to authorise a revision of it. Little progress, how- 
ever, was made ; so Cromwell employed Miles Coverdale, who was then 
residing in Germany, to make a new translation, which he completed in 
1535, with the advice and approval of Tyndal. In 1536 Tyndal fell into 
the hands of the Inquisition and was burnt, but in 1537 John Kogers 

1 THE POLES. 
George, Duke of Clarence, = Isabel Neville, daughter of the 
brother of Edward iv. , Earl of Warwick, 

d. 1478. d. 1477. 



Margaret, = Sir Kichard Pole. Edward Plantagenet, 



Countess of Salisbury, 
executed 1541 



Earl of Warwick, 
executed 1499. 



Henry Pole, Reginald, Geoffrey. 

Lord Montacute, Archbishop of Canterbury, 

executed 1539. and Cardinal, d. 1558. 



420 The Tudors 1539 

put together all Tyndal's work, "whicli included the whole of the New 
Testament, and the Old Testament from Genesis to the Second Book of 
Chronicles, giving the remainder in Coverdale's translation. This he 
published under the assumed name of Matthew, and Cromwell persuaded 
the king to give it his licence. Cranmer wrote a preface for it, and in 
1539 it was placed in churches as ' The Great Bible.' In the same year 
Henry allowed private persons to have Bibles, and new editions were 
quickly sold. 

If the translation of the Bible was a success for the reforming party, 
the Act of the Six Articles was a triumph for their opponents. In 1539 
Act of the a new parliament met, and at once took into consideration 
Six Articles, ^^le condition of religious belief. The laity at this date were 
extremely sensitive to any imputation of heresy, and, led by the duke of 
Norfolk, the lords, in spite of some opposition from Cranmer and Latimer, 
agreed upon an Act which imposed upon the nation the belief and practice 
of Six Articles of Catholic doctrine, and it passed the lower house by 
acclamation. The Act asserted (1) truth of Transubstantiation ; (2) that 
communion in both kinds was not necessary ; (3) that priests might not 
marry ; (4) that vows of chastity ought to be observed ; (5) that private 
masses ought to be continued ; (6) that auricular confession must be 
retained. The penalty for denying the first was death ; for the rest, 
forfeiture of property for the first ofi'ence, death for the second. Henry 
had suggested that in every case a written statement of his heresy should 
be given to the accused before trial, and that the trial should take place 
in open court, but these modifications were not accepted. The passing 
of this Act was a great blow to the advanced party, and Latimer, the most 
fearless among them, at once resigned his see. There is little doubt, 
however, that it exactly represented the position of the average English- 
man who wished to see the Church of England separated from Eome, but 
retaining the old faith unaltered. On July 30, 1540, a 
Prcftestants typical execution took place. Three priests, Abel, Feather- 
C^thoHcs^" stone, and Powel, attainted by parliament as traitors for 
denying the royal supremacy, and three Protestants, Barnes, 
Gerard, and Jerome, also attainted by parliament for heresies ' too long 
to be repeated,' were dragged in pairs on hurdles to Smithfield and there 
put to death. 

Ever since the Reformation became the question of the day a division 
had arisen in foreign politics similar to that which had existed on religious 

Foreign matters. While the advanced reformers wished to connect 

Politics. England with the general reforming movement on the con- 
tinent, their opponents were desirous of holding aloof. In 1530 the German 



1540 Henry Fill, 42i 

reformers had formed the League of Schmalkalden for mutual defence- and 
in 1539 it was hoped that the confederates might form an alliance with 
Francis. If Henry joined this, all danger of invasion by the emperor 
would be removed, and Cromwell strongly urged Henry to do so. The 
king agreed, and it was arranged that the alliance should be Anne of 
cemented by a marriage with Anne of Cleves, the sister of Aleves, 
the duke of Cleves, whose territory occupied a most important position 
on the lower Rhine, linking the Protestant states of Germany with 
France and the Netherlands. Unfortunately the negotiations for the 
marriage had hardly been completed when the scheme for a general 
alliance broke down. Nevertheless Henry determined to fulfil his en- 
gagement ; and, as Anne had been represented to him as a beautiful girl, 
he looked forward to the marriage with pleasure. However, when Anne 
arrived she turned out to be extraordinarily plain ; and though Henry 
went through the marriage ceremony, he was soon determined on a 
divorce. This was arranged in a way most disgraceful to the clergy ; but 
Anne herself seems to have readily acquiesced in the loss of her husband 
in return for a pension, and lived happily afterwards in England for 
many years. 

The failure of the alliance and the king's disgust with his marriage were 
fatal to Cromwell. For some time his power had been growing more pre- 
carious. By the old nobility he was detested with a hatred paii of 
worse than that with which they had regarded Wolsey ; and Cromwell, 
at the very first symptom of the king's withdrawing his favour, he was 
attacked on all sides. A short time before, Cromwell had asked the 
judges whether an act of attainder passed without the accused being 
heard in his own defence would be good at law ; the judges answered in 
the affirmative, and this opinion was now used against himself. The 
attack was led by the duke of Norfolk and Gardiner. It was not easy 
to show that he had committed treason ; but a charge that he had ex- 
ceeded his powers in the execution of his office was stretched to mean 
that he had encroached on the royal authority, and he was attainted 
of treason and beheaded in July 1540. Cromwell was undoubtedly 
an extremely able man and the first of the line of English lay states- 
men. During the ten years of his power he had exercised very great 
influence over Henry, and was rightly regarded by the old nobility 
as their most formidable opponent. Cromwell's sister's son, Richard 
WiUiams, took the name of Cromwell, and was the great-great-grand- 
father of the Protector. 

Cromwell's fall may be regarded as part of the reaction which had 
produced in the passing of the Six Articles. Another symptom of 



422 The Tudor s 1540 

it was Henry's marriage to Katharine Howard, niece of the duke of 
Norfolk, and daughter of Sir Edmund Howard who was killed in 
Katharine 1513.^ Unluckily, after two years it was indisputably 
Howard. proved that she had behaved badly both before and after 
her marriage, and she was put to death, and the king soon afterwards 
Katharine married Katharine Parr, widow of Lord Latimer. She 
^^"- was a good and discreet person, and made Henry an ex- 

cellent wife during his last years. 

The reign of Henry saw several important changes made in the relations 
between different portions of the king's dominions. Hitherto Wales and 
the county palatine of Chester had been unrepresented in the 
tion of English parliament. In 1536 this distinction was abolished. 

^ ^^* Twenty-four members for Wales, four for Cheshire, and 
three for Monmouthshire, took their seats in parliament. The lands of 
the lords-marcher were abolished. The old Welsh shires were enlarged, 
and five new shires — Denbigh, Eadnor, Montgomery, Brecon, and Mon- 
mouth — were established. A council similar to the Council of the 
North began to sit at Ludlow, under a president ; it heard appeals from 
the Welsh courts, and was generally responsible for the good order 
of the principality. In Ireland more than one rebellion 
occurred during the reign, but in 1536 the power of the 
turbulent Fitz-Geralds was broken by wholesale executions ; and, in 
1542, Henry brought Ireland a step nearer to the English crown by ex- 
changing the title of lord for that of king of Ireland. 

Between the battle of Flodden and 1542 there was no open war 



1 THE HOWARDS. 

John Howard, 
created Duke of Norfolk, killed at Bosworth, 1485. 

I 

Thomas, Earl of Surrey, 

won battle of Flodden, 1513, restored to the dukedom, 1514, d. 1514. 

Thomas, Duke Edmund Howard. William Howard, Elizabeth = Thomas 
of Norfolk, • I created Lord Howard Howard. Boleyn. 

d. 1554. Katharine Howard, of Effingham. 

m. Henry viii. , | Anne Boleyn, 

executed 1542. Charles, m. Henry viii., 

second son of Lord Howard executed 1536. 
j of Effingham, defeated the | 

Henry, Earl of Surrey, Armada, 1588, created Queen Elizabeth, 

beheaded 1547 Earl of Nottingham, 1590, 1558-1003. 

I ■ d. 1624. 

Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, 
beheaded 1572 (great-grandfather 
of Lord Stafford, executed in 1680), 



1544 Henry VIII. 423 

between England and Scotland, but the border lords kept up a perpetual 
strife, and every effort was made to weaken the country by promotiDg 
internal dissension. It might have been hoped that the 
young king, James v., would have been friendly to his uncle ; ^'^°^'^"^- 
but when he grew up he threw himself into the French alliance, and 
married successively Magdalen, daughter of the French king, and after- 
wards Mary of Guise. The result was to accentuate the border quarrels ; 
and, in 1542, James led an army to the border. The occasion, however, 
was seized by some of the Scottish nobles to show their dislike of James' 
favourites ; and when the English army, composed of border 
farmers, made its appearance at Solway Moss, the Scots fled Soiway° 
in disgraceful rout. This broke James' heart ; and in a ^°^^- 
few days he died, leaving his crown to his daughter Mary, an infant of a 
week old. Henry at once took advantage of this turn of Mary Queen 
affairs to suggest a marriage between his son Edward and °^ Scots, 
the young queen. The proposal was of course viewed with favour by 
the English party in Scotland, but was disliked by the French, whose 
traditional policy of playing off Scotland against England would have 
been destroyed by it. However, in 1543, a treaty for the marriage was 
completed ; but Cardinal Beaton and the French party acting in concert 
with Mary of Guise, threw every obstacle in the way, and finally getting 
the upper hand, entered upon an alliance with France. Henry, however, 
who was now in alliance with the emperor, took the „, 

War with 

offensive. He invaded France in person, and took the long- France and 
coveted town of Boulogne ; while he sent an army by sea 
into Scotland under his brother-in-law Edward Seymour, earl of Hert- 
ford, and John Dudley, Lord Lisle, son of Henry vii.'s old minister. The 
invaders landed at Leith and burned it and Edinburgh, but effected 
nothing more. This lesson destroyed for a time the power of the French 
party, and in 1546 Cardinal Beaton was murdered. 

During the later years of Henry viii., the financial difficulties of the 
government drove the king into a great mistake. The possessions of 
the monasteries had for the most part been disposed of for . 

political purposes at a price much below their value, and the of the 
money been spent at once. The expenses of the long 
preparation for an invasion of the southern coast had been very con- 
siderable, and the invasions of Scotland and France had put a further 
strain upon the resources of the country. In these circumstances the 
government fell back upon the unfortunate expedient of debasing the 
coinage. For many years the English coinage had maintained a high 
reputation ; it had been renewed by Henry ii., Henry in., Edward i., 



424 The Tudors 1544 

and Edward iii., and the standard set by the last monarch had been 
steadily maintained. The rule of the mint was that |-oz. of alloy should 
be mixed with every 12-oz. of silver, in order to give sufficient durability 
to the coin ; but in 1543 coins were issued in which the proportion was 
2-oz. of alloy ; and in 1546 the proportion was 8-oz. of alloy to 12-oz. of 
silver. The result of this was to relieve Henry by defrauding the 
government creditors, but its effect on the commercial prosperity of the 
country was disastrous. Transactions between distant customers became 
impossible, for no one knew the value of the money to be paid. The 
good coins were hoarded or sent out of the country, and nothing re- 
mained but the bad ones. The social evil which followed was as serious 
as the commercial. Prices went up, to the distress of the wage-earning 
classes, while wages, which never rise so rapidly as prices, were little 
altered. Distress in the towns, and beggary and robbery in the country 
naturally followed. 

In religion, the last few years of Henry viii. witnessed a constant 
struggle between the reformers and their opponents, sometimes the one 

„ and sometimes the other gaining the advantage. On the 

Progress i i /-i t o o o 

of the Refor- one hand, Gardmer's party were able to enforce the Act of 

the Six Articles against heretics ; and in 1546, Anne 
Askew, a well-known lady and friend of the queen, was burnt to death. 
They were also able, in 1543, to have the reading of the Bible forbidden to 
husbandmen, artificers, and journeymen, and to all women except gentle- 
women. On the other hand, the reformers gained a great step in the 
direction of an English liturgy. Down to the Eeformation there had 
been no service-book in use throughout the whole country. Various 
forms were in use in different parts of the country, and the Uses of 
Sarum, Lincoln, Bangor, and Hereford were most largely employed. As 
early as 1536, however, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Com- 
mandments had been published in England along with some Articles of 
Belief. There, for some time, progress stopped ; but in 1544, Henry him- 
self prepared, and possibly translated, our present Litany for processional 
use, and in 1545 there was issued a service for morning and evening prayer 
and the burial of the dead, to be used instead of the breviary. After 1545 
Henry's health rapidly deteriorated, and all parties began to intrigue for 
the chief power under the expected minority of Edward. Henry himself 
Fall of the '^^^ anxious that power should not fall into the hands of the 
Howards. Howards, who, as the leaders of the old nobility and of the 
reactionary movement against the Eeformation, might be expected to 
undo much of his work. The duke of Norfolk himself, though an old 
and faithful servant of the crown, was not likely to commit himself ; 



1547 Henry Fill. 425 

but his son, Henry, earl of Surrey, the accomplished poet, was a man 
of rash and violent temper, and was certainly plotting to secure the 
ascendancy of his family. Suspicion was first aroused by his moving the 
arms of Edward the Confessor, which he had a right to bear, to a place 
on his shield, which meant that he was in direct descent from the throne. 
Upon this, he and his father were both arrested, and sufficient evidence 
was found to secure their attainder. Surrey was at once Henry's 
beheaded, but it is uncertain what would have been Nor- Death, 
folk's fate, had not Henry's death occurred in 1547. 

The character of Henry viii. has always had a strong fascination for 
historians. By some he has been represented as a monster of wickedness, 
and the slave of his own passions ; by others as the able 

<. 1 . 11 i-rn 1 . r.,1 Reflections 

guide of his country through a most dimcult time. The on his 
strong point of Henry viii., like that of all men who ^^^'^ ^^' 
have successfully led the English nation, was that at any given time his 
ideas represented the exact length to which the average Englishman 
was prepared to go. In the reform of church discipline, in the 
separation from Eome, and in the dissolution of the monasteries, 
he was certainly not in advance of the wishes of his time. In 
securing a translation of the Bible, he was supplying a demand which 
persecution had hardly been able to keep in check ; on the other hand, 
when in fear of the spread of heresy he agreed to the Six Articles and 
the restriction of the use of the Bible, he accurately represented English 
fear of recklessly leaving the old paths. In the strength as well as in 
the weakness of his character, he was a thorough Englishman, and the 
middle course taken by the English Keformation as compared to its 
history in Germany, France, or Scotland, must be ascribed to the fact 
that we had in Henry viii. a king who was able to guide the move- 
ment in accordance with the wishes of the more sober part of the lay 
population. 

CHIEF DA TES. 

A.D. 

Battle of Flodden 1513 



Divorce question raised, .... 
Act of Supremacy passed, . . . 
Dissolution of the smaller Monasteries, . 

Incorporation of Wales 

Pilgrimage of Grace, 

Surrender of the larger Monasteries confirmed, 
Act of the Six Articles, . . . • 

Fall of Cromwell, 

Debasement of the Coinage, 



1527 
1533 
1536 
1536 
1536 
1539 
1539 
1540 
1543 



CHAPTER III 

EDWARD VI. : 1547-1553 
Born 1537 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 

Emperor. Scotland. France. 

Charles v., resigned. Mary, deposed 1567. Henry ii., d. 1559. 

The Arrangements for the Minority — Somerset— Battle of Pinkie, and Rebellions 
in Devonshire and Norfolk — Ascendancy of John Dudley — The Reformation 
—Unpopularity of the Government— Plot to alter the Succession. 

Henry viii. left the crown by will to Edward, his son by Jane Seymour, 
and in event of Edward's death without children, to his daughters Mary and 
Henry Elizabeth successively. Failing their issue it was to go to 

VIII. 's Will. ^\^Q descendants of his sister Mary, duchess of Suffolk ; the 
children of Margaret of Scotland being thus omitted from the succession. 
Edward was only nine years old. He was to come of age at sixteen, and 
until then the government was to be carried on by a council of executors 
named in the will. Henry had chosen these with great care, excluding, 
as he thought, all persons of rash and violent character, and so managing 
that both the old faith and the new should be represented. By this 
means he hoped to secure the continuation of his own moderate policy 
Chief Coun- until his son came of age. The chief members of the council 
ciiiors. were Hertford, Lisle, Cranmer, and Paget, who represented 

the new ideas ; and Wriothesley the chancellor. Sir Anthony Browne, and 
Tunstall, bishop of Durham, who inclined to the old order of things. No 
member of the council was to have precedence over the rest, so that 
responsibility for its actions might rest upon the whole council. Henry's 
chief reliance, however, was placed upon Hertford and Paget, and he 
spent the last two days of his life in earnestly explaining to them his 
ideas for the future government of the country. 

426 



1547 Edward VL 



427 



Hardly, however, was Henry dead when Hertford and Paget set to 
work to upset his scheme. In spite of the chancellor, they persuaded 
the other executors that the good of the kingdom required a 
single head, and Hertford accordingly was appointed Pro- becomes 
tector of the realm, and governor of the king's person. The ^^°^^^*°^- 
executors then declared that Henry had intended to raise many of them 
to higher ranks in the peerage, and to give them grants of church lands. 
Accordingly, Hertford became duke of Somerset, and his brother, 
Thomas Seymour, Lord Seymour of Sudeley ; Lord Lisle, earl of 
Warwick ; and Wriothesley, earl of Southampton. Two months later a 
mistake of Wriothesley's led to his removal from the chancellorship, and 
then Hertford induced the king to give him a new commission as Pro- 
tector, not as an executor under Henry viii.'s will, but as the nominee 
of Edward himself. 

The Protector was one of the most remarkable characters of his time. 
He was a man of undaunted courage and some military ability, of 
generous disposition, aiming at the accomplishment of great 
things, and sympathetic towards the grievances of the poor, of the 
But his abilities as a statesman were by no means equal ^° ^'^ °^' 
to the position to which he had raised himself. He was wanting in 
caution, and belonged to that class of politician whom Frederick the Great 
described as ' always taking the second step before they took the first.' 

The weakness of Somerset's character was at once shown in his treat- 
ment of religious matters. Henry viii. had always aimed at holding the 
mean between the two opposing religious parties, and had „ ,. . 
hoped that his executors would follow out his policy when 
his son came of age. Somerset, on the other hand, over-estimating 
the ripeness of the country for change, and not understanding that what 
was popular in London and the seaport towns would probably not com- 
mend itself to the slower minds of the country districts, almost immedi- 
ately sent out a commission to pull down all images in churches, and to 
whitewash the frescoes on the walls. They also abolished the mass, and 
ordered the service to be said in English. In London the commissioners 
were well received, but it was very different in the country ; and things 
were made worse by the gross irreverence with which the commissioners' 
servants carried out the orders of their masters. They might be seen 
parading the country, dressed out in religious vestments ; and images and 
pictures, which had received the reverent worship of many generations of 
parishioners, were dragged down and burnt amidst unseemly revel. 
Nothing could have been more unwise. Hitherto, so far as the country 
people had been concerned, the Reformation had been merely a question 



428 The Tudors 1547 

of nominal changes ; but the destruction of the images and ornaments, 
the substitution of English for the chanted Latin services, for which this 
country was celebrated, brought home to the country people the reality 
of the change, and caused much excitement. 

At the same time, the government foolishly attacked the interests of 

the artisans of the towns. In the towns the most important institution 

was that of the guilds, which dated back from before the 

Disendow- ° ' . -, ^ r- -n t i 

mentofthe Conquest, and seem to have been mseparabie from Hinglish 
"^ ^' life. They were of many kinds : some, like the guilds 

merchant, were associations of leading merchants ; others, like the 
craft-guilds of the weavers or dyers, were more like trades unions, 
except that they included both the masters and the journeymen ; others 
were associations for common purposes, as for the cultivation of 
music. These guilds, besides regulating trade, performed a variety of 
useful functions. They acted as insurance or benefit societies, which 
aided members when they were sick, educated the young, helped work- 
men who had sufi'ered from accident, provided for the burial of the dead, 
pensioned widows, and paid for masses for the repose of the souls of 
their members. Besides this they played a large part in the social life 
of the people. The feast days of the guilds were festive gatherings for 
their members, and in many places, as at York, miracle plays and pro- 
cessions formed part of the day's entertainment. In Norfolk there were 
no less than nine hundred and nine guilds, and in the little town of 
Bodmin there were forty-eight. In course of time these guilds had 
accumulated a considerable property, on which was charged the payment 
for masses for the dead ; and the Protector persuaded the members of 
parliament, who must have been themselves unconnected with the 
guilds, to pass an Act confiscating their property. The London trade 
companies, being too powerful to be touched with impunity, were spared. 
In regard to Scotland Somerset pursued an equally reckless policy. 
Henry viii. had been well aware that the all-important marriage which had 
been arranged between Edward and Mary could only be 

Scotland. ^ * i i , • 

carried out at the price of much tact, and also that it was 

necessary at all hazards to support the English faction in Scotland. 

Somerset neglected both these principles. He allowed the clerical party, 

with the aid of the French, to capture the castle of St. Andrews, where the 

murderers of Cardinal Beaton were holding out, and then exasperated 

the whole country by an invasion. He crossed the border in August, 

declaring that he came to enforce the treaty of 1543, and took with 

him 14,000 foot, 4000 horse, and 15 guns, marching along the coast 

towards Edinburgh supported by his fleet. 



1549 Edward VI. 429 

He found the Scots, 25,000 strong, posted near Musselburgh, on the 
Edinburgh side of the river Esk, which here flows into the Forth almost 
at a right angle. The river was shallow, but the banks Battle of 
were so steep and rugged that it could only be crossed by ^i^^l^ie- 
cavalry and guns at one bridge a quarter of a mile from the mouth. 
Somerset encamped his men about two miles short of the bridge, and was 
expecting a doubtful and difficult passage of the river in face of the 
Scots, when the enemy, mistaking his halt for fear, determined to advance 
next morning and themselves attack the English camp. Accordingly 
at daybreak they crossed the river by the bridge, and, turning to theii 
right to avoid the guns of the English fleet, made their way over some 
marshy and arable land in the direction of Fawside Brae, a piece of 
rising ground about two miles from the sea. The English, however, 
divining their intention, were the first to seize the brae, where they 
planted artillery, and then charged the Scottish right wing with the 
English horse under Lord Grey. The impenetrable barrier of Scottish 
spears, however, threw the English horsemen into disorder, and Grey 
himself was wounded ; but the Scots, in the excitement of victory, fell 
into confusion. In this condition they were charged by the English foot, 
and so complete a rout followed that it is said that no less than 13,000 
Scots were slain. The victory of Pinkie destroyed for a time the 
Scottish military power, but from a political point of view it was worse 
than useless. Even Scotsmen who were not unfavourable to the 
English alliance were repelled by the barbarity of the invasion. The 
marquis of Huntly's remark that he 'misliked not the match but he 
hated the manner of wooing,' spoke the general sentiment. The Scots 
were thrown into the arms of France, and the little queen was at once 
sent across the water to be brought up at Paris as the future wife of the 
Dauphin. Next year the Protector sent a force to occupy Haddington, 
which was held for some years by the English. 

The chief event of the session of 1549 was the issue of a new prayer- 
book, called the First Prayer-book of Edward vi. This was prepared 
by a committee of divines sitting at Windsor, of whom the 
best known were Cranmer and Nicolas Eidley, bishop of Prayer- 
Rochester. It was approved by convocation, and was then E°dwa°rd vi. 
laid before parliament. It received the sanction of both 
houses, and an Act of Uniformity was passed substituting it for the 
Uses and other services hitherto employed. This prayer-book was 
founded upon the old missal and breviary, and the work of translation 
was mainly done by Archbishop Cranmer. The question of the exact 
position of the Sacraments was long debated, and in the end was settled 



430 The Tudors 1549 

by a compromise which left room for some latitude of opinion, neither 
strictly following the views either of the old Catholics or of those who 
took their views from the teaching of Calvin at Geneva. This service- 
book was revised in 1552, 1559, 1603, and 1662 At its introduction, 
when it had to contend against the popularity of old-established uses, it 
was little liked, but the beauty of its language and its devotional tone 
have long endeared it to members of the Church of England. 

The same session of parliament had to deal with the treason of Lord 
Seymour of Sudeley. This man, who was a notorious evil liver, was far 

Lord Sey- inferior to his brother in every way. He was extremely 

mour's ambitious and intriguing. He first aspired to marry the 
Treason. 11,1-, i 

Princess Elizabeth, then clandestinely married Henrj^'s 

widow, Katharine Parr. On her death in 1548 he reverted to his 

former scheme, and bribed Elizabeth's attendants to influence her in his 

favour. Besides this, he used his influence as admiral to make friends 

with the pirates of the Channel ; had money coined for him at Bristol ; set 

on foot two cannon foundries; forged twenty-four cannons and thirteen tons 

of shots ; and fortified and provisioned Holt Castle. These things having 

come to light, their treasonable character was manifest, and Seymour 

was put to death by an act of attainder, ' He was a wicked man,' said 

Latimer, ' and the realm was well rid of him.' 

Trouble next arose in the West ; the new service-book was read for the 
first time on Whit Sunday, 1549. It created a storm of indignation ; 

Rising in and in one village, at any rate, the congregation compelled 

t e West. ^Yie priest to sing mass as usual. The malcontents soon 
appeared in arms, and an abortive attempt of Sir Peter Carew to put 
down the insurrection only added fuel to the flame. The rebels marched 
on Exeter, 10,000 strong, under Sir T. Pomeroy and Sir Humphrey 
Arundel, demanding the religious laws of Henry viii,, especially the Six 
Articles, the restoration of the mass and the elevation of the host, the 
suppression of the English version of the Bible, and the recall of 
Cardinal Pole. Had they marched on London at once, the situation 
would have been extremely serious, for insurrections had also broken 
out in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and other counties ; but time was wasted 
in an unsuccessful siege of Exeter, and in August, Lord Kussell and Lord 
Grey de Wilton, aided by a body of German troops whom the govern- 
ment had hired as a standing army, attacked them at St. Mary's Clyst, 

o .., r a village about four miles from Exeter. The rebels fought 

Battle of . ° => 

St. Mary's with the utmost determination, and Grey, who had led 

the cavalry at Pinkie, said he had never seen such steadi- 
ness ; but in the end the German bullets proved too much for the valour 



1549 Edward VL 43 1 

of the brave English peasantry, and, after a second battle at Sampford 
Courtenay, and the loss altogether of about 4000 men, the rebellion in 
Devonshire was put down. Arundel and three others were hanged at 
Tyburn. For his services in the west, Russell was made earl of 
Bedford. 

While this struggle had been going on in the west, another insurrec- 
tion had broken out in the eastern counties. Devonshire and Norfolk 
in those days represented almost the two extremes of Rising in 
English life. Norfolk was probably the richest county in Norfolk. 
England, with the largest number of manufactures, and a population 
more in sympathy with the Reformation than that of any other rural 
district in England. Devonshire, on the other hand, was far removed 
from the life and stir of the times, and clung to the old-world tradition. 
In Norfolk, however, the commons had grievances of their own. No 
county in England had been more affected by the rise of sheep-farming 
and the consequent evictions of yeomen tenants, enclosure of commons, 
and diminution in the demand for agricultural labour. The base 
coinage, too, had made the small wages even less remunerative than 
formerly, while the recent disendowment of the guilds had added a 
further cause of discontent. Accordingly, on July 6, at Wymondham 
near Norwich, a casual gathering of people resulted in an organised 
attack upon the enclosures, led by Robert and William Ket. The Kets 
were tanners of some means, and, under their guidance, the peasantry 
formed a camp on Household Hill, which overlooks Norwich from the 
north. There they built log huts, supplied themselves with provisions 
from the manor-houses of the neighbouring gentry, and called the 
gentlemen themselves before them to answer for their conduct. Their 
proceedings were perfectly orderly ; no blood was shed ; the new morning 
and evening prayers were read daily ; and sermons were preached from a 
solitary tree, called the Oak of Reformation, among others by Matthew 
Parker. Somerset was placed in a great difficulty ; he had already ex- 
pressed dissatisfaction with the enclosures, and appointed a commission 
to inquire into the subject ; he therefore hesitated to use force, and tried 
to persuade the rebels to go home quietly. His well-meant intentions, 
however, failed ; fighting began, and the council, taking the matter mto 
their own hands, ordered the earl of Warwick, who was on his way to 
Scotland, to turn his forces against the rebels. This he did ; ^^^^j^ ^^ 
and the peasantry, foolishly leaving the high ground, were Mousehold 
attacked at great disadvantage in the valley of Duffindale, 
and routed with the loss of 3000 men on August 27. It was said that 
a silly prophecy, ' The country gruffs, Hob, Dick, and Hick, with clubs 



432 The Tudors 1549 

and clouted shoon, shall fill up Duffindale with blood of slaughtered 
bodies soon,' lured them to their destruction. The two Kets were 
hanged, the rest were not treated with severity. Other smaller move- 
ments took place in the other eastern counties, and the widespread cry 
of ' Kill the gentlemen ! ' showed what an exceedingly dangerous spirit of 
class hatred had been aroused by the new landowners. 

For this state of things the gentry and nobility threw the blame on 
Somerset ; and there could be no doubt that his rule had been a failure. 

The French kings had been allowed, little by little, to make 
Unpopu- ^ 11 

larity of thcmselvcs mastcrs of the environs of Boulogne, so that the 

port was only held with exceeding difficulty and expense. 
The alliance with the emperor, so important in any war with France, 
had been endangered, and war with France was now imminent. The 
finances of the country were in complete disorder ; from the highest to 
the lowest, the officials were tainted with the vice of peculation. There 
had been more rioting and rebellion in the last six months than in the 
whole reign of Henry viii. ; nothing seemed to succeed under the Pro- 
tector's rule. The other councillors therefore determined to take their 
stand upon the literal meaning of Henry viii.'s will, and to oust Somerset 
from his office of Protector. 

The process was by no means easy. The councillors, led by Warwick, 
assembled in London, and drew up a remonstrance ; but Somerset had 
Fall of the king with him at Hampton Court, and when he heard 
Somerset. q£ their design he issued a proclamation, calling upon the 
commons to come to his defence, and sent for Kussell from the west to 
defend the person of the king. The councillors, however, held to their 
course, and sent letters over the country explaining their position. 
Their steadiness seems to have unnerved Somerset. He hurried the 
king, in a wild midnight ride, to Windsor, and there made a complete 
submission. He was conveyed to the Tower, and signed a series of 
charges against himself, based upon the failure of his policy. He was 
then treated with clemency, and in April next year was restored to his 
position in the council. 

After Somerset's fall, no new Protector was appointed, but the chief 
influence in the council fell into the hands of Warwick. John Dudley, 
Rise of earl of Warwick, was the son of the old minister of 
Warwick, jje^j-y yjj^ jjg j^g^fj i^een largely employed under Henry 
VIII., had distinguished himself both as a soldier and as a diplomatist, 
and had been raised to the peerage in 1542 as Viscount Lisle. In 1544, 
and again in 1547, he had acted as second in command to Somerset in 
Scotland, and had maintained his previous character for efficiency. His 



1551 Edward VL 433 

recent victory over the Norfolk insurgents, and the adroitness with 
which he had carried out the change of government, had made him the 
most conspicuous man in the state. Warwick was one of those men of 
the Napoleonic type who always come to the front in revolutionary 
times ; ambitious, able, unscrupulous, indifferent to religious beliefs, 
singularly cool and calculating, he devoted his entire attention to the 
advancement of himself and his family, ^ 

The immediate concern of the council was to remove the ill effects 
of Somerset's government. Careless, however, of everything but their 
own selfish interests, they attempted to provide for the debt poiicy of 
by borrowing more money, and by coining large sums of *^^ Council, 
debased metal. They also attempted to check a sudden rise in prices, 
owing to a deficient harvest, by fixing a maximum price at which corn 
should be sold — a measure which created so much exasperation among 
the farming classes that it had to be withdrawn immediately, for fear of 
an insurrection. A more reasonable action was to make peace with 
France, which was done at the price of giving up Boulogne. 

In religious matters the fall of the Protector made a new starting- 
point in the Eeformation. Warwick was probably aware that a 
reaction towards the policy of Henry viii. would have „ ,. . 

^ *^ '' . , Religion. 

been popular, but he could hardly attempt this without 
releasing the duke of Norfolk and Gardiner ; and he saw clearly that 
a restoration of the old nobility to power would be fatal to his own 
pretentions ; he therefore supported the Eeformation. Accordingly, 
Bonner, Gardiner, and other bishops of the old faith were deprived, and 
their places taken by such men as Eidley, bishop of London, and 
Hooper, bishop of Gloucester, and Miles Coverdale, bishop of Exeter. 
All three were strong Protestants, and Hooper was with difficulty 



GENEALOGY OF THE DUDLEYS AND THE SIDNEYS. 
Edmund Dudley (minister of Henry vii.) executed 1509. 

John Dudley (Viscount Lisle, 1542 ; Earl of Warwick, 1547), 
created Duke of Northumberland, 1551, executed 1553. 



Earl of Warwick, Eobert Dudley, Guildford Dudley Mary, m.bir 

executed 1553. younger son, (m. Lady Jane Henry bidney, 

created Earl of Grey), executed Lord- Deputy of 

Leicester, 1563. 1554. Ireland, d. 158b. 



Sir Philip Sidney, d. 1586, Robert Sidney, created Earl of 

m. Frances, daughter of Leicester, 1618.^ (Grandfather of 

■non Sianey, who 
executed 1683). 



m. Frances, daughter of , r. . - i 

Sir F. Walsingham. Algernon Sianey who was 



2 E 



434 The Tudors 1552 

induced to wear the Episcopal robes. At the same time, there was no 
cessation in the prosecution of heretics whose views were more advanced 
than those of the men in authority. In 1550 Joan Boucher was burnt 
for heretical views as to the Incarnation ; and in 1551 George van Paris, 
a Dutch Anabaptist, suffered the same fate. The responsibility for these 
executions lies mainly with Cranmer, who with great difficulty persuaded 
Edward to give his consent. Meanwhile, the council were much puzzled 
as to what should be done about the Princess Mary, who still adhered to 
the use of the mass. She was ordered to desist but stood firm ; and, the 
emperor Charles having interested himself in her favour, the council, 
fearful that he might ally himself with France against England, with- 
drew their prohibition of its use in her household. 

Meanwhile, Somerset had been regaining a good deal of his influence. 
His personal character gave him an immense advantage over his rival, 

Death of and his genuine attachment to Protestantism gained him 
omerset. ^j^g affectionate support of the earnest believers in the new 
faith. In the autumn of 1551 it seemed quite possible that a reaction 
in his favour might again drive Warwick from power, and both states- 
men were undoubtedly plotting against one another. Warwick, how- 
ever, was the more astute, and, taking advantage of information he 
possessed as to Somerset's schemes, he had him suddenly arrested on a 
charge of treason. Eventually, however, the charge of treason was 
dropped, but Somerset was found guilty of a murderous conspiracy 
against his rival, and was beheaded in January 1552. The scene at his 
execution proved his extraordinary popularity, and those near the 
scaffold dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood to keep them as relics ; 
but Edward coolly noted in his journal, ' the duke of Somerset had his 
head cut off, upon Tower Hill, between eight and nine o'clock in the 
morning.' From that day forward Warwick, who shortly before had 
been made duke of Northumberland, became thoroughly detested. 

In 1552 there was an important session of parliament ; in which was 
sanctioned a revised version of the Prayer-book, commonly called the 
Second prayer-book of Edward vi. The new work was 
Prayer- a drastic revision of the old ; and the changes made, especi- 

Edward VI ^^^^ ^^ regard to the Sacrament, being in the Protestant 
direction, made it less easy for those who believed in 
Transubstantiation to accept it. With the new prayer-book were pub- 
lished an ordinal abolishing some ceremonies and vestments hitherto 

Treason allowed, forty-two articles of religion, a set of homilies, 

Trials. ^nd a catecliism for the instruction of the young. An act 
was also passed regulating trials for treason, by which it was enacted 



1552 Edward VI. 435 

that in future no one should be convicted except on the evidence of two 
witnesses at least. 

Another series of acts dealt with the economic difficulties of the 
time. The abolition of villeinage and the virtual separation of the 
labourer from the soil had created a class of labourers who n^-u r-, 

1 ne Unem- 

were wholly dependent for their livelihood upon the sale of ployed. 

their labour. If they could not sell it they had nothing to fall back upon, 

and although it had been assumed that there was work for everybody 

who wanted it, experience showed that this was not true, c-- . r^ 

r irst Poor 

Statesmen, in fact, were confronted in the sixteenth century, Law. 
for the first time, with the problem of the ' unemployed.' They met it by 
a Poor Law enacting that in each parish a systematic collection was to be 
made for the poor, and by appointing a commission to see what could be 
done for the revival of agriculture. On the other hand, us 
they neglected a practical scheme which was offered to them forbidden. 
for making dyeing a great English industry, and renewed the old laws 
against usury, which was declared to be ' odious and detestable.' 

Nothing could be better calculated to bring about a reaction against 
the Reformation than the conduct of Northumberland and his friends. 
Under the new order o€ things everything seemed to be 
going from bad to worse. In old time the immorality of against the 
the clergy had been a grave cause of complaint ; but the ^ ormation. 
Reformation, by concentrating men's religious thoughts on points of 
belief only, had as usual led to neglect of conduct, and now there was 
complaint of a general relaxation of manners. In the old days, before 
the disendowment of the guilds, some means had been taken to ensure 
the quality of goods ; now, there was complaint on all hands of adultera- 
tion and bad work, and, to the disgrace of the country, English merchan- 
dise had been exposed at Antwerp and Venice as of fraudulent 
manufacture. Before the fall of the monasteries there had been less 
talk of the rapacity of the landowners, and of the new proprietors who 
regarded the life of a man less than that of a sheep. In the old days 
government had contrived to live on its own ; now the country was 
deeply in debt, and that in spite of the confiscation of vast quantities of 
church property, the sale of the church bells, of the lead from their roofs, 
even of the copes and surplices of the clergy. For all these things, the 
Reformation tended to get the blame ; and men looked back with regret 
to the time of Henry viii., who, though stern and harsh to his opponents, 
had always been in sympathy with the general body of his subjects. 

Much was hoped from Edward's rule. Though delicate, he was a pre- 
cocious lad, and some of his written papers show a marvellous insight 



436 The Tudors 1552 

into the real state of affairs. He was now fifteen years old ; he was to 

come of age at sixteen, and it was hoped that when he could take the 

Edward's I'^ins into his own hands an immense improvement would 

Character, -^e made. Already he had done something to cut down the 

expenses of the royal household, and had formed a scheme for gradually 

paying off his debts. Unluckily, in the spring of 1552, Edward began to 

' show unmistakable signs of failing health. As early as the night ride to 

Windsor in 1551, he had been troubled with a cough which he seemed 

unable to shake off, and he now grew rapidly worse. His condition 

filled Northumberland with alarm ; according to Henry viii.'s will, made 

with the full sanction of parliament, he was to be succeeded by the 

Princess Mary — and the duke could have no doubt that in 
Northum- . . . , 

beriand's that event his own rum was certam. He thereiore devised 

°^' an ingenious plan to set aside the succession. After Mary 

and Elizabeth the crown was to go to the duchess of Suffolk, and then to 
her daughters Jane and Katharine Grey. Northumberland, therefore, 
arranged a marriage between Lady Jane and his son Lord Guildford 
Dudley, and between Katharine Grey and Lord Herbert, the eldest 
son of his friend the earl of Pembroke. Edward throughout his life had 
shown himself an ardent Protestant, and the celebrated John Knox and 
Grindal, afterwards the Puritan archbishop of Canterbury, were among 
his chaplains. On this Northumberland worked, and persuaded him 
that, in the interests of Protestantism, Mary must be set aside, nominally 
on the plea of her illegitimate birth. The same rule applied to Eliza- 
beth. He then induced Edward, without parliamentary authority, to 
make an illegal will, bequeathing the crown to Lady Jane and her heirs, 
afterwards to her sister, and then to the heirs of Margaret, daughter of 
Margaret Tudor, who had married the earl of Lennox. The judges 
plainly pointed out to Edward the illegality of what he was doing, but 
the boy persisted, and the will was accepted under compulsion by most 
of the leading men. After this Edward rapidly grew worse, and on 
July 6, 1553 he died in his sixteenth year. 



CHAPTER IV 

MARY: 1553-1558 
Born 1516 ; married 1554, Philip of Spain. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 

Scotland. France. Spain. 

Mary, deposed 1567. Henry ii. , d. 1559. Charles i,, resigned 1556. 



Philip II., d. 1598. 



Emperor. 
Charles v., d. 1558. 



The Accession — The Spanish Match — Gradual Repeal of the Ecclesiastical Legis- 
lation passed since 1529 — Persecution of the Protestants — War with France 
and Loss of Calais — Unpopularity of the Government. 

Northumberland had made every preparation to keep Edward's death 
concealed until Mary had been arrested, but a friend conveyed instant 
intelligence of it to Hunsdon in Hertfordshire whore she Mary eludes 
was residing. Edward died between eight and nine o'clock Northum- 

® , ^ berland. 

on July 7, and before the next morning Mary was on her 
way to Kenninghall in Norfolk, a castle belonging to the Howards. 
Norfolk himself, the head of the family, was in the Tower, but the others 
were keenly in her favour ; and Norfolk was a good place, either for a 
long resistance or for flight to the continent in case it became neces- 
sary. Everywhere on her road Mary declared herself queen, 
and called upon all loyal Englishmen to come to her assistance. 
Meanwhile, Lord Eobert Dudley, afterwards the famous earl of Leicester, 
had been despatched by his father to Hunsdon to arrest her. He found 
the bird flown, and it then appeared what a fatal mistake Northumber- 
land had made in not effecting Mary's arrest sooner. 

Concealment being no longer possible, Northumberland gathered the 
council, announced Edward's death, and made preparations for the 
accession of Lady Jane. On the 9th she was accepted as Lady jfane 
queen by the lords of his party, and on the 10th took up proclaimed, 
her residence in the Tower. The same day she was formally proclaimed 

437 



438 The Tudors 1553 

in the city. The people listened respectfully, but made no demonstra- 
tion in her favour ; and one lad, Gilbert Potter, boldly exclaimed, 'the 
Lady Mary has the better title ! ' Jane herself, who from the accounts 
retained of her and from her own letters, must have been of a most beauti- 
ful character, combining sincere piety with a learning and wisdom far 
beyond her years, took little pleasure in her new dignity, but showed 
Northumberland that she was likely to be no puppet in his hands by 
declining to have her husband Lord Guildford Dudlej^ crowned with 
her. ' That,' she said, ' could not be done without an act of parliament.' 
From the country the most serious reports were hourly reaching 
Northumberland ; his sons, Lord Warwick and Lord Robert, had caught 
up Mary's escort, but their own followers had refused to 
ness of ^^ fight. Noblemen and gentlemen were flocking into Norfolk 
"J^!!L^ from all sides, and the earl of Derby was said to have raised 

20,000 Cheshire men to fight for the rightful queen. The 
fact was, that, as the case presented itself to all but a small clique, 
Mary's claim was unanswerable. She was the rightful heir, according 
to a will made by the authority of an act of parliament, and never set 
aside. Nothing was known of her character but good ; she had won 
respect by the determined stand she had made on behalf of her own 
religion, and pity by the long course of ill usage to which she had been 
subjected. Her accession might be expected to restore the good times 
of Henry viii., and to produce such a religious settlement, based upon 
his j)olicy of separation from Rome but adherence to Catholic doctrine, 
as the majority of Englishmen undoubtedly desired. Jane's success, on 
the other hand, meant the continuance in power of Northumberland and 
his creatures, who were identified in the popular mind with all the 
mistakes and corruption of the last reign. In these circumstances, there- 
fore, Jane had no chance. 

To defeat the forces who were gathering round Mary and to seize her 
person was Northumberland's one chance, and he therefore hired troops 
by lavish promises of pay, and set out for Norfolk ; while 
Northimi° ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ sent round to Yarmouth. But the ranks of 
bedand's Northumberland's army had been deliberately filled by the 
servants and dependents of his bitterest enemies, who were 
prepared to turn upon him at the first favourable moment, while, im- 
mediately on their arrival at Yarmouth, the sailors declared for Queen 
Mary, No sooner had Northumberland left London than the lords of 
his own party headed by Lord Pembroke, the father-in-law of Katharine 
Grey, declared for Mary, and the news reached Northumberland when 
a few miles beyond Cambridge. Seeing that the game was up, he 



1553 Mary 439 

retraced his steps, and on July 20 himself proclaimed Mary at Cambridge. 
Next day he was arrested by Mary's orders, and with his son the earl of 
Warwick, and a few others, sent to the Tower. On the 3rd August Mary 
entered London, riding side by side with the Princess Elizabeth, and 
her first act was to release from the Tower Norfolk, Gardiner, and 
Edward Courtenay, son of the marquis of Exeter, who had been executed 
in 1539. Northumberland could expect no mercy. He was executed 
at once, and did infinite harm to the cause of the Eeformation by a 
declaration that his Protestantism had been all along a sham. Trial of 
Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford Dudley were also sent Lady jane, 
the Tower, and in November were tried and convicted of treason, but Mary 
had no intention at this date of jDutting their sentences into execution. 

At her accession Mary was thirty-six years of age, with a face which, 
though stern, was not without beauty when animated ; and from her 
picture she must have been extremely like her great-grandmother 
Margaret Beaufort, from whom perhaps she inherited the strength of 
her religious convictions. Now that people could show their minds 
freely, it was clear that Mary's accession was cordially ac- Mary's 
cepted by all but a small group of reformers, but her very position, 
success was in itself a danger. The English people had accepted Mary 
as offering the best chance of securing a certain kind of government, 
rather than from any real knowledge of her character, of which they 
knew only the best side. She would certainly endanger her j)opularity 
either by a foreign marriage, or by any attempt to bring back the country 
into communion with Eome. Unluckily for her, these were precisely 
the points on which her mind was already made up ; and when she 
thought any course to be dictated by the interests of religion she had 
no hesitation in carrying it through, irrespective of policy. 

The ablest adviser in her council was Stephen Gardiner, bishop of 
Winchester, Wolsey's old pupil, who became lord chancellor. He was 
thoroughly English in his sympathies, and, though he wished Stephen 
to go back to the religious policy of Henry viii., had no Gardiner, 
desire to re-establish the authority of the pope. Instead, however, of 
listening to his advice, Mary put herself completely in the hands of 
Kenard, the imperial ambassador, whose one wish was to ^^^^^^ 
promote the interests of his master. She also opened a 
secret negotiation with the pope and with her enthusiastic cousin, Cardinal 
Pole, who was appointed papal legate, and who wished to come to Eng- 
land at once. Neither Eenard, Pole, nor Mary really understood the 
English people, and consequently from the very first Mary's popularity 
began to diminish. 



440 The Tudors 1553 

The first question raised was that of the queen's marriage. Gardiner, 
and practically the whole English nation, wished that she should marry 
Edward Courtenay, who had been created earl of Devon, and 
Marriage who was the last representative of the Yorkist line ; and an 
Question, alliance with him would therefore have strengthened the 
dynasty, while it would have produced no complication with foreign 
powers. Mary, on the other hand, had made up her mind to marry 
Philip, the eldest son of the emperor, and received every encouragement 
from Renard. He also did all in his power to set her against her sister 
Elizabeth, and to incite her to the execution of Lady Jane Grey and her 
husband. Mary herself was quite infatuated upon the subject, and 
imagined herself deeply enamoured of Philip, whom she had never seen. 
Nothing could exceed the unpopularity of the match in England, The 
only thing to be said in its favour was that as the Queen of Scots was 
married to the Dauphin, England ought to strengthen herself by a 
connection with Spain ; but this seemed nothing compared to the danger 
of becoming a mere dependency of the Spanish monarchy, like Naples 
or the Netherlands, which most Englishmen fully expected. However, 
the Protestants and the Catholics could not agree to make common cause 
against it, and the result was that Mary carried the consent of the 
council by surprise. Nevertheless in drawing up the marriage articles, 
Charles v. was careful to allow fully for English susceptibilities. He re- 
served to Mary the sole administration of English afi'airs and 
Marriage of English revenues, and as Spain would go to Don Carlos, 
Contract. phUip's child by his first wife, he promised Burgundy and 
the Low Countries to the children of the English marriage. The council 
also stipulated that no foreigner should have any command in the army 
or the fleet, and that England should not be involved, directly or in- 
directly, in the war between France and the empire. The arrangements 
were concluded before the close of the year, and it was intended that 
the marriage should take place before Lent 1554, when an outburst of 
insurrection in England caused it to be postponed. 

The leaders of the insurrection were the duke of Suffolk, Courtenay, 
Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Peter Carew, and other persons who had been 
Wyatt's friends of the duke of Northumberland. Nominally their 
Rebellion, insurrection was directed against the Spanish marriage ; but 
had they succeeded, Mary would in all probability have been dethroned 
and Elizabeth set in her place. The insurrection proved a failure. Cour- 
tenay was questioned before the council and confined ; Carew was arrested 
in Devonshire ; and Suffolk found that his connection with Northumber- 
land prevented the midland counties from rising in his favour. Sir 



1554 Mary 44 1 

Thomas Wyatt, however, got together a considerable following in Kent, 
and being joined at Eochester by a body of Londoners whom the earl of 
Norfolk had led against him, made his way to Suffolk. Had he been 
able to cross London Bridge, matters would have been very serious, for 
Mary's rule was more unpopular in the city than anywhere else. She 
herself, however, with masculine courage, rode to the Guildhall, and 
promising that she would not marry till the project had been considered 
by parliament, succeeded in enlisting the goodwill of the citizens. 
London Bridge, therefore, was held against Wyatt, and there was nothing 
for it but to march up the river to the next bridge at Kingston, and 
cross there. This he did ; but his followers melted away, and though 
Wyatt himself, whom the citizen-soldiers seemed unwilling to slay, made 
his way to the city, he was there arrested. 

This foolish and ill-managed insurrection was not only ruinous to the 
cause of those who wished to prevent the marriage, but fatal to the 
friends of those who were concerned in it. Eenard seized upon the oppor- 
tunity to win Mary's consent to the execution of the Death of 
innocent Lady Jane, and she was put to death with her Lady Jane, 
husband on February 12 ; while Gardiner, flying at higher game still, 
spared no effort to implicate Elizabeth, who was sent to the Tower. To 
get evidence against her of complicity in the rebellion. Danger of 
threats and promises were used to the condemned insurgents. Elizabeth. 
Fortunately, however, these failed ; and Wyatt on the scaffold declared 
that she had had nothing whatever to do with the movement. Suffolk 
was beheaded. Courtenay was imprisoned for some time, but ultimately 
was released. He died unmarried at Venice in 1566. The other in- 
surgents were hanged in scores. After Elizabeth had been kept in the 
Tower till May 19, she was sent to Woodstock. The marriage arrange- 
ments now went on without opposition. In April parliament met and 
confirmed the marriage treaty ; and in July Philip arrived, 
and the marriage took place on July 25. At his marriage marries 
with Mary, Philip was twenty-seven years of age ; he was ^ ^^" 
short, but well proportioned, with a broad forehead, grey eyes, and a flaxen 
pointed beard, which added length to a face already long by nature. His 
disposition was cold, and his capacity was of a very moderate phiiip's 
order. In religion he was a bigoted Catholic, but was not Character, 
prepared to allow his religious convictions to interfere either with his poli- 
tical schemes or his private life. He regarded his marriage as one of purely 
political expediency, designed as a set-off to that between the Dauphm 
and Mary Queen of Scots. If he could acquire real power in England, he 
was prepared to stay ; if not, he would go home as soon as possible. 



442 The Tudois 1554 

It is now time to turn to ecclesiastical matters. On Mary's accession 
a reaction was so certain that most of the foreign clergy, and a great 
Ecclesiasti- many of the English divines who had taken a prominent 
cai Affairs, -^.^xt during the last reign — among others, Peter Martyr and 
John Knox — immediately left the country. Others like Cranmer, 
Latimer, and Eidley, remained at their posts, and Cranmer issued a 
bold letter in which he declared his adherence to the new views. It was 
soon seen how far the measures of Edward vi.'s councillors had been in 
The Mass advance of popular opinion. Without any orders at all, the 
restored. mass was practically restored, each congregation acting for 
itself in this matter. When parliament met in October it repealed the 
Ecciesias- religious acts of the parliaments of Edward vi., and restored 
ticai legisla- ' Such divine service and administration of the sacraments 

tion of ,,._,-.-- 

Edward VI. as were most commonly used m England in the last year of 
repealed. j^-^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^ , 

Meanwhile, the reforming bishops had been deprived of their sees, 
and their places taken either by their old occupants, such as Gardiner 
at Winchester, and Bonner at London, or by new men whom the govern- 
ment could trust. Thus strengthened in the House of Lords, Gardiner, 
in April 1554, introduced bills to restore the Six Articles, the statutes 
against Lollardy, and the episcopal jurisdiction permitted in the reign of 
Henry viii. ; but Lord Paget, the old and trusted minister of Henry 
VIII., successfully opposed their passing. In October a new parliament 
met. Great pains had been taken to influence the elections, and the 
result was shown in a House of Commons more friendly to Mary 
than any of her parliaments. By this time Mary ventured to bring 
back Cardinal Pole as papal legate, and in November he landed in 
England. In spite, however, of the members' goodwill to the govern- 
ment, they made the most stringent bargain with Pole, and insisted 
upon having the whole of it recorded in an act of parliament. On 
the one hand, they confessed the sin of which they had been guilty 
Ecciesias- ^^ separating from Rome, and begged to be again received 
ticai legisla- into favour, and repealed most of the ecclesiastical legislation 
Henry VIII. of Henry VIII. On the other hand, they insisted that the 
repea e . pope should in the fullest manner guarantee the possession 
of the abbey and other church lands to their present possessors. 

Similarly they bargained that the restoration of the church courts and 

of the Lollard statutes of Henry iv, and Henry v. should be bought at the 

price of the clergy declaring that they had no right to the 

Statutes lands they had lost ; and they retained in full force the old 
Statute of Praemunire, and the other anti-papal legislation 



1555 Mary 443 

which dated earlier than 1529. Also in repealing Henry viii.'s leo-isla- 
tion they were careful to say, in respect of the acts of succes- 
sion on which Elizabeth's title depended, that they repealed title^^^^^ ^ 
so much only as affected the see of Rome. In this way a P^^^^^^^^- 
formal reconciliation was effected, and Pole withdrew the interdict. 

By the end of the year it was announced that Mary was about to have 
a child. Provision was therefore made for a regency in case of her 
death ; but parliament, in assigning the post to Philip, An heir 
enacted that the marriage articles should in that case ^^P^cted. 
remain in full force during his term of office. The birth of Mary's child 
was looked forward to by the English and Spanish courts with the 
utmost enthusiasm : a boy was confidently predicted, and every prepara- 
tion was made for the celebration of so auspicious an event. 

Parliament was dissolved on January 16, and within a fortnight the 
work of burning the Protestants began. The actual initiative was taken 
by Gardiner, who, it is not improbable, expected that the Persecution 
terror of the flames would produce recantations similar to ^^S""- 
that made by Northumberland, and do great discredit to the Protestant 
cause. But there is little doubt that the real inspirer of the persecution 
was Mary herself, and after her, Pole. The first victims were selected 
with care. Hooper, bishop of Gloucester, had been conspicuous for his 
devotion as a prelate ; and Rogers, canon of St. Paul's, was well known 
as a translator of the Bible ; both were burnt early in February, and 
before the end of March Ferrar, the well-meaning bishop of St. David's, 
and thirteen other persons of less note, also suffered. Of seventeen who 
had been brought to trial, only one recanted ; the constancy of the 
others was received by the spectators with admiring reverence ; and it 
was soon evident to unprejudiced spectators like Renardthat the govern- 
ment was defeating its own ends. 

Mary's child was expected at the beginning of May, but it did not 
come ; and Mary in a passion of disappointment, hoping to propitiate 
heaven, sent a letter to the bishops to enjoin greater activity 
in persecution, and in three months fifty more victims were jng from an 
sent to the stake. Before the end of summer it was evident ^^sease. ^ 
to everybody that the unfortunate queen had been deceived 
by the symptoms of an incurable disease, and that not only would she 
never have a child, but that her own life could not be much prolonged. 
In August a further blow fell upon her. Charles v. had long been 
contemplating resignation, and wanted his son at home. Philip, 
therefore, gladly made this an excuse to leave England. In leaving he 
strongly urged upon the queen the policy of keeping on good terms with 



444 The Tudors 1555 

Elizabeth, whose future accession might now be regarded as certain. 

In November Mary lost her best English adviser, Gardiner, the last of 

the statesmen whom Wolsey had trained, and after his death she seems 

to have acted almost entirely by the advice of Pole. 

Hitherto the only bishops who had been put to death were Hooper 

and Ferrar ; Coverdale had been released at the intercession of the 

Further king of Denmark ; and most of the other deposed bishops, 

Persecution, though married men, had not been remarkable for strong 

heretical views. Cranmer, Eidley, and Latimer, however, were left ; 

and in September 1555 they were brought up for trial at Oxford. The 

point upon which stress was laid was their belief with regard to tran- 

substantiation ; and upon this all three were condemned as heretical. 

Cranmer's case, as an archbishop, was reserved for the consideration of 

, the pope. Latimer and Ridley were burnt together at 
Latimer and - , /^ , t-. i • t i i ^ 

Ridley Oxford on October 16. Both perished at the same stake ; 

and Latimer's last words to his companion were : ' Play the 
man, brother Ridley ; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's 
grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.' In February 
authority arrived from Rome for dealing with Cranmer, and on February 
14, 1556 he was formally divested of his archiepiscopal robes. On this 
occasion Cranmer put forward an appeal to a general council. Those 
wishful to spare him, founded upon this act a hope of recantation. 
Every effort was, therefore, made to play upon his natural clinging to 
life. To this he yielded, and signed a series of submissions, finally 
describing himself as the real cause of all the ills that had taken place. 
Nevertheless Mary and Pole were determined that he should die ; but 
hoping for a public recantation, which would have been an even greater 
scandal to Protestantism than that of Northumberland, arranged that he 
should profess his views publicly in St. Mary's Church at Oxford. But 
when the time came to speak the archbishop recovered his nerve, with- 
drew all his recantations, and boldly declared that he would die a Pro- 
testant. ' As for the pope I utterly refuse him, as the church's enemy 
and anti-Christ, with all his false doctrine : and as for the sacraments, I 
believe, as I have taught in my book against the bishop of Winchester.' 
Furious with disappointment, his persecutors at once hurried him to 

the stake, where he showed his constancy to the last by 

Cranmer ' -^ '' 

burnt, thrusting into the flame the right hand — 'that unworthy 

IVIsrch '^i. 

hand' — with which he had signed his recantations. He was 
immediately succeeded as archbishop by Pole. After Cranmer's death 
the persecution of meaner victims went on as before ; but it is very remark- 
able that among all the laity put to death there was no one of distinction. 



1557 Mary 445 

Indeed, of the whole total of two hundred and seventy-seven, not more 
than a dozen could be described as in any way notable. For the most 
part, indeed, the persecutors shut their eyes to the heresy of the powerful, 
and laid their hands only on the defenceless. Equally noteworthy is the 
small area in which persecution was carried out. In the diocese of London, 
Bonner burnt one hundred and twenty-eight ; in that of Canterbury, 
Pole was responsible for fifty-five ; in Norwich, Hopton for forty-six ; 
and all the other dioceses together only contributed about fifty. Gardiner 
seems to have taken no part after he found that persecution would not 
produce recantation. As a statesman he probably recognised that 
persecution was defeating its own ends, and that by showing that Pro- 
testantism was a faith for which martyrs would die, Mary and her 
advisers were doing it the best of services. 

It must not be supposed that Mary's proceedings were not viewed 
with profound disgust by the mass of the nation. To move, how- 
ever, was extremely difficult. Had English politics been Popular 
isolated from those of the continent, a national rising would '^^^'"S- 
certainly have dethroned Mary and placed Elizabeth on the throne. 
But it was well known that Philip was watching for any excuse to throw 
Spanish troops into England. In that case it would have been almost 
necessary to have recourse to France ; and no prudent Englishman could 
wish to see a French army on English soil supporting Elizabeth, con- 
fronted by a Spanish force fighting for Mary. In these circumstances 
the wisest Englishmen decided to bide their time. Mary's life could 
not be prolonged, and they determined to wait till Elizabeth succeeded 
in natural course. This prudent resolve, however, was not respected by 
a number of young Englishmen, some of whom in 1556 Abortive < 
formed a plan to land French troops in the Isle of Wight ; "^^s^^s^- 
and Thomas Stafi'ord, grandson of the last duke of Buckingham, sailed 
from France and seized Scarborough Castle in April 1557, but was 
immediately taken prisoner and put to death. 

These ill-judged schemes were only serious because they supplied 
Philip with an excuse for urging Mary to declare war against France ; 
and accordinglv in the summer of 1557 he paid a short visit war against 

France 

to England, during which he induced her to declare war. 
For such an undertaking the country was wholly unprepared. Mary 
had been spending the income of the crown on the restoration of abbeys 
and churches, while the ships and fortifications had been falling to 
ruin. The government was extremely unpopular ; money could only be 
collected by forced loans and by levying illegal customs duties ; the few 
councillors who still attended were for the most part as incompetent and 



446 The Tudors 1557 

as fanatical as Mary herself, and nothing but disaster could be expected. 
The war, however, opened with a slight gleam of success. An English 
contingent was sent to the Netherlands, and though it did not arrive in 
time to take part in Philip's great victory at St, Quentin, it took its 
share in the storm and sack of the town itself. Philip's hesitation, 
however, prevented him from following up his victory ; and the French 
were able to recall the duke of Guise from Italy, and to make pre- 
parations for a counter-stroke, at the English expense, by attacking 
Calais. 

At that date the English held within the Pale of Calais two towns, 
Calais and Guisnes, and the connecting fortress of Hanimes. Of these, 

Calais Calais and Guisnes were both strongly defended. The 

attacked, governor of Calais was Lord Wentworth, and of Guisnes Lord 
Grey, the hero of Pinkie, both excellent soldiers. They had long been 
aware that Calais was likely to be attacked, and had in vain warned the 
government that the garrison was inadequate to its defence ; but the 
government heeded not. The provisions were allowed to dwindle down 
to a supply for only three or four weeks ; the sluices upon which the 
water defences of Calais de^Dended were unrepaired. All through the 
month of December Wentworth wrote again and again urging the neces- 
sity of reinforcements. On the 29th he announced that the French 
might be expected immediately. No effect, however, was produced ; and 
on the 31st Mary wrote that 'she had intelligence* that no enterprise 
was intended against Calais and the Pale, and that the reinforcements 
had been countermanded.' The very next morning the French formed 
their lines. Wentworth had only five hundred men against some 25,000, 
but he contrived to hold out till the 6th, when he was forced to surrender. 
In England the four days thus gained were wasted. Though the sea 
was calm, no reinforcements were sent over ; and when at length on 
January 10 some ships and men were ready, a south-westerly gale 
dispersed the transports ; and on January 20, Grey too was forced to 
Calais surrender. The loss of Calais came upon the country like a 

surrendered, thunder-clap, and completed the unpopularity of a govern- 
ment who were so entirely responsible for the disaster. A French 
invasion even seemed imminent, and though before summer, the nation 
plucked up heart, and a fleet was again manned and at sea, and even 
took an honourable part in a fight between the Spaniards and the French 
on the sea-coast near Gravelines, the self-respect of the nation suffered 
a terrible blow. 

By no one in the country, however, was the disaster more felt than by 
the queen. She now knew that she was stricken with a mortal disease, 



1558 



Mary 



447 



and that in a few months her sister Elizabeth, whose very beauty was 
an offence to her, would take her place and reverse her policy. Her 
husband had again left her, with no probability of return. Mary's 
Her best friend, Cardinal Pole, had been deprived of his ^^^^ '^^y^- 
legatine authority by the pope, and was labouring under a charge of 
heresy. She knew that she was hated by her subjects, who were wait- 
ing with eagerness the hour of Elizabeth's accession. Still she adhered 
to her old course ; the burnings went on ; the rebuilding of monasteries 
was continued. When the end came, she faced it boldly, recognised 
Elizabeth as her successor, and died on the 17th November 1558. The 
same day died Cardinal Pole. Of Mary's character the most charitable 
explanation is that her mind was unhinged by the strain which followed 
upon her accession to the throne. Her relations with Philip show every 
sign of hysterical mania, and the extraordinary harshness with which 
she persecuted the Protestants points also to the same conclusion. 



CHIEF DATES. 





A.D. 


Execution of Lady Jane Grey, . 


1554 


Marriage of Mary and Philip, . 


1554 


Latimer and Ridley burnt, 


1555 


Cranmer burnt, ..... 


1556 


Loss of Calais, 


1558 



CHAPTEE V 

ELIZABETH: 1558-1603 
Born 1533. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES. 

Scotland. France. Spain. 

Mary, deposed 1567. Henry ii., d. 1559. Philip ii., 1598. 

James VI. Francis ii., d, 1560. Philip iii., d. 1621. 

Charles ix., d. 1574. 

Henry III., d. 1589. 

Henry IV., d. 1610. 

Elizabeth's Keligious Settlement — Foreign Affairs — The Keformation in Scotland 
— History of Mary Queen of Scots to her Flight into England — The Civil 
Wars in France — The Eevolt of the Netherlands — Improvement in Eliza- 
beth's position — The Rivalry of the English and Spaniards in the South 
Seas — Danger from Mary Queen of Scots — Her Execution — The Spanish 
Armada — English Command of the Seas — Irish Affairs — Essex's Career and 
Execution — The Monopolies. 

Elizabeth was in her twenty-sixth year when she was called to the throne 

by the acclamation of all Englishmen — Catholic as well as Protestant. Her 

„, only serious rival was Mary Queen of Scots, who, on the sup- 

The Queen's "^ . . . . 

Position and position that Elizabeth was illegitimate, might be regarded 

arac er. ^^ having a better claim. On the other hand, Elizabeth's 
right rested upon an act of parliament ; and she had the further advantage 
that Mary's position, as a Scot and as wife of the Dauphin, made her cause 
unpopular. During the last years of her sister's life Elizabeth had lived 
in retirement at Hatfield. She had carefully made herself acquainted with 
the problems she would have to encounter ; and when she came to the 
throne was quite determined on the general line of policy, both foreign 
and domestic, which she meant to pursue. For details she cared com- 
paratively little — perhaps because being a woman she had no experience 
of practical work — and left these to her ministers. Her character presents 
remarkable contrasts, and shows the impress both of her father and 

448 



1558 Elizabeth 449 

mother. From her father she inherited her masculine will, sound 
political instincts, and sharp, rude way of expressing herself ; from her 
mother a more than usual thirst for admiration, and a certain freedom in 
her relations to her admirers which was often little short of scandalous. 
According to Henry viii.'s will, the next occupant of the throne would 
be Katharine, the younger sister of Lady Jane Grey. 

Elizabeth immediately gave her confidence to William Cecil, whom she 
reappointed secretary of state. Cecil was born in 1520 at Bourn, in 
Lincolnshire, and was educated at Cambridge. His father vviiiiam 
being an officer about the court, young Cecil was taken into Cecil, 
the service of Henry viii. On the king's death he became private secre- 
tary to Somerset ; and under Warwick filled the post of secretary of 
state. Though he had agreed to the accession of Lady Jane, he contrived 
to make his peace with Mary, and, during her reign, kept in the back- 
ground, conforming outwardly to the old religion, though in reality a 
Protestant ; and it is probable that Elizabeth's judicious conduct during 
her sister's lifetime was regulated by his advice. Fortunately Pole's 
death had rendered the archbishopric of Canterbury vacant, and Eliza- 
beth named to it Matthew Parker. Parker, son of a Matthew 
Norwich tradesman, was born in 1504, and was educated at Parker. 
Cambridge ; he became chaplain to Anne Boleyn, and since her death 
had spent his time at the University, where he was master of Corpus 
Christi College. He was well known to Cecil, who recommended him 
for the post. As keeper of the great seal, Elizabeth named Nicholas 
Bacon, Cecil's brother-in-law, and father of the more celebrated 
Francis. Cecil and Parker were both members of the moderate Pro- 
testant party. 

England had now had experience of two extremes : under Edward vi. 
she had seen the methods of the extreme Protestants, and under Mary 
those of the extreme Catholics, and the persecutions by ^^^ 
the latter had left the more vivid impression upon the Religious 

1 111 i» 1 Question, 

popular mind. What most people would have preferred, 

therefore, was to have returned to the policy of Henry viii., but without 

persecution. A position of absolute neutrality, however, was no longer 

possible. Elizabeth and her advisers were perfectly aware that she must 

rest either upon the Eoman Catholics or the Protestants. The latter 

were the less numerous, but, at the same time, the more energetic, and they 

were also the growing party, and the party most interested in maintaining 

Elizabeth on the throne. In ecclesiastical matters Elizabeth was no 

bigot. She had little personal religion, and she was more anxious to find 

the settlement which would meet with the least resistance, than to force 



450 The Tudors 1558 

her own particular views on the nation. Accordingly she at once pro- 
claimed that the epistle and gospel and the ten commandments, with the 
Lord's Prayer and the Creed, might be said in English, and forbade con- 
troversial preaching till a settlement had been made by parliament. 
Meanwhile, Parker, Grindal, and others were appointed to revise th,e 
prayer-book. Early in 1559 parliament met, and by ISIay had placed 
the religious settlement on a permanent basis. 

In the first place, the great Act of 1554 was repealed, so that the 
authority of the pope was again abolished, and the ecclesiastical legisla- 
its Settle- *i<^^ of Henry viii. was again brought into force. Secondly, 
ment. .^^ j^q^ ^f Supremacy was passed, by which the queen, 

instead of being styled the supreme head of the church, was spoken 
of as being ' over all persons and causes, as well ecclesiastical as civil, 
within these dominions supreme,' and allowing her to exercise her 
authority through commissioners. Thirdly, an Act of Uniformity was 
passed, which imposed the second prayer-book of Edward vi., but with 
some important alterations likely to make it more acceptable to Roman 
Catholics, and to those Protestants who, like Elizabeth herself, believed 
in some form of a real presence. For example, a passage in the Litany 
which spoke of ' the tyranny of the bishop of Rome and all his de- 
testable enormities ' was omitted, and in the words in which the bread 
and wine are given to communicants at the Sacrament, the phrases from 
the first and second prayer-books of Edward vi., one of which could be 
regarded as implying the doctrine of the real presence and the other 
not, were joined together. As for vestments of the clergy and the orna- 
ments of churches, it was ordered ' that such ornaments of the church 
and ministers, at all times of their ministration, were to be retained and 
used, as were in the Church of England, by the authority of parliament 
in the second year of King Edward vi.' By this means, Elizabeth and 
her advisers hoped to devise a liturgy which should meet the views of 
moderate men of all parties. From the ordinary layman no pledge or 
declaration of faith was exacted ; he was merely required to show his 
conformity by attendance at church. Office-holders, however, were re- 
quired to take the Oath of Supremacy, on penalty of losing their places. 
The fine for non-attendance at church was one shilling, afterwards 
altered to twenty shillings a month for a man and his household, and 
those who declined to attend church for conscience' sake were known 
as Recusants. The forty-two articles of Edward vi.'s reign were 
reduced to thirty-nine. This arrangement was accepted by the laity 
without enthusiasm, but without resistance. Probably a majority 
would have preferred to keep the mass with as many of the old 



1559 Elizabeth 45 1 

ceremonies as possible; and as late as 15V1, Parker wrote: -The 
most part of the subjects of the queen's highness, dislike the common 
bread for the sacrament.' But as no persecution was attempted, there 
was little glory to be gained by resistance ; and though the mass was 
undoubtedly celebrated in country-houses over a large part of Eucdand 
— particularly in the north — and most men of the old faith sought the 
services of a Koman Catholic priest on their death-bed, the bulk of 
the people attended their parish churches, and by degrees the new 
service gained a hold on their affections. Among the clergy, how- 
ever, there was more resistance, especially among the church dignitaries. 
With one exception, the whole of the existing bishops, most of whom 
had been appointed by Mary, resigned, and about two hundred ecclesi- 
astics, out of a total of nine thousand, threw up their posts. This, how- 
ever, was rather an advantage to Elizabeth. Their places were taken 
partly by men like Bishops Coverdale or Barlow, who had been in 
exile, and partly by new men of Protestant views, who were elected 
under the revived conge cVelire. In this way the upper ranks of the 
Church of England have always been filled by men who were in sympathy 
with the government of the time ; and as most of the private patronage of 
the church is also in lay hands, the influence of the laity on the views of 
the official clergy has always been much greater in England than in 
other countries. 

From the queen's right to delegate her authority to commissioners 
there came into being the Court of High Commission. At ^ 

. ? . , . Court of 

first, commissions were issued from time to time, but in High Com- 
1583 the court became permanent. It consisted of forty 
persons, twelve of whom were bishops, and was empowered to inquire 
into all offences against the existing ecclesiastical system ; to punish 
persons absenting themselves from church ; to reform all errors, heresies, 
and schisms which might be reformed according to the laws of the 
realm ; to deprive all beneficed clergy who held opinions contrary to 
the doctrinal articles ; to punish all immoralities and disorders in mar- 
riage, and all grievous offences punishable by the ecclesiastical laws. 

Elizabeth's settlement, being a compromise, was liable to be opposed 
both by those who thought it went too far, and by those who did not think 
it went far enough ; and as time went on the nation opposition 
divided itself into three distinct bodies. First, the bulk of beth's^^' 
the nation, who accepted the settlement more and more Plan, 
cordially year by year ; second, the Koman Catholics, who clung to the 
mass, acknowledged the authority of the pope, and whose most extreme 
members believed that he had a right to depose Elizabeth ; and third. 



452 The Tudors 1559 

Puritans who refused to accept the English Reformation as adequate, 1 
and wished to go much further. Most of these men had been absent 
from England during the reign of Mary, and had imbibed their ideas 
from Calvin, the Genevan reformer. Though discontented, they remained 
members of the English Church ; but the unwillingness of some of them 
to conform to the ceremonies gave them the name of Nonconformists. 
A few of the extreme men went further. Disregarding Calvin's advice 
not to secede, they formed congregations of their own, and were there- 
fore called Sectaries or Separatists. 

While Elizabeth had been engaged in religious matters, she had been 
compelled to devote not less attention to foreign affairs. At her 
Foreign accession England was a much weaker power than either 
Affairs. France or Spain. She had no standing army, and no 
fortresses, and her people, though brave to a fault, and sufficiently 
disciplined to meet the Scots on equal terms, had neither the training 
nor experience to match themselves with the well-drilled and well-armed 
' regulars ' of France and Spain, led by experienced officers, and armed 
with the newest weapons. On the other hand, Wolsey had shown that in 
consequence of the rivalry between France and Spain, England was 
capable of playing a part far beyond her strength ; and, fortunately for 
Elizabeth, the same conditions which made Wolsey successful were still 
in existence. France and Spain were still at war, and each had a great 
scheme in which England was included. On the one side, Henry 11. of 
France hoped to unite on the heads of his son and daughter the crowds 
of England, Scotland, and France, and, as it were, to cut the Spanish 
dominions in two ; while Philip who since his father's resignation had 
been ruler of Spain, the Netherlands, and a great part of Italy, wished 
to defeat this plan, and saw that to do so it would be necessary, at all 
hazards, to support Elizabeth on the English throne. So confident did 
Elizabeth therefore feel of his support, tbat she ventured upon a religious 
settlement which she knew would be most displeasing to him. 

At first Philip's idea was that he should himself marry Elizabeth ; and 

he wrote her a letter to that efi'ect, in which he frankly confessed that he 

w^ould not be able to spend much time in England, but 

Offer^of Avould comc over and see her as often as he could. EHza- 

Marnage. y^^^i^^ however, knew that whether she would willingly 

have married Philip or not, there was an insuperable obstacle to her 

doing so. Philip could not have married her without a dispensation 

from the pope ; and if the pope could grant a dispensation to a man to 

marry his deceased wife's sister, it followed that he could also grant one 

to a woman to marry her deceased husband's brother. This Elizabeth 



1559 Elizabeth 453 

could not acknowledge without giving up the whole case for Henry 
viii.'s divorce, and making herself illegitimate. Elizabeth, therefore, 
while keeping on good terms with Philip, left his proposal unanswered. 
Her marriage in fact with anybody was surrounded with the greatest 
difficulties. If she married a foreigner, she would offend her English 
subjects. If she took an English nobleman, she would rouse the jealousy 
of the rest. If she married a Catholic, the Protestant settlement would 
seem to be endangered ; if a Protestant, she would throw her Catholic 
subjects into the arms of Mary Queen of Scots. These considerations, in 
the end, proved fatal to her marrying at all ; but, for many years, no one 
either in England or out of it doubted that she would ultimately marry. 
Accordingly, her hand was looked upon as a prize to be won, and of this 
Elizabeth took full advantage for political purposes. It was long thought 
that she would personally have wished to marry Lord Robert Dudley, 
afterwards earl of Leicester ; but this is extremely doubtful. She liked 
Leicester, and believed that his admiration foi' her would make him a 
faithful servant ; but she probably, throughout all her life, was never in 
love with anybody in the ordinary sense of the word. 

In March 1559, the long war between France and Spain was con- 
cluded by the Treaty of Cateau Cambresis. By this important treaty 
the wars of mere ambition, inaugurated by Charles viii.'s 
expedition to Italy, came to a close, and Europe entered Cateau^ 
upon a new period, lasting till the peace of Westphalia 
in 1648, in which religion became the dominant factor in deciding the 
relations between states. During the festivities to celebrate its con- 
clusion Henry it. was accidentally wounded in a tournament. He died 
in July, and Mary Queen of Scots and her husband, Francis 11., ascended 
the throne. Francis 11., however, died in 1561. As Francis and Mary 
had no issue, this dissolved the union between the crowns of France and 
Scotland, and shortly afterwards Mary returned home. The condition 
of Scotland, as she found it, was very different from what it had been 
when she left it in 1549, for since that time the Reformation iia.l 
swept over it, and effected a complete revolution. The Scottish Church 
was very rich and very corrupt. On the other hand, the Scottish nobles 
retained all their old feudal rights, and such families as the ^^^ g^^^_ 
Hamiltons, the Huntlys, and the Argylls could bring into tish Refor- 

' "^ ' '="^ ^ , . mation. 

the field a small army of devoted tenants. In these cir- 
cumstances the kings had for years relied upon the bishops against the 
nobles, and, consequently, when the Reformation began, it was taken 
up by the nobles as being the best method of breaking the power both 
of the kins and of the church. For a long time the clergy fought hard 



454 The Tudors 1559 

to stop the spread of Protestant doctrines, and among their victims was 
the celebrated George Wishart. But on the accession of Queen Eliza- 
beth the Protestants were encouraged to declare themselves ; and a 
body of the nobility, calling themselves the Lords of the Congregation, 
signed a covenant, and demanded the introduction of the English Book 
of Common Prayer. 

Little progress, however, was made till 1559, when John Knox 
returned to Scotland. Knox was now fifty-four years of age. Taken 
prisoner after the capture of St. Andrews Castle (see page 
423), he had been sent to the French galleys. He had, 
however, escaped, and after being chaplain to Edward vi., had taken 
refuge with Calvin at Geneva. There he adopted Calvin's views, and 
also made himself notorious by the publication of a book called The 
Monstrous Eegiment of Women, directed against Mary of England. 
Immediately on his arrival in Scotland Knox began to preach against 
idolatry, and his unrivalled power of exciting enthusiasm roused the 
people to frenzy. After one of his sermons at Perth, the congregation 
rose and destroyed all the pictures, coloured glass, and statuary which 
had adorned the cathedral, and their example was soon followed all over 
Scotland. This violence resulted in open war between the Lords of the 
Congregation and the Kegent. She appealed to France, and they to 
England. To Elizabeth they proposed that she should marry the earl of 
Arran, the eldest son of the duke of Chatelherault, the head of the 
Hamilton family. Arran stood next in succession to Mary in the 
Stuart line, and if Elizabeth would have married him an attempt would 
have been made to depose Mary and crown Arran king. Elizabeth, how- 
ever, thought the scheme too risky ; and, on seeing Arran himself, who 
was weak both in mind and body, she rejected it entirely. She agreed, 
however, to aid the Lords to expel the French troops from Leith on con- 
dition that they remained loyal to the queen. This accordingly was done. 
The upshot of the religious changes was that the Scots became ahnost 
entirely devoted to Protestantism of an extremely strict type, Catholicism 
only maintaining its hold in a few noble families and among the High- 
landers. The monasteries were entirely abolished, and their lands 
appropriated by the Lords of the Congregation. Even the cathedrals and 
parish churches were, for the most part, dismantled. 

On Mary's arrival in Scotland she was a widow of nineteen years of age. 

Though her pictures differ very much, her contemporaries are unanimous 

Mary Queen ^s to her beauty. She had abilities of a very high order, and 

of Scots. showed herself a match in political address for most of those 

with whom she had to deal. For some years it was a question what 



1566 Elizabeth 455 

would be the relations between Elizabeth and Mary. There seemed no 
overmastering reason why they should not be friendly. Though unmar- 
ried herself, Elizabeth strongly urged marriage upon her cousin, and 
suggested to her that she should marry Leicester. Mary, however, 
while pretending to consider the proposal, made up her mind to marry 
Henry Darnley, the son of her father's half-sister, Margaret Douglas and 
the earl of Lennox, and did so in 1565. Darnley had been born in 
England during his father's exile, and was well known to Elizabeth. 
The marriage had the effect of uniting the two lines of succession from 
Margaret Tudor (see page 374), and therefore strengthened Mary's posi- 
tion. Unfortunately for Mary, Darnley's personal qualifications were of 
a very low order. He was tall and fairly handsome, but his character 
was weak and vicious, and he had no capacity for politics. She found, 
therefore, that she had to rely upon herself as before, and employed the 
services as secretary of David Rizzio, an Italian singer and musician 
who had originally come over with the ambassador of Savoy. His 
knowledge of foreign languages made him useful to her, and he soon 
became her confidential adviser. To Darnley, on the other hand, she 
refused even the crown matrimonial, and the foolish youth immediately 
threw himself into the arms of the Protestant malcontents. With them 
he entered into a plot to murder Rizzio, and to get the government into 
his own hands. The first part succeeded. Rizzio was dragged from 
the room where he was at supper with the queen, and slain in the ante- 
chamber. In the second, however, he completely failed. Darnley was 
as supple as wax in his wife's hands, and, with the assistance of James 
Hepburn, earl of Bothwell, she completely out-generalled the con- 
spirators, and forced them to fly for their lives. 

On June 19, 1566 was born Mary's son, James. This event added 
very much to her strength, for the claims of Katharine Grey had been 
discredited of late. In 1553 she had been married to Birth of 
Lord Herbert, but the marriage had been annulled ; and in James. 
1561 she had clandestinely married Lord Hertford, son of the Protector, 
Somerset. By him she had a son ; but the facts of her marriage having 
been examined. Archbishop Parker declared the union invalid, and the 
result was to discredit both Katharine's claims and those of her child. 
In these circumstances. Englishmen began to look more favourably upon 
the claims of Mary, who had not shown herself unreasonable with regard 
to Scottish Protestantism. Mary had thus again secured a good position 
and a strong party when she threw away all her chances Mary and 
by an affair of the heart. Craving for a husband on whom Bothwell. 
she could lean for support, and completely disillusioned about Darnley 



456 The Tudors 1566 

she thought she saw everything she wanted in the rude Border swords- 
man, Bothwell, and she fell passionately in love with him. Bothwell 
does not appear to have returned her affection, for he had a wife living, 
to whom he was attached ; but he was prepared to take full advantage 
of his good fortune, encouraged Mary, and entered into a plot for the 
murder of Darnley. That unfortunate man, after the birth of his son, 
had fallen completely into the background. In December 1566 he was 
attacked with small-pox at Glasgow. From this he recovered, and had 
been brought by Mary herself to a lonely house, the Kirk o' Field, 
situated to the south of the old town of Edinburgh, not far from 
Holyrood Palace — a place selected for the freshness of the air — and 
was there from time to time visited by Mary. On the night of 
Murder of February 10 a loud explosion was heard, and it was 
Darnley. found that the house had been blown up ; but the bodies 
of Darnley and his servant were found untouched by fire, and apparently 
strangled, lying together in the garden. In a few days Bothwell was 
universally accused of the murder, and Lennox, Darnley's father, de- 
manded a trial. However, on April 12, the day fixed for the trial, the 
streets of Edinburgh were crowded with Bothwell's retainers. Lennox 
asserted that he went in fear of his life, declined to prosecute, and upon 
this Bothwell was declared to be acquitted. A few days later Bothwell 
seized Mary as she was returning from a visit to her son, and carried her 
off to the castle of Dunbar ; and on May 15, as soon as Bothwell had 
secured a divorce from his own wife, they were married. 

This marriage was Mary's ruin. Few now doubted that she had been 
privy to Darnley's murder ; and Bothwell himself was so hated for his 
Disposition Overbearing insolence, that by marrying him she set against 
of Mary. herself the whole of the Scottish nobility. In face of such 
a unanimous outbreak of hostility, Bothwell in vain tried to make head. 
Summoning round him his vassals, Mary and he attempted to reach 
Edinburgh ; but on June 15 they encountered the forces of the nobility 
at Carberry Hill, five miles east of Edinburgh. Bothwell's troops began 
to desert, and, recognising his cause as hopeless, he fled ; and Mary gave 
herself up to secure his escape, exactly a month after her marriage. 
From Carberry, Bothwell made his way to Dunbar, and thence to 
Orkney, and after a wandering life was seized by the Danes as a pirate, 
and died in prison in 1577. From Carberry Mary was hurried in a 
disgraceful procession to Edinburgh, where she was received with yells 
of execration, and banners were displayed on which her infant son was 
depicted calling for vengeance on the murderers of his father. There 
she met with no mercy. The Lords, headed by James Douglas, earl of 



1568 Elizabeth 457 

Morton, placed her in confinement in Lochleven Castle, and compelled 
her by threats to resign her crown in favour of her infant son, with her 
half-brother, the earl of Murray, as regent. In prison, however, Mary 
continued her intrigues, and succeeded in effecting her escape to the 
Hamiltons, to whom she trusted to raise the Catholics in her favour. 
She was joined by a considerable force, with whom marched a multitude 
of deposed bishops, abbots, and priests. Mary hoped to secure the 
strong fortress of Dumbarton ; but on May 14, 1568, near Glasgow, she 
was met at Langside by the regent at the head of a small Battle of 
force. In the battle that followed, Mary's motley soldiers Langside. 
were completely routed, and she herself rode sixty miles from the field of 
battle before she considered herself in safety near the Solway Firth. 
There, encouraged by some verbal support which Elizabeth had given 
her in her previous contests with her nobility, she decided to appeal 
for English assistance, and on May 16 landed at Workington, in 
Cumberland, with a few followers, and made her way thence to Carlisle. 
The arrival of Mary in England was a source of much embarrassment 
to Elizabeth. She did not come in the least as a dejected fugitive, but as 
one queen calling on another to aid her against her re- Mary in 
bellious subjects, and she fully expected that Elizabeth England, 
would take up her cause at once. It was no easy task for Elizabeth to 
decide what to do. Probably the best course would have been to hand 
Mary over to the regent, who would have placed her in a more secure 
prison. On the other hand, Elizabeth did not wish to appear in league 
with rebels, and she therefore attempted to gain time by insisting on 
holding an investigation into Mary's connection with the murder of 
Darnley. Till this could be held, she removed Mary to Bolton Castle, in 
Yorkshire, where there would be less danger of escape or rescue than at 
Carlisle. Accordingly in October, Murray, Morton, and others, on 
behalf of the Scots, met Elizal^eth's representatives, headed by Thomas 
Howard, duke of Norfolk, at York. The most important evidence pro- 
duced by the Scots were some letters, said to be written by Mary to 
Bothwell, which, it was declared, had been found in a ^he Casket 
silver casket accidentally left behind by Bothwell at Edin- Letters, 
burgh Castle. Whether these were forgeries it is now impossible to 
say ; but at the time of their production they produced a great sensation. 
It was, however, no part of Elizabeth's plan to have Mary either found 
guilty of murder or distinctly acquitted ; and as she found that Norfolk 
was already scheming to marry the fugitive, she found means to break 
up the conference, and in January 1569 Murray returned home, while 
Mary was placed in confinement at Tutbury. 



458 The Tudors 1568 

During the ten years which had elapsed since Elizabeth ascended the 

throne, her position both at home and abroad had steadily improved. 

At home, her peaceful and economical government had 

menUn^" given time for the country to recover itself from the dis- 

Ehzabeth's Qp,;|epg of the previous reigns. The coinage had been 
position. . 

renewed, and her financial credit was good. The navy had 

been refitted and the fortresses properly manned. Moreover, Elizabeth's 

conciliatory policy towards the Catholic nobility, and the pains she had 

taken to drive no party to despair, had resulted in the creation of a 

national party who were prepared to put the interest of the country 

above that of any section of it. Abroad, it had become increasingly 

evident that her reliance on the rivalry of France and Spain to prevent 

either from attacking her was perfectly justified by results ; and in 

addition to this, causes were at work which materially impaired the 

actual strength both of France and Spain, and, therefore, contributed to 

make England relatively stronger. 

The first of these was the outbreak of the religious wars in France. 

lu that country Protestantism never gained a hold over the mass of 

„. p. ., the people. It was taken up by the nobility and by the 

Wars in middle classes of the districts south of the Loire, of which 

FrsricG 

Eochelle is a chief town, and still more in Gascony, Beam, 
and Languedoc. There the Protestants w^ere probably in a majority, but 
in other parts of France they were quite exceptional. In dying, Henry it. 
left four sons, Francis, Charles, Henry, and a second Francis, of whom 
the eldest was only sixteen. The first three reigned successively as 
Francis ii., Charles ix., and Henry iii., but for many years the real 
power was in the hands of their mother, Katharine de Medici. As 
her jDower w^as disputed by the powerful family of Guise, headed by 
Duke Francis, conqueror of Calais, Katharine, though a Catholic, was 
frequently obliged to ally herself with the Huguenots, as the French 
Protestants were called, the leaders of whom were Coligny, the admiral, 
and the Prince of Conde, brother of the King of Navarre. In 1562 
an attempt of Katharine to give legal toleration to the Huguenots 
resulted in open ^var. Conde was defeated and taken prisoner ; Guise 
was assassinated, and the contest so begun was carried on with 
great bitterness. For Elizabeth the serious danger was that the 
Guises, if victorious, might use Mary Queen of Scots against her. 
She, therefore, cautiously gave some assistance to the Huguenots, and 
accepted from them, as security, the town of Havre. Katharine, how- 
ever, soon patched up a peace, and the English were compelled to 
evacuate Havre and make peace. Henceforward Elizabeth made the 



1568 Elizabeth 459 

preservation of peace with the French government a cardinal point in 
her policy. 

At the same time Spain was weakened by Philip's difficulties with 
the Netherlands. This district consisted of seventeen provinces, each of 
which had been held on a separate title by the House of 
Burgundy, and had now descended to Philip 11. Generally ^^'"' 
speaking, they were divided into two parts, between which a line draAvn 
eastward from the estuary of the Scheldt gives a rough boundary. The 
northern states were Dutch by blood, Protestant in religion, and poor. 
The southern were Flemish by blood, less Protestant in religion, but 
richer than the northerners. The north had then no town of importance : 
the towns of the south, Brussels, Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent, were reputed 
the most opulent in Europe. For many years the Netherlanders had 
been accustomed to be treated with great deference by their rulers, in 
recognition of their liberal grants, and to this feeling Charles had always 
paid due regard. Philip, however, who, unlike his father, stayed in 
Spain instead of travelling about, and trusted to the reports of his officers 
instead of seeing with his own eyes, failed [to recognise the strength of 
the Netherlandish independence, and involved himself in a series of 

disputes which ultimately brought on an armed rebellion. ^ 

^ . . . Revolt of 

This conferred a double advantage on Elizabeth. First, it the Nether- 
weakened Philip in the very part of his dominions from 
which an attack could most easily be made upon England. Second, the 
cruelties of Philip's lieutenant Alva drove no less than thirty thousand 
Protestant weavers from their homes ; and these, settling in the south- 
eastern counties of England, especially in Norfolk and Suffolk, brought 
with them their skill in manufactures. Henceforward the English, in- 
stead of despatching their raw wool to the Netherlands, began to manu- 
facture it themselves, and the growth of the new industry did much to 
restore the balance between agriculture, pasturage, and manufacture, 
which had been endangered by the wholesale enclosures of the preced- 
ing years. 

Nevertheless, the presence of Mary Queen of Scots could not fail to 
give Elizabeth much anxiety. Even during the proceedings at York 
it had been suggested that she should marry Norfolk. As RebeUion 
the duke was the leader of the party of the old religion, °^'569- 
such a marriage would have given widespread satisfaction in England. 
On the other hand, the Protestants would have been driven to despair, 
so Elizabeth sternly forbade it to be thought of. The result was to cause 
such dissatisfaction among the great nobles of Norfolk's party that plots 
were entered into for a rising, assisted by a Spanish force which Alva was 



460 The Tudors 1568 

to despatch from the Netherlands. Nothing, however, was to be done 
by Alva till the English Koman Catholics had shown their power by- 
arresting Cecil. This Norfolk failed to do ; and Elizabeth, rightly 
regarding him as of little danger, left him alone, while she ordered the 
arrest of Thomas Percy, earl of Northumberland, and Charles Neville, 
earl of Westmorland, who, being each at the head of an army of rude 
Border tenantry, accustomed to fighting, were far more formidable than 
the southern nobility. At the order for their arrest Northumberland and 
Neville flew to arms, seized Durham, had the mass sung for the last time 
in its glorious cathedral, and then marched south to secure the person of 
Mary, who was then living in Tutbury Castle. Elizabeth, however, was 
too quick for them. Thomas Katclifle, earl of Sussex, a Catholic noble- 
man on whose loyalty she could rely, was hurried to the front, and Mary 
was transferred to Coventry, where she would have Sussex's army between 
her and her friends. Finding themselves thus out- manoeuvred, the earls 
retreated north, and eventually broke up their forces without a battle. 
Their advance had shown distinctly the line of demarcation between the 
new faith and the old, for in Yorkshire while the countrymen were almost 
to a man for the earls, the towns in which a clothing trade was beginning 
to spring up were for the queen. Leeds Bridge was held against the 
rebels, and Halifax sent a contingent to join the army of Sussex. This 
serious rebellion, the first and last in Elizabeth's reign, seemed to the 
queen to require measures of exceptional severity. Orders were there- 
fore sent north that the captured rebels were to be hanged in batches at 
every market town and considerable village between the Wharfe and the 
Tyne, and many a gallows-green marks to this day the memory of this 
stern severity. Altogether, it is computed that three hundred and 
fourteen persons thus perished. Northumberland and Westmorland 
both escaped into Scotland, but Northumberland was captured by the 
regent, and being handed over to Elizabeth was executed in 1572, while 
Westmorland, after spending some time in hiding on the Scottish side of 
the l3order, escaped to the Netherlands and there died. 

Hardly was this formidable rising disjjosed of, when it was known 
that a new plot was on foot. Hitherto various reasons had prevented 

the popes from excommunicating Elizabeth ; but in 1570 
Ridoifi Pius V. published a bull in which Elizabeth was declared 

to be excommunicate, and all her subjects released from her 
allegiance. The natural result was to give a further imj^etus to plotting, 
and Norfolk and the southern lords continued their treasonable corre- 
spondence with Spain. Their agent was a certain Bidolfi, an Italian 
banker resident in London, who in the way of his business could easily 



1572 Elizabeth 



461 



visit the Netherlands, Spain, or Italy. Cecil, however, was well informed 
of what was going on, and eventually full proof was obtained of the 
existence of a conspiracy to bring over a Spanish army, in which, araono- 
others, Norfolk, Arundel, and Mary herself were fully implicated*^ 
Again Elizabeth felt that severity was needed, and in 1572 Norfolk was 
beheaded. 

Though Elizabeth was troubled by disaffection and indifference among 
her nobility, she was amply compensated by the growing devotion of the 
House of Commons. Here, indeed, her chief difficulty Loyalty of 
arose from excess of zeal on the part of the members. Parliament. 
Since the Oath of Supremacy had been enforced on all office-holders, no 
honest Eoman Catholic could sit in the house, and consequently the 
members, the vast majority of whom represented south of England 
boroughs, where Protestantism was strongest, were as a body decidedly 
Protestant and even Puritan in feeling. This was a great source of 
strength to the queen ; and whenever she wished to show either her 
own nobles or foreign powers that she had the nation at her back, the 
simplest plan was to call a meeting of parliament. Thus the parliament 
of 1572 not only petitioned for the execution of Norfolk, but also passed 
a Bill of Attainder against the Queen of Scots, which, had the members 
had their way, would have been carried into instant execution. 
Elizabeth, however, was cjuite satisfied with the moral eflect of their 
action, and declined to give her consent to the bill. The only point, 
indeed, on which Elizabeth and her parliament were at variance was 
that of her marriage, Eeflecting the wishes of the advanced Protestants, 
the members again and again petitioned Elizabeth to marry, as they 
looked to the birth of an heir as needful to secure them against the 
accession of Mary Queen of Scots. Elizabeth, however, had good 
reasons for her own conduct, and roundly bade them mind their oAvn 
business. 

Indeed, at tliis very time she was making use of the bait of her hand 
to secure a great diplomatic triumph. As it became clearer that Spain 
was the real enemy against whom open war might be prench 
anticipated, it became essential to come to terms with ^^^^^^^^^ 
France, not only for its own sake, but also to avoid 
difficulty with Scotland. Accordingly, she expressed herself willing to 
consider the possibility of a match between herself and Henry of France, 
duke of Anjou. Probably she never meant anything serious, but the 
effect was to re-establish cordial relations with the French court ; and 
presently a treaty was made, by which each country bound itself in case 
other was attacked for any cause to aid the other with 6000 men. 



462 The Tudor s 1572 

Scotland was included ; and it was specially stipulated that, while 
neither France nor England should interfere in Scottish affairs, no other 
country should be permitted to do so. Difficulties had been raised 
about the Anjou marriage as soon as a decision became necessary, but it 
was suggested that they might be overcome in the case of his younger 
brother, Francis, duke of Alen^on, a lad of seventeen, and for eleven 
years the possibility of such a match, absurd as it was, was more or less 
seriously considered. From time to time Alencon visited England, and 
though he was an ugly little man, with a big head and a repulsive nose, 
whom Elizabeth jocularly termed ' her frog,' she pretended to fall in 
love with him. The French alliance formed the keystone of Elizabeth's 
foreign policy. She maintained it against several rude shocks, chief of 
which was the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572. To keep on 
friendly^terms with a government which had been guilty of such cruelty 
was a sore trial to English feeling, but Elizabeth was well aware that to 
take up the opposite policy would drive the French court into alliance with 
Spain, and persistently held to her course till the danger passed away. 

The necessity for thus securing the French alliance at all costs was 
to be found in the danger to be apprehended from Spain. To crush 
J. , the Dutch, Philip poured thousands of Spanish troops 

a Spanish into the Netherlands under his best generals, and their 
presence constituted a standing menace of invasion to 
England. Elizabeth was unwilling openly to recognise rebellious 
subjects ; but, for the sake of adding to Philip's difficulties, she allowed 
Englishmen to enlist in the Dutch service, and from time to time gave 
assistance in money. However, in 1577, the skill of Don John of 
Austria, who had gained a world-wide reputation by defeating the Turks 
at Lepanto, succeeded in bringing about a temjDorary cessation of 
hostilities, and he immediately set himself to arrange an invasion of 
England, which he hoped would result in the deposition of Elizabeth, 
and a marriage between himself and Mary Queen of Scots. Philip, 
however, was too jealous of his half-brother to allow such a scheme to 
succeed. Escovedo, Don John's agent in Spain, was murdered, and in 
1578 Don John also died, not without suspicion of poison. He was 
succeeded in the Netherlands by Alexander Farnese, duke of Parma, 
probably the best general of his time, who rapidly reduced the southern 
Netherlands to their allegiance, and seemed likely also to bring the 
Dutch into submission. 

Meanwhile, the condition of home affairs was also undergoing a change. 
During the first ten years of Elizabeth's reign, she had strengthened 
herself by her judicious attitude on religious matters ; but during the 



1581 Elizabeth 403 

second ten this policy became increasingly difficult to maintain. The 
change was due mainly to a change in the character of Eoman Catho- 
licism. The Protestant movement for a more spiritual re- 
ligion and separation from Eome had been followed by a Roman 
similar movement within the Eoman Church which had ^^*^°^^'^^' 
resulted in what is known as the Counter-Eeformation. The effect of 
this was to purge away most of the scandals for which the Eoman 
Church had been notorious at the beginning of the century, and to 
replace such popes as Alexander vi. and Leo x. by men like Pius v. and 
Gregory xiii., whose zeal for their religion was undoubted, and whose 
purity of life quite unquestioned. These popes made use of the new 
religious order of Jesuits, formed expressly to push forward the Counter- 
Eeformation, for the purpose of attacking Protestantism in Protestant 
countries. In England the chief advocate of the new propaganda was 
William Allen, an old Oxford man, who founded for that purpose a 
college for secular clergy at Douai, in the Netherlands, from which 
secular priests were ^ent across the Channel. A college for English Jesuits 
was set up at St. Omer, also within Philip's dominions. By law the 
celebration of the mass and speaking against the supremacy were 
treason ; but the government had hitherto been careful that, while the 
law was preserved in terrorem, it should not be carried into effect. 
However, in 1581, Campion, one of the purest-minded and Execution of 
enthusiastic of the English Jesuits, was arrested after a Campion, 
protracted visit to England. The government determined to make 
an example ; and he was condemned and executed for treason on the 
ground that he refused to deny the pope's right to depose princes. 
From this time forward Eoman Catholic priests exercised their functions 
at the peril of their lives, and frequent executions are recorded down to 
the outbreak of the Civil War under Charles i. At the same time the 
fines of the recusants were raised to £20 a month for non-attendance at 
church. This persecution had the effect of embittering the feeling 
between the two religions, and did much to check the gradual extinction 
of Eoman Catholicism which Elizabeth's previous policy had been 
bringing about. 

Though Elizabeth's settlement had been nominally accepted by the 
great body of the clergy, Parker found it extremely difficult to establish 
uniformity of practice. This was due partly to the unwill- jhe Extreme 
ingness of many of the bishops to enforce practices of which Protestants, 
they did not wholly approve themselves, and partly to the difficulty of 
finding clergy sufficiently well educated to preach. However, Elizabeth 
insisted that uniformity should be enforced, and in 1566 Parker called 



464 The Tudors I58i 

the London clergy before him, and demanded that they should carry out 
the Act of Uniformity. Over thirty refused to wear the surplice, and 
were deprived of their livings. On the other hand, in the diocese of 
Norwich, Bishop Parkhurst made no attempt to enforce uniformity, 
while Pilkington of Durham reduced even the cathedral service to the 
Puritan ideal. Beset by these difficulties, Parker was only able very 
imperfectly to enforce the prescribed ceremonial, while the number of 
those who, while remaining in the church, refused to conform, steadily 
increased. Parker died in 1575, and was succeeded by Edward Grindal, 
archbishop of York, who immediately fell into disagreement with the 
court on the question of prophesyings. These were meetings of the 
clergy and laity, held for the purpose of debating some doctrinal point, 
and had been encouraged by the bishops as tending to make the clergy 
thoughtful and well informed. Elizabeth, however, apparently under 
the impression that they w^ere conducted by unlearned persons, ordered 
Grindal to put a stop to them. Grindal would gladly have stopped the 
laity, but w^ished to preserve the right for the dergy ; and when he 
refused he w^as suspended from his office and the prophesyings forbidden 
by royal proclamation. Grindal died in 1583, and was succeeded hy 
John Whitgift, bishop of Worcester. Whitgift w^as just the man for 
Elizabeth's purpose : he loved order for its owm sake, and was deter- 
mined to enforce it with a high hand. 

The task, however, had now become very difficult. Originally the 

quarrel between the bishops and the nonconforming clergy had turned upon 

ceremonial : it had now^ come to include church government 

Difficulty of ' -.1 I n T . 1 1 

enforcing- as w^ell. The Nonconformists also had come to be divided 
ni ormity. .^^^ ^^^ bodies — first the sectarians, sectaries or sej)ara- 
tists, wdio had openly left the church ; and secondly, those who, while 
they remained in the church, did their best to get its practices altered. 
Of the former the most important body were the Brownists, named after 
Eobert Brown, a relation of Cecil. Brown held that each congregation 
of Christians ought to be self-governing, from which his followers came 
to be called Independents. In doctrine he was Calvinistic. Another 
body were Anabaptists or Baptists. 

Of those who remained in the church the most distinguished was 
Thomas Cartwright, who had been deprived of the post of Lady ISIargaret 
Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. His views were enunci- 
' ated in the Book of Discipline, which advised the clergy to 
form themselves into groups for the purpose of self-government, ignoring 
as far as possible the authority of the bishops. Cartwright's views were 
widely accepted, and from that time forward there existed wdthin the 



1583 Elizabeth 4.(55 

Church of England a large body, who were in principle Presbyterians. 
The hope of the Puritans lay in the support of the House of Com- 
mons, and they were strongest in the south-eastern counties. Their 
weak point was the extreme violence of some of their members, some of 
whom published a series of libellous attacks upon the bishops known as 
the Mar -Prelate tracts. The result was to alienate some of their strongest 
supporters, and in 1593 parliament passed a severe act against seditious 
Avritings, which had the effect of keeping controversy within bounds 
On the church side the most remarkable writer was Eichard Hooker 
whose Ecclesiastical Polity was written for the purpose of showing that 
Episcopalian government could l^e defended not only as an apostolical 
institution but on grounds of general utility. 

In the course of the cjuarter of a century during which Elizabeth had 
now reigned, she had also strengthened herself by using her charms as a 
woman to attach to her cause the rising generation of Eng- Loyalty to 
lishinen. Such men as Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser the poet, Elizabeth, 
and Sir Walter Raleigh talked about her as of a mistress to whose service 
their lives were devoted, and they were merely typical of the young 
Englishmen of the day, with whom devotion to their virgin queen had 
come to be almost a principle of life. Throughout her reign Elizabeth 
had always been surrounded by two classes of courtiers. Men like Cecil, 
Walsingham, and Bacon, who served her in the cabinet, and with whom 
she discussed political affairs on a footing of statesmanlike equality. 
On the other hand there was her old friend, Leicester, who had loved 
her for her own sake when she was a girl, and in whom, though not a 
man of first-rate ability, she could always trust for devoted service. 
With him were Sir Christopher Hatton, her lively lord chancellor, who 
was said to have won his position by his skill as a dancer, and a crowd 
of younger men, some of whom, like Raleigh, were at court ; others, like 
Spenser, merely caught the reflection of court life at a distance, but all 
of them helped in their several ways to spread the feeling of personal 
loyalty to the sovereign. 

Curiously enough, the policies of Elizabeth and Philip towards each 
other were for many years practically the same. Neither wished for 
open war, though both probably regarded it as ultimately philip and 
inevitable ; but each wished to do the other as much harm Elizabeth. 
as possible without an actual declaration of hostilities. Elizabeth 
encouraged her subjects to aid the Netherlanders ; Philip sent Spaniards 
to assist the rebellious Irish, while each kept an ambassador at the 
court of the other, and their diplomatic intercourse was conducted w ith 
every expression of regard. 

2g 



466 The Tudors 1583 

In the work of covert hostility EUzabeth had* no more useful agents 
than the mariners of the Devonshire jDorts. The true descendants of 

Chaucer's shipman, they had always been equally ready for 
shire Sea- commerce or piracy, and in seamanship they had no rivals. 

Nothing could have suited such men better than the clisr 
covery of the New World, which came just at the moment when the rise 
of strong governments made piracy a dangerous trade in European 
waters. Until the Reformation, however, the English do not seem to 
have meddled much with the New World, which was regarded as having 
been lawfully divided by Pope Alexander vi. betweeen the Spaniards 
and the Portuguese. The renunciation, however, of the papal authority 
untied their hands, and a series of bold mariners issued forth, some to 
attempt the discovery of new lands, some to open up legitimate trade, 
and others for purposes little different from piratical. Such adventurers 
cared little for the political relations between England and the Spanish 
and in order to put themselves, as it were, in order, invented the con- 
venient formula — 'No Peace beyond the Line.' Of those who sought 

,„ new countries, the most notable were Sir Hugh Willoughby, 

Willoughby. ' o o jy 

who perished in 1554 in an attempt to reach China by fol- 
lowing the northern coast of Asia ; Martin Frobisher, who, in 1576 and 
1577, investigated the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland with a 
view to a settlement ; and John Davis, the first Englishman 
^^^^' to attempt the north-west j)assage. Better known than 
these is the brave Sir John Hawkins, who fii'st exported 
negro slaves from Africa to the Spanish settlements in America — a 
traffic then considered honourable and even j)raise worthy, as it brought 
the negroes under the influence of Christianity ; but above all stands in 
popular estimation the name of the greatest of Elizabethan seamen, Sir 
Francis Drake. 

This great man was born of undistinguished parents in 1539, and 
spent almost his whole life at sea. First in the coasting trade, and after- 
Sir Francis wards in more distant voyages, he became an admirable 
Drake. seaman. In 1567 he was chosen by Hawkins, who is said 

to have been a relation, to join him in a slave-trading expedition in the 
West Indies. The adventure, however, proved a failure, as Hawkins 
rashly involved himself in a fight against a superior force of Spaniards. 
In 1572 and 1573 Drake was again in the West Indies attacking Spanish 
vessels, and plundering settlements on the coast. Having landed on 
the Isthmus of Panama, he saw the Pacific Ocean, and conceived the idea 
of rounding South America and attacking the Spaniards in their fancied 
security. Accordingly in November 1577, with five vessels, the largest 



1584 Elizabeth 



467 



of which was only one hundred tons, and with one hundred and sixty- 
three men, he sailed from Plymouth, made his way to South America 
and passing through the straits of Magelhaen, appeared unexpectedly in 
the Pacific. Beginning with Valparaiso, the capital of Chili, he called 
at every important Spanish port on his way north, everywhere helping 
himself almost without resistance to the silver and gold which had come 
down from the mines and was waiting to be sent to Europe. Then 
sailing north, he reached the latitude of California, and after some 
thoughts of attempting a passage round the north, made his way to 
Java, and thence by the Cape of Good Hope to Plymouth, arriving there 
in September 1581, bringing back with him treasure valued at ^'800,000, 
and the immortal reputation of being the first Englishman to circum- 
navigate the globe. In 1585 he and Frobisher were together in the 
West Indies attacking the Spaniards, and on their way home they 
picked up the survivors of a colony which had been planted in 1585 on 
the coast of North America. 

The year 1584 forms a turning-point in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. 
Hitherto she had been able on the whole to maintain peace, and to avoid 
committing herself definitely against any foreign power, „.. , 
but a series of events in that year made this policy no Position 
longer possible. The first of these events was the death, in 
June, of Francis, duke of Anjou, formerly duke of Alengon — Elizabeth's 
absurd suitor — the only surviving brother of Henry iii. As Henry iii. had 
no sons, the crown of France would go by inheritance, after his death, to 
Henry, king of Navarre, a representative of the Bourbon line, and head 
of the rising party of French Huguenots. This prospect filled the French 
Catholics, and especially the Parisians, with alarm ; and a Catholic 
league was formed, under the patronage of the Guises, to prevent 
Henry's accession to the throne. At first Henry in. acknowledged the 
king of Navarre as his heir, but was afterwards obliged to throw in his 
lot with the Guises. Civil war immediately broke out, and Elizabeth 
found she could no longer rely upon the French alliance, or the 6000 
troops which were to be sent to her in case of invasion. 

A month after the death of Alencon, William of Orange was murdered 
by Balthazar Gerard ; and the Dutch, after in vain asking the assistance 
of Henry iii., were advised by him to apply to England, ^he 
Accordingly they asked Elizabeth to become their pro- Netherlands, 
tector. This position, however, it was impossible for her to accept, 
for, in the first place, she would have given her sanction to the 
lawful subjects of one sovereign transferring their allegiance to 
another : and, secondly, because she had never wished to set herself 



468 The Tudors 1584 

up in any way as the head of a Protestant league. Nevertheless, 
the loss of her French alliance compelled her to make terms informally 
with the Dutch ; and in 1585 she despatched an English force to 
the States. At the head of this she placed the earl of Leicester, 
but he betrayed her confidence by accepting the powers and title of 
governor-general, by which the States tried to compel Elizabeth to 
become their over-lord. Elizabeth was extremely angry, and ordered 
Leicester to resign the post — by which, at the cost of offending the 
Netherlanders, she maintained her position as friend only. In military 
matters Leicester proved no match for the duke of Parma. The chief 
event of the war was the battle of Zutphen, where perished Sir Philip 
Sidney, author of the Arcadia, who, though only thirty-two years of 
age, had been recognised by his contemj)oraries as tyj)ical of the best 
English character of the time — a man who already had distinguished 
himself as a diplomatist, a courtier, a soldier, and an author. After the 
battle of Zutphen the war languished. Leicester came home in 1586, 
and Parma's energies were soon turned in another direction. 

The year 1584 was also a turning-point in the history of Mary Queen 
of Scots ; up to this time she had been treated more as a guest than as 
Mary Queen a prisoner, and had been allowed considerable freedom of 
of Scots. action. Such treatment had long been thought too lenient 
by the Commons, who, as early as 1572, had j)etitioned for her attainder ; 
and when, in 1584, a plot was discovered for the assassination of 
Elizabeth, contrived between Francis Throgmorton, a Cheshire gentle- 
man, and Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, parliament again took up 
the question. There was no doubt that, so long as Mary lived, the 
temptation to assassinate Elizabeth would be very great ; and also 
that, in such an event, it would be extremely difficult for the Protestants 
to prevent Mary's accession, as they had no candidate immediately 
available, and no organisation. Accordingly an Act of Parliament was 
passed, enacting, first, that if the country were invaded, or the queen 
murdered, or a plot formed for that purpose, with the 'privity' of 
any one that pretended a title to the realm, such a person could be tried 
by royal commission ; and, secondly, that, if the queen were murdered, 
the lords of the privy council, with the other magnates, should 
prosecute such a pretender to the death. At the same time an 
association was formed, binding the members, in case of the queen's 
murder, to ' prosecute to death ' any person by whom or for whom the 
deed had been done. 

Before long there was ample evidence that Mary had brought herself 
within the scope of this Act. A plot against Elizabeth's life was formed 



1587 Elizabeth 469 

by Anthony Babington and a number of young Catholic gentlemen, 
some of whom were about the court— for Elizabeth made no dis- 
tinction of religion in her service. Meanwhile, Sir Francis Babington's 
Walsiugham had arranged a plan by which all Mary's ^1°*- 
correspondence passed through his hands, and before long he had 
intercepted two letters from Mary to Babington, encouraging bis scheme. 
The conspirators were then arrested, convicted, and put to death ; and 
in October, 1586, a special commission, as provided by the Act, sat to 
try Mary, and found her guilty of complicity. A few days afterwards 
parliament assembled, and demanded that the sentence should be put 
into execution, and there can be no question that they spoke the voice of 
the nation as a whole. On the other hand, Elizabeth was exceedingly 
averse to act. As in 1568, she probably hoped that the disgrace of 
exposure would be sufficient ; but at length, urged by her ministers, she 
signed the warrant, and handed it to Davison, Walsingham's co-secretary 
of state. Probably she hoped that they would put it into execution, 
but in such a way that they might be disavowed and punished. The 
secretaries, however, called a meeting of those of the privy council within 
reach, and ten of them, including Burleigh, Leicester, Lord Howard of 
Effingham, Walsingham and Davison, signed an order to the earls of 
Kent and Shrewsbury, directing them to carry out the Mary Stuart 
execution. This was done at Fotheringay Castle on beheaded. 
February 8. When the news reached London, Elizabeth found it 
impossible to punish an act which had been carried out perfectly 
legally by her leading ministers ; but a scapegoat was made of Davison, 
who was deprived of his secretaryship and fined. By the nation at 
large the news was accepted as a relief ; bonfires were lighted and bells 
were rung, as for a victory ; for men felt that, let the Spaniard come 
when he would, there was now no chance of a Roman Catholic rebellion 
to aid the foreign invader. 

In dying, Mary left her claims to the throne, not to her son, who had 
turned out a strong Protestant, but to a daughter of Philip by his 
third wife, a princess of Portugal, who was a descendant of war with 
John of Gaunt. Philip accepted the legacy, and immedi- Spam, 
ately began to prepare for a great invasion of England. From that 
time, though no open declaration of war took place, England and Spain 
may be regarded as hostile powers. Drake was at once despatched to 
the Spanish coast ; and in April, with an audacity that astonished 
Europe, he sailed, with twenty-four ships only, into the harbour of 
Cadiz, and, in spite of all the Spanish forts and war-galleys could do, 
destroyed no less than a hundred sail of shipping and vast quantities of 



470 The Tudors 1587 

stores, which were being collected for Philip's expedition. Then sailing 
back, he endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to penetrate into the mouth of the 
Tagus, where other preparations were going forward. The result of 
his exploits was to delay the expedition for a year. This, however, was 
a very serious matter for Philip, because the duke of Parma had 
collected in the Netherlands an army of thirty thousand men, which, 
being kept together through the winter, was reduced to seventeen 
thousand by the time the Armada actually sailed. These exjDloits Drake 
called ' singeing the king of Spain's beard.' 

At last, in the summer of 1588, everything was in readiness, and the 
Armada, numbering one hundred and thirty-two ships, left the Spanish 
The Armada poi'ts under the command of the duke of Medina Sidonia. 
sails. itg orders were, on reaching the English Channel, to keep 

along the French coast to Dunkirk, and thence to escort the duke of 
Parma, in a fleet of flat-bottomed transjDorts which had been prepared, 
to the mouth of the Thames. Meanwhile, the English had been by no 
means idle. Thirty -four ships of the royal navy, almost all of which had 
l)een built by Elizabeth's orders, and one hundred and sixty-four armed 
merchant vessels, had been divided into two squadrons : one, under Lord 
Howard of Effingham, Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, and Martin 
Frobisher, was at Plymouth ; the other, under Lord Henry Seymour, 
was blockading the Netherland ports. An army of seventy-three 
thousand men had been collected at London, most of whom seem to 
have had firearms, and were led by officers who had had experience in 
fighting in France and elsewhere, at the head of whom was the earl of 
Leicester. It was also arranged that, when the beacon-fires showed 
the arrival of the Armada, every county should call out its militia, 
and confront the Spaniards with what was practically a levee en 
masse. 

Contrary to his orders, Sidonia sailed close to Plymouth, which he 

passed on the 20th July, and was immediately followed by the English 

i^u •c'- u^ fleet. The English commanders, who had the utmost 
The Fight » _ ' 

in the confidence, in the seamanship of their men, and regarded 

the tonnage of the Spanish fleet, which was twice as large 
as that of the English, and their superiority in cannon, which was four- 
fold, as quite compensated by the greater handiness of their own shij^s, 
and the much larger proportion of sailors which each contained, had 
decided to follow close behind. By this means, as the wind was south- 
west, they had the weather-gauge of the Armada, and were able to 
approach it or stop at will, while the Spaniards were unable to turn 
upon their pursuers. In this way the two fleets moved slowly up the 



1588 Elizabeth 



471 



Channel, and, a week after they passed Plymouth, the Spaniards 
anchored off Calais. Both sides had expended a great amount of 
ammunition, of which the English were beginning to run short. The 
loss, however, was almost entirely on the side of the Spanish ; for the 
Spanish guns, fired from their huge castles, could not touch the small 
English craft, while the English Avere able to do terrible execution 
among the crowded soldiery on the Spanish decks. 

On arriving at Calais, Sidonia expected to find Parma at Dunkirk 
with his men all ready to embark ; instead of which Parma was still at 
Bruges, and nothing whatever was ready. The English, The Armada 
however, were determined to bring matters to extremities, defeated. 
as a change in the wind might alter the whole aspect of affairs ; so, on 
the 29th, they sent fire-ships, full of combustibles, driving among the 
Spanish ships. Panic-stricken, the crews cut their anchors and fell into 
confusion, and when morning broke were again attacked by the English 
fleet. In this day's fighting, victory distinctly declared for the English ; 
and, when night fell, a strong north-east wind was driving the Spanish 
vessels on the shoals of Flanders. Had it continued, hardly a ship could 
have escaped ; but, luckily for them, the wind again shifted to the 
south-west, and enabled them to make their way north into the open 
sea. Keturn, however, to the Channel was impossible, and there was 
nothing left for them but to make the best of their way round the north 
of Scotland. From that moment, however, ill-luck pursued them ; a 
series of gales drove some on the coast of Norway, others on the rock- 
bound coasts of Scotland and Ireland. No less than two thousand 
corpses were counted on the beach of Sligo Bay ; and, eventually, only 
fifty-three vessels made their way back to Spain. Philip met his 
misfortune with a magnanimity that would have done credit to a better 
man : ' I sent you out,' he said, ' to war with men, and not with the 
elements.' Philip, however, was wrong. Up to the fight at Dunkirk, 
the elements had been all the Spaniards could wish ; the north-east 
gale which blew on the night of that fight was their first piece of 
misfortune due to the elements. The real causes of the disaster 
were to be found, partly in the superior seamanship of the English, 
partly in the fact that, at the critical moment, Parma and his men 
were not ready. Had Parma effected a landing, it is probable that 
he might have won a battle : that he would have conquered the 
country, or even effected a lengthy settlement, is most improbable ; 
and he himself never underrated for a moment the difficulty of the 
undertaking. 

In other respects the defeat of the Armada formed the turning-pomt 



472 The Tudor s 1588 

in the reign. Before the close of 1588 Leicester died. In 1590 he was 
followed by Walsingham ; and in 1591 by Christopher Hatton. Sir 

Nicholas Bacon had died in 1579, so that of the great 
Personal ° 

changes men who stood round the throne at the accession, Bur- 
leigh alone was left, and he was now an old man verging, 
on seventy. New men, therefore, began to come into prominence, of 
whom the most noticeable were Eobert Cecil, Walter Ealeigh, and the 
earl of Essex. Eobert Cecil was Burleigh's second son, and had been 
born in 1563. From his earliest youth he had been trained by his father 
Robert ''^^ ^^^^ successor ; he inherited many of his father's qualities, 
Cecil. ]3^^ ^yg^g jjqIj gQ distinguished a statesman. Nevertheless, 

his knowledge of business and of his father's secrets made him a most 
useful minister. Walter Ealeigh stood in a very different position. 
Walter Born in Devonshire in 1553, he soon made his way to court. 
Raleigh. Being a man of fine presence and good wit, he had early 
attracted the attention of Queen Elizabeth, who rewarded her favourite 
with large grants of land and money. She even made him captain of the 
guard ; but he had no place in the privy council, and no influence in 
political matters. Ealeigh was essentially a man of action, but he was 
extremely deficient in the capacity for dealing either with his equals or 
his superiors. He had had great experience of affairs, had fought in 
France, the West Indies, and in Ireland, and had about him a certain 
genius which has gained for him a much larger recognition in later times 
than he received in his own. 

Eobert Devereux, earl of Essex, was born in 1568, and was conse- 
quently twenty at the time of the Armada. He was, therefore, fifteen 
Robert years younger than Ealeigh, who regarded him as a younger 
Devereux. rival in the good graces of the queen. Essex's character 
seems to have been essentially showy, and, unlike Ealeigh, he seems to 
have acquired a reputation among his contemporaries quite out of pro- 
portion to his real capacity. He courted popularity ; and Lord Burleigh 
on one occasion, in advising a young man against either neglecting or 
over-courting popularity, told him to be 'neither an Essex nor a Ealeigh.' 
For the next ten years after the Armada, the contest between Eliza- 
beth and Philip was continued in full activity. In 1589 Henry iii. of 
^ France was assassinated by Jacques Clement ; and conse- 

France. j i ? 

quently, Henry of Navarre became legitimate king of 

France. He was, however, opposed by the Guises, with the support of 

Spain ; so Elizabeth, now no longer troubled by the thought that she 

was aiding rebels, was able to throw her whole force into Henry's 

scale ; and a contingent of some six thousand troo]3s, usually under the 



1596 Elizabeth 



473 



command of the earl of Essex, fought regularly under Henry's banner 
till the conclusion of the war. 

Besides thus indirectly aiding to check Philip, a series of expeditions 
were sent out from England against Spain. In 1589, Sir Francis Drake 
and Sir John Norris commanded an expedition to Portugal, ^,_ „, 

=> ' The War. 

under the pretext of aiding Don Antonio, one of the Portu- 
guese royal family, to recover the crown of Portugal, which P°^t"g^^- 
had been worn by Philip, in right of his wife, since 1580. They were, 
liowever, able to effect little ; for after taking Corunna, and marching 
from Peniche to Lisbon, they found that the Portuguese would do 
nothing to aid them. In 1590, Lord Thomas Howard and Sir Richard 
Grenville, with seven ships, were sent to intercept the Plate fleet off the 
Azores. There, however, they were attacked by a fleet of fifty Spaniards. 
Lord Thomas and six ships retreated ; but Sir Richard Grenville in the 
Revenge, having waited to bring off some sick men, was The 
attacked by the whole Spanish fleet ; and after a desperate ' Revenge.' 
combat was forced to surrender. In 1592 another expedition was sent 
to the Azores under Sir Martin Frobisher. In 1594, Drake and Hawkins 
sailed to the West Indies ; but the expedition was unfortunate. The 
Spaniards were found prepared, and both commanders perished of sick- 
ness at sea. By this time it was rumoured that another Armada was 
being prepared in Cadiz harbour ; so in 1596, Lord Howard of Efiingham, 
the earl of Essex, and Raleigh, repeated Drake's exploit of 1587. 
Entering the harbour, the fleet destroyed the Spanish ships 
at their moorings, while the soldiers, under Essex, stormed 
the town and destroyed the fortiflcations, bringing away with them much 
booty. The action excited the admiration of all Europe. 

War with Spain naturally led to English schemes of colonisation. 
As early as 1579 a half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Humphrey 
Gilbert, who ought to be regarded as the real foun'der Colonisation. 
of our Colonial Empire, obtained a grant from the 
queen authorising him to make settlements in unoccupied territory. 
Accordingly in 1583 he attempted to make a colony in qju^^j.^ 
Newfoundland ; and after landing the settlers, jDroceeded 
south to make a further voyage of discovery. Unfortunately on his 
homeward passage, the crazy vessel of ten tons in which he was crossing 
the Atlantic foundered near the Azores, and all on board perished. 
After Gilbert's death, his patent was regranted to Raleigh; and, 
his brother's colonists having perished, Raleigh decided j^^i^jgh. 
to make a fresh attempt in a more genial clime. In 
1584, an expedition sent out by him explored the coast north of 



474 The Tudors 1596 

Florida, and reported so well of the climate that Kaleigh decided to 
choose it for his settlement ; while the queen honoured his intention by- 
permitting the country to be called Virginia. Accordingly, 
in 1585, a body of colonists were sent out under the escort 
of Sir Richard Grenville. Next year Grenville took out another body, 
but found that the first batch had just returned home with Drake (see 
page 467), after a sojourn of ten months. For some unexplained reason, 
Grenville's new colonists perished — probably from being led away into 
the interior by the thirst for gold, or through giving insufficient attention 
to crops. Another body sent out in 1587 shared the same fate. 

Ealeigh's eff'orts, therefore, were unsuccessful ; and after spending 
about £40,000 on the enterprise, he handed over his rights to a 

Raleigh in company of merchants ; and nothing more was eff'ected in 

Guiana. Virginia until the next reign. Raleigh, however, devoted 
his attention to a new sphere of action. Having heard of the wealth of 
Guiana, he sent out an expedition in 1594 to explore the coast ; and in 
1595 followed himself. Having made his way to the mouth of the 
Orinoco, he ascended the river in small boats for a considerable distance. 
He was well received by the natives, between whose chief and the queen 
of England he established a somewhat shadowy treaty, and returned 
home satisfied as to the wealth of the country, and thoroughly believing 
in the existence of a gold mine a little farther inland than he had been 
able to penetrate. Circumstances, however, prevented him from 
returning ; but he sent out two subsequent expeditions under his 
friend Captain Laurence Keymis. 

Besides these attempts at colonisation, the latter years of Queen 

Elizabeth saw a great extension in our commerce. The practice of 

fitting out exi3editions such as those of Drake and Raleigh 
Commerce. ,^ „ . . ^^ ■ -, ^ i i • 

at the expense of private individuals, though sometimes 

with government assistance, had trained Englishmen in one of our most 
important national characteristics — viz. that of doing by individual 
eff'ort what elsewhere is done by government alone. Trade Avith 
distant countries was then a dangerous and expensive undertaking ; and 
for the purpose of carrying it on, companies were formed exactly 
analogous to our great railway companies or South African companies 
of the present day. Such companies received a charter from the govern- 
ment and special privileges, and many such were granted by Queen 
_, „ Elizabeth. Of these, the most famous was the East India 

The East ' 

India Company, incorporated in 1600. For a long time the trade 

omp y. ^^ ^^^ East had been carried on by the Portuguese with 

such secrecy, that it was not till 1587, when Drake on his return from 



1599 Elizabeth 



475 



Cadiz captured a Portup^uese East Indiaman, that the English realised 
its value. From that time forward, however, efforts were made Ijoth by 
the English and Dutch to break down the Portuguese monopoly. The 
first voyage of an English East Indiaman was made in 1601, and in 
that year an English trading station or factory was established at 
Calicut. Other companies traded with Eussia and the Levant ; and 
the impetus thus given to English commercial enterprise was never lost. 

After 1596 the war against Spain gradually died out. In France, 
Philip had completely failed to prevent Henry of Navarre from becoming 
king. In 1590 Henry defeated the league and their Spanish 
allies at the battle of Ivry. In 1592 Parma, Philip's best 
general, died during an attempt to raise the siege of Eouen. Next 
year Henry made success secure by formally joining the Catholic Church. 
This step, which he justified on the ground that ' France is worth a mass,' 
made him king not merely of a faction but of the French nation, and 
from that time forward resistance gradually died away. In 1598 he put 
the religious affairs of France on a firm footing by the Edict Edict of 
of Nantes, which granted toleration to the Huguenots. And Nantes, 
the same year the Peace of Vervins brought his long struggle with 
Spain to a close. Within a month or two Philip himself died, and was 
succeeded by his peaceful son Philip iii. 

We must now return to events in Ireland. The Tudors had never 
lost sight of the policy, initiated by Henry vii., of bringing the island 
completely under English rule ; and though the progress 
made had been fitful, a considerable amount had been 
accomplished. During the reign of Henry viii., as in that of his pre- 
decessor, the great difficulty had been caused by the over- ^^^ ^ 

Henry VIII. 
weening power of the earls of Kildare ; and when Henry's 

quarrel with Rome began, this turbulent family, of course, took the 
opportunity to declare for the pope, and added religious warfare to 
the horrors of the country. The danger, however, was so serious 
that the government took most energetic measures to restore peace : 
every leader who fell into Henry's hands was hanged, and only a single 
boy remained to represent the Geraldines of Kildare. 

The Reformation in Ireland was quite diflerent from that in England. 
The pre-reformation church of Ireland was in an extremely lax condi- 
tion : authority was divided among no less than eight arch- The Refor- 
bishops, no one of whom was supreme ; and the bishops, "^ 
instead of having regular spheres of work, were attached to monastic 
houses. Accordingly, when the religious houses were swept away, the 
church fell into complete confusion. The Act of Supremacy was passed 



476 



The Tudors 



1599 



by the Irish parliament in 1538 and generally accepted by the chiefs ; 
and orders were given, though not apparently carried out, for the trans- 
lation of the English service-book into Irish. The Eeformation, how- 




ever, on its spiritual side was wholly foreign to the Irish character ; the 
people still clung to the old faith, and to the ministrations of the 
itinerant friars ; and it is from the friars and their preaching that the 



1599 Elizabeth 477 

Irish Catholic Church has received the national and popular character 
which distinguishes it at the present day. At the same time, it nuist not 
be supposed that the conduct of the Irish chiefs towards the English 
government was dictated by religious motives. Mary restored the 
Roman Catholic religion, but the chiefs rebelled against her just the 
same ; and the names of Queen's County and Maryborough, King's 
County and Philipstown still remain to show how far English rule was 
advanced in her time. 

The system, however, of annexing the territories of the chiefs and 
organising them as English shires, brought the government face to face 
with a new and most serious difficulty. In the history of 

„ , , , , . •^ ^ The. Irish 

land-tenure, ownership 01 land by the nation, the tribe, the Land 
family or community, and the individual, mark four sue- ^^ ^"^" 
cessive stages of civilisation. The English had reached the stage of 
individual ownership before they arrived in Britain ; but the Celts were 
between the tribal and family stages, and their customs appeared, 
to the English of the sixteenth century, perfectly barbarous. The 
whole nation was divided into groups, each of whom acknowledged the 
authority of a chief, who held certain demesne lands in his own hands, 
and whose household was provided for by contributions due from all the 
inhabitants. Under him were secondary groups, called Septs, all the 
members of whom had one surname and had a particular chieftain or 
Tanist, who had likewise his demesnes and dues. At the death of a 
chief or chieftain, his land went as a whole to the next heir ; but 
all other lands, held by the inferior inhabitants, were divided by 
gavelkind, in which all the children, legitimate or illegitimate, shared 
alike. The consequence was to make agriculture and progress almost 
impossible, for 'almost every acre of land hath a several owner, 
which termeth himself a lord, and his portion of land his country.' 
Moreover, the Irish regarded the lands of the chief or chieftain not 
as belonging to him, but as belonging to his followers collectively, 
and therefore looked upon the confiscation of the property of the 
chief as robbery of themselves. Confronted with this land-system, 
the English attempted to introduce the English system. They created 
the chiefs earls, and regarded the dues paid as rents. From this it 
followed that, when an Irish chief committed treason, his property was 
confiscated as in England, and probably redivided among English 
adventurers, without regard to the rights of the chieftains. Thus one 
rebellion led the way to another. 

Early in Elizabeth's reign, her authority was defied by Shan O'Neal, 
•earl of Tyrone. Like the other Irish chieftains, Shan had made 



478 The Tudors 1599 

an excellent impression at the English court, but immediately on his 
return he began disturbances ; and he maintained his independence, more 
Shan <^^ l^S'^5 ^i^l ^^ 1586 he was assassinated in a fray. Troubles 
O'Neal, then broke out in the south-west, owing to a quarrel 
of the queen with the Ormonds and the Desmonds ; but nothing very 
The serious happened till 1579, when the Desmonds of Munster 

Desmonds, j^poke into rebellion, assisted by a Spanish force. The 
Irish, however, again proved too weak to resist the English when fairly 
roused : the Desmonds were routed, and the Spanish and Italian soldiers, 
sent by the pope, were forced to surrender and then brutally massacred at 
Smerwick. The most formidable insurrection of all, however, broke out 
after the Armada. The defeat of the Desmonds was followed by a whole- 
sale confiscation of their lands, which were divided out among the English 
colonists. Among others, the poet Spenser, who had acted as secretary to 
the lord-lieutenant, and whose View of the Present State of Ireland is a 
most valuable contribution to our knowledge of the time, received 
Kilcolman Castle ; and another large share was given to Sir Walter 
Ealeigh. Spenser went and resided on his estate, and Sir Walter 
Raleigh made a genuine efibrt to people his lands with English settlers ; 
but, in most cases, the adventurers did little or nothing to make good 
their hold on their grants. The result was to drive the Irish chieftains 
to despair. Accordingly, a most formidable insurrection broke out, in 
which Spenser barely escaped with his life ; and the English colonists in 
Munster were practically swept away. This insurrection, however, 
though terrible in its immediate consequences, would have been short- 
Hugh lived had not Hugh O'Neal, earl of Tyrone, who was a 
O'Neal. relative of Shan O'Neal, put himself at the head of the 
movement. Tyrone was probably the best general the Irish had yet had. 
He was a master of the art of irregular warfare, and knew exactly how 
to train his soldiers enough to stand up against regular troops without 
destroying their aptitude for the irregular forays to which they had been 
accustomed. He proved himself, therefore, a most formidable antago- 
Norris. nist. Sir John Norris, one of the best English soldiers of 
the day, was worn out in pursuing him. His successor. Sir 
Bagnal. Henry Bagnal, was led into an ambush, by the Blackwater, 
and vslain with most of his soldiers. In these circumstances, the council 
determined to enlist the services of the earl of Essex. 

Essex was, on the whole, the best man to send. He had had much 
experience in fighting, and was believed to be capable of gi'eat deeds. At 
the same time, the courtiers saw him depart with mixed feelings. He 
was hated by the Cecils, and by his personal rivals, Raleigh and 



1599 Elizaheth 



479 



Cobliam, to whom his failure, even at the expense of the state, could not 
fail to be grateful. On the other hand, he received a letter of sound advice 
from Francis Bacon. Arrived in Ireland, Essex entirelv for- t^ 
got, or was unable to carry out, the policy he had advocated Expedition, 
in England. Instead of attacking Tyrone in his Ulster headquarters, he 
allowed himself to be beguiled into a ruinous campaign in the desolated 
regions of the south. Here, without any commensurate result, he lost 
half his forces, and, when he finally confronted Tyrone, found himself too 
weak to engage him with any prospect of success. In these 
circumstances, he entered into a treaty by which he agreed ^^ ^' "^^' 
that some great lord should be sent as viceroy, and that only Irishmen 
should be appointed to offices. To such an arrangement Essex must 
have been perfectly aware that Elizabeth would never agree. 

For some time he was at a loss what to do. At one time he thought 
of bringing his army over to England and dictating his own terms ; 
eventually he left it under the command of Lord Mountjoy, Return to 
and, without any leave of absence, returned to London. England. 
On his arrival, without even waiting to change his travel-stained clothes, 
he rushed into the queen's apartments, and claimed an audience. Eliza- 
beth indignantly ordered him out ; and, though she granted him a private 
interview, ordered his case to be investigated by the council. The 
members, however, being unaware of Essex's treasonable designs, merely 
ordered him to be confined to his house ; and, after a short time, even 
this restriction was removed. Nevertheless, the earl was not permitted 
to appear at court ; and, chafing at the triumph which his own folly had 

given to his enemies, he entered into a treasonable corre- ^^. ^ 

° ^ . His treason. 

spondence with the king of Scots ; collected round him 
soldiers, and desperate men such as Catesby and others, who afterwards 
took part in the Gunpowder Plot. He had also behind hmi a number of 
noblemen, such as Lords Southampton and Monteagie ; and, by an 
expression he had let fall, that, if he were in power, no one should sufier 
for his religious opinions, had secured some support from both Eoman 
Catholics and Puritans. Such a combination was, obviously, most 
dangerous to the government, and Elizabeth and her ministers, though 
they did not know the full extent of Essex's schemes, were aware of their 
general import. Orders were, therefore, given for his arrest. Essex, 
however, cleverly evaded the officers, and, after an unsuccessful attempt 
to raise the Londoners, defended Essex House against the Essex's 
queen's troops. Such conduct was, obviously, intolerable. Death. 
His conviction for treason followed as a matter of course, and he was 
beheaded in 1601. His death left Cecil in secure possession of power. 



480 The Tudars leoi 

The last parliamentary event of Elizabeth's reign was the question of 

monopolies. During the first thirty years of her reign only eight 

subsidies had been voted. This remarkable economy, which 
Parliament. „ , ^ , . ., , 

was of the greatest advantage to the country, was impossible 

after the Spanish war ; and, during the last fifteen years, Elizabeth had 
had to raise fifteen subsidies and to sell crown lands to the value of more 
than two more. In spite of this she was in great difficulties for money. 
During her earlier years she had paid ofl" the debts of her father and her 
brother and sister, but during the years of war she had great difficulty 
in providing both for the ordinary expenses of the country, and the extra 
charges entailed by the war and by her alliances with the Dutch and 
French. As a means of raising money, therefore, she had used largely 
her right of granting monopolies, for which an annual charge 
was made to the state. These created a good deal of dis- 
content ; and the parliament of 1601 having raised the question, the 
queen consented to a revision. On the whole, the relations between 
Elizabeth and her parliaments were extremely friendly, the only difficulty 
arising from the fact that the Commons wished to go farther than the 
queen ; and though on several occasions Elizabeth arrested members for 
their conduct in the house, no serious exceiDtion seems to have been 
taken at the time. 

The reign of Elizabeth saw a most marked change in the economical 
condition of the country. The rise of sheep-farming, the disendowment 
Social of the guilds, and the dissolution of the monasteries had 

Changes, proved fatal to the old system of life, both in town and 
country. That system, which depended upon the organisation of the 
individual in some recognised community such as the manor or the 
guild, had been almost replaced by the new system, in which the 
relation between employer and employed is simply a matter of wages. 
The introduction of the new system was inevitable, but it brought with 
it its drawbacks. First, because it substituted for a fixed relation and 
a fixed remuneration a temporary connection and a fluctuating income ; 
and secondly, because it- brought with it the problem of the unemployed. 
These difficulties were met by statesmen by an attempt to fix wages 
by law, and by the provision of a regular system of Poor Law relief. 
The rate of wages was regulated by the Aijprenticeshijp Act of 1564, 
generally known as the Fifth of Queen Elizabeth, Chapter 4. Its scope 
was twofold. First, it attempted to limit the number of skilled 
labourers by enacting that each artisan must have served a seven years' 
apprenticeship in the trade which he followed. Secondly, it empowered 
the magistrates at quarter sessions to fix the wages payable in their 



1603 Elizabeth 48 1 

district. It also placed restrictions ou the practice of labourers removiuf 
from one district to another in search of higher wages. In the time of 
Edward vi. the clergy were ordered to exhort their parishioners to provide 
by their liberality for the maintenance of their own poor. This not 
proving efficient, officers were appointed to assess the in- The Poor 
habitants of the parish, and to demand the payment on ^^^• 
pain of being censured by the magistrates ; and finally, compulsion being 
found necessary, the law was consolidated into the great Poor Law of 
1601, which provided that in every parish the churchwarden, and from 
two to four householders should be nominated by the justices of the 
peace as overseers of the poor. These persons might levy a rate on land 
and use it : first, to set to work indigent children, and able-bodied men 
out of work ; second, to relieve people who could not work and had no 
near relatives to support them ; and third, to erect houses of correction 
for vagabonds, and to put out pauper children as apprentices. This 
Act formed the basis of the Poor Law till 1834. 

The last two years of Elizabeth's life were marked by no political 
event of first-rate importance. The war with Spain still dragged on, but 
took mainly the form of privateering. In Ireland Essex's Conclusion 
successor, Mountjoy, distinguished himself by defeating °^^^^ reign. 
Tyrone, who was pardoned. At court the chief attention of statesmen 
was given to securing their own fortunes under Elizabeth's successor. 
That successor, it was now quite understood, would be James of Scotland, 
for the claim of the Suffolk family was forgotten, and the advantage of 
uniting England and Scotland under one crown was obvious to every- 
body. Until 1602 Elizabeth had preserved her regular health ; but 
during the autumn of that year she failed fast, and in March 1603 her 
long and successful reign came to a close. In estimating the merits of a 
sovereign it is always difficult to apportion praise and blame between the 
crown and its ministers ; but in Elizabeth's case it may fairly be said 
that where she differed from her ministers, events almost invariably 
showed that she was right, and, what is still more remarkable, she con- 
trived that even the very weaknesses of her character should play their 
part in the attainment of what she considered the national good. 



CHIEF DATES. 



A.D. 



Treaty of Cateaux Cambresis, ... - 1559 

Many London Clergy leave the Church, . . 1564 

Mary Queen of Scots comes to England, . . 1568 

2 H 



482 



The Tudors 



permanent 



CHIEF DA TES {continued). 



Rising of the North, 
Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day 
Execution of Campion the Jesuit, 
High Commission Court put on a 

basis, 

Execution of Mary Queen of Scots, 
Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 
Tyrone's Rebellion in Ireland, . 
Execution of Essex, . 
The Great Poor Law, 



A.T>. 
1569 
1572 
1581 

1583 
1587 
1588 
1599 
1601 
1601 



Book VII 

THE STUARTS 



XYII.— THE STUARTS. 







James I, = 
1603-1625 


= Anne of Deni 
d. 1619 


nark. 






Henry, Charles I. 
d. 1612. 1625-1649. 
1 


) 




1 
Elizabeth = 
d. 1662. 


3: Frederick 
of the 
Palatinate. 


Charles II., 
1660-1685. 




James II., 

1685-1688, 

d. 1701. 


1 
Mary = 
d. 1660. 


^ William 
of 
Orange, 
d. 1650, 

lM III., 
1702. 




1 
James 
(the Old 
Pretender), 
b. 1688, 
d. 1765. 


1 1 
Anne, Mary=^Willlj 
1702-1714. 1688-1694. 1688- 




1 

Prince Kupert, 

d. 1682. 




1 1 
Prince Maiirice, Sophia = 
d. 1652. d. 1714. 

Georg 
1714- 

Georc 


= Elector 

^e L, 
1727. 

je II. 


of Hanover. 



XVIII.— BOURBON KINGS OF FRANCE, 1589-1715. 

Henry IV., 1589-1610. 

Louis XIII., 1610-1643. 

I 
Louis XIV.,:tl64;3-1715. 



481 



CHAPTER I 

JAMES I. : 1603-1625 
Born 1566 ; married 1589, Anne of Denmark. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS 

France. Spain. Emperors. Denmark. 

Henry iv., d. 1610. Philip in., d. 1621. Ruclolpli, d. 1612. Cliristiau iv,, 
Louis XIII., d. 1613. Philip iv., 1665. Matthias, d. 1619. 1588 to 1608. 

Ferdinand, d. 1637. 

The Main and Bye Plots — The religious question — Parliament — The Gunpowder 
Plot — Financial and constitutional difficulties of James — Death of lluleigh — 
The Thirty Years' War — Buckingham — the Spanish Match. 

On the death of Elizabeth, James vi. of Scotland became king of 
England and Ireland by right of descent from his great-grandmother, 
Margaret, daughter of Henry vii. According to the will of The Acces- 
Henry viii. (see p. 426), Elizabeth should have been sue- ^^°"" 
ceeded by William Seymour, the son of the earl of Hertford, and of 
Katharine Grey, younger sister of Lady Jane ; but the legitimacy of 
their marriage was in dispute, and he had no party behind him. Indeed, 
had Elizabeth been willing, parliament would gladly have named James 
heir-apparent, but Elizabeth resented the mention of the subject, and 
only on her deathbed had indicated ' her cousin of Scotland' as her 
heir. 

At his accession James was thirty-seven years of age. He had been 
king from babyhood, and had most exaggerated ideas of the rights of 
sovereigns. Great as had been the personal respect exacted The King's 
by the Tudors, and high-handed as had been their conduct, Character, 
the Tudor sovereigns had never troubled themselves much about the 
theory of government. Absolute monarchs, indeed, they claimed to be- 
that is, free from the control of pope or emperor, or of any external 

485 



486 The Stuarts 1603 

power — but they had never advanced the theory that their prerogative 
was above the law. James, on the contrary, was wanting in the Tudor 
art of winning personal respect. His slovenly and gluttonous habits 
contrasted ill with the dignity of his predecessors, and in consequence he 
received less credit than was due to him for the many good qualities 
which he undeniably possessed. He was both good-humoured and good- 
natured, gifted with the power of vigorous and decisive speech, and, 
thanks to the good education given to him by his tutor, the learned 
George Buchanan, he was better versed in history and in religious con- 
troversy, and knew more of foreign countries, than the majority of 
contemporary statesmen. Unfortunately, however, his learning was 
greater than his practical wisdom, while his conscious intellectual 
superiority led him to make errors which a more stupid man would 
probably have avoided. Indeed, the contrast between his great learning 
and his real ineffectiveness caused Henry iv. to describe him as 'the 
wisest fool in Christendom.' It is but just, however, to say that the 
conditions under which he lived were calculated to bring his faults to the 
front, and prevent his abilities from being noticed. 

James' initial error was a failure to remark the essential diflFerence be- 
tween English and Scottish politics. He regarded the bishops as having 
the same influence in England as the Scottish ministers had across the 
border, and as forming a power which could be played off against that of 
the nobility. This was a double mistake ; for in England the nobles, as 
such, had little power, and the strength of the Puritan feeling in the 
middle classes caused the opinion of the bishops to be regarded with the 
strongest suspicion. Moreover, the Scottish parliament contained nothing 
so independent and powerful as the English House of Commons, which 
had already begun to show itself restive under the popular and judicious 
rule of Elizabeth. On the other hand, it could not be expected that the 
new sovereign would readily surrender rights which had been exercised 
by his predecessors, so that a struggle between king and parliament was 
inevitable. On his w^ay from Scotland James hanged, without form of 
trial, a man Avho was caught pocket-picking ; and this action, which 
violated a cardinal maxim of the constitution, may be taken as typical 
of the manner in which he regarded his prerogative as overriding the law 
and customs of his new kingdom. 

After a leisurely journey, spent in visiting the houses of the leading 
nobility, James reached London in May. He found the leading men 
divided into two parties, according as they preferred war with Spain or 
peace, the latter headed by the secretary of state, Sir Eobert Cecil ; 
the other by the captain of the late queen's guard. Sir- Walter Ealeigh. 



1603 James I. 



487 



Of these, Sir Walter Ealeigh, who was then fifty-one years of acre, was 
the greatest surviving representative of the active spirits of the late 
reign ; and succeeding ages have recognised him as a man 
of genius, great as well in thought as in action, and as ^^^^*^•^• 
one of the founders of our Colonial Empire. His contemporaries 
however, thought very differently. Though a few, such as Spenser 
the poet, estimated his powers highly, the mass of his countrymen 
regarded him as at once insolent and intriguing, and Queen Elizabeth 
would never admit him into her privy council. During Elizabeth's 
reign, Raleigh, as a supporter of the war policy, had been kept in the 
background, but he hoped to find employment and influence under the 
new king. Cecil, on the other hand, had not a spark of genius ; but he 
was diligent, methodical, and safe. He represented the peaceful policy of 
Elizabeth's later years, had behind him the reputation of his father, was 
perfectly disinterested, and had the invaluable quality of a conciliatory 
manner. James, however, had learned while in Scotland to appreciate 
Cecil's good qualities, while his repugnance to war alienated him from 
Raleigh ; so Cecil was continued in his post of secretary, while Raleigh 
was dismissed, and his office given to Sir Thomas Erskine, a Scotsman. 
Though it would be a mistake to regard Raleigh's chance of displacing 
Cecil as having ever been serious, there is no doubt that this rebuff 
was a sore disappointment to him and to his friend. Lord Cobham. 
Their anger led them to discuss a plan for getting rid of Cecil by force. 
Cobham also certainly thought of dethroning James, and of placing 
Arabella Stuart, a daughter of Darnley's younger brother. The Main 
on the throne. It was said, too, that there was wild talk of °*' 
getting assistance from Spain ; but that is most unlikely. These 
plans of Raleigh and Cobham were consequently spoken of as the Main 
Plot. 

At the same time there was a movement among the Roman Catho- 
lics, who were disappointed at finding that James did not at once 
put a stop to their grievances. These were undoubtedly The Bye 
great. The celebration of mass was not only forbidden by ^'°^' 
law, but both the priest who said it and the congregation who heard him 
were alike subject to the terrible penalties of treason ; and although so 
far as laymen were concerned, the strict letter of the law was rarely 
enforced, the fines for non-attendance at church were vigorously col- 
lected. Language had been used by James, while in Scotland, which 
created a belief among the Roman Catholics that these would be remitted ; 
but the council dared not face the financial difiiculty that would be caused 
by the loss of such a source of revenue, and it was soon found that the 



488 The Stuarts 1603 

fines -would be collected as before. Accordingly, William Watson, a 
priest, who had visited James in Edinburgh ; George Brooke, a brother 
of Sir Walter Raleigh's friend Lord Cobham ; and Lord Grey de Wilton, 
a Puritan who had been associated with Roman Catholics in Essex's plot, 
talked over a plan for seizing the king and forcing him by threats to 
grant toleration. This scheme became known as the Bye. Cecil heard 
of both schemes; and, arresting all concerned, tried the prisoners as though 
Ijoth plots were the same, as indeed was suggested by Brooke's connec- 
tion with both. The evidence against all the prisoners, especially against 
Raleigh, was very slight ; but the dread of revolution was great. Treason, 
as Shakespeare defined it, was ' to labour in one's country's wrack,' and 
of that the population was perfectly prepared to hear that Raleigh 
was guilty. Accordingly, Brooke and Watson were hanged ; Raleigh, 
Cobham, and Grey were found guilty, but respited and consigned to 
the Tower. Throughout the whole transaction popular feeling was 
altogether on the side of Cecil, and Raleigh passed through the streets 
on his way to the Tower amid the execrations of the mob. Had it 
not been for James, he and the rest would certainly have suftered 
death. 

Both Puritans and Roman Catholics hoped to find favour with 

James. The former relied on his Presbyterian education, the latter 

The Re- ^^ ^^^ descent from Mary Queen of Scots ; but it was the 

ligious lot of both to be disappointed, for partly from preference, 

partly from stress of circumstances, James decided to 

maintain the religious settlement of Queen Elizabeth. The views 

of the Puritans were stated in a document called the 

The Punts. tis 

" Millenary Petition, because it was intended to be signed 
by one thousand ministers. The position taken up was decidedly more 
moderate than that held by the Puritan leaders under Elizabeth, 
Instead of asking for the abolition of Episcopacy, as had been advo- 
cated by Cartwright and by the authors of the Mar-prelate tracts, the 
question of church government was waived, and changes in doctrine 
and ceremonial were jilone demanded. The petitioners, however, 
showed little idea of toleration : they asked for the most part that 
the changes desired by themselves should be not only allowed but 
enforced on others. Their chief requests were that the cross should 
not be allowed in baptism ; that the bestowal of the ring should not 
form part of the marriage ceremony ; and that the terms ' priest ' 
and ' absolution ' should be ' corrected.' They were also desirous that 
pains should be taken to secure better preachers ; and that Sunday 
should be more strictly observed. The petition was loudly condemned 



1604 James I. 489 

by the universities ; but James consented to receive it, and in the spring 
of 1604 a conference between the bishops and four of tlio leading peti- 
tioners was held at Hampton Court. The most active representative 
of the church was Bancroft, bishop of London ; and 
of the Puritans, Reynolds, president of Corpus Christi ton Court^" 
College, Oxford, and Chadertou, master of Emmanuel Controversy. 
College, Cambridge. Reynolds' first demands were that the Lambeth 
Articles, a strongly Calvinistic formula, should be incorporated with the 
Thirty-nine Articles. This James refused ; but he agreed to Reynolds' 
next suggestion that a new translation of the Bible should be made. The 
third subject raised was that of ' Prophesy ings,' or meetings of clergy for 
debate, to which Elizabeth had entertained so strong an objection, and 
this led to the introduction of the word ' Presbytery.' On hearing it, 
James fired up, and assuming that the real aim of the petitioners was 
the establishment of the Scottish Presbyterian system, he abused them 
roundly, took up the position enunciated in his favourite maxim, ' No 
Bishop, no King,' and broke up the meeting. ' If this be all they have to 
say,' said the king, ' I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse.' 
His declaration amounted to open war between the bishops and the 
Puritans. Within the year Bancroft succeeded Whitgift as archbishop 
of Canterbury, and some new canons, conceived in a high church sense, 
having been drawn up by convocation under his direction, about three 
hundred clergy who refused to accept them were driven from their 
livings, and were thus forced to become Nonconformists. Happily these 
differences did not impede the joint action of both parties in the transla- 
tion of the Bible. Forty-seven revisers, selected impartially from the 
most learned men of both parties, participated in the work, of Avhom the 
most notable were Andrewes, bishop of Winchester, Sir Henry Savile, 
warden of Merton College, Oxford, and Chaderton. The new transla- 
tion, which is still known as the Authorised Version, was completed and 
published in 1611. Founded as it was upon the best wording of earlier 
translations, and carefully corrected according to the best scholarship of 
the time, it represents both in style and accuracy not only the best that the 
age could produce, but probably the best of which the English language 
is capable. 

With the Roman Catholics James had more sympathy ; but it was not 
easy for him to carry his good wishes into action. The importance of 
the fines paid by the recusants as a source of revenue made The Roman 
it hard to dispense with them, and the Puritan feeling of ^ ° ^^^' 
the House of Commons was fatal to any changes in the law. James' great 
hope, however, was to devise some oath of allegiance which the Roman 



490 The Stuarts 1604 

Catholics would be willing to take, and so give a guarantee of loyalty 
to the existing government ; but though he worked hard and dis- 
played great ingenuity, he failed, and before long the recklessness of 
some of the more violent Roman Catholics made their position worse 
than ever. 

James' first parliament met in March 1604. In calling it, he took 
the unusual course of advising the electors as to their choice of repre- 
sentatives, and warned them against the election of outlaws 
Parliament. , , „ -, „ . . , ,. i 

or bankrupts, of men noted for superstitious blindness one 

way,' or for their 'turbulent humours' on the other. This advice, 
though unconstitutional, was sound ; but the sting of the proclama- 
tion lay in its tail. All returns of elections were to be made into 
the Court of Chancery, and if any 'should be found to be made 
contrary to the proclamation,' they were ' to be rejected as unlawful 
and insufficient.' 

When the returns came in, it was found that Sir Francis Goodwin, 
one of the members for Buckinghamshire, was an outlaw. The Court of 

Goodwin's Chancery cancelled the return, and ordered a new election. 

Case. Yyi this Sir John Fortescue was chosen. However, when 

parliament met, Goodwin claimed the seat, and his right was allowed by 
the House. A dispute followed, and in it James made the astounding 
statement that ' all matters of privilege were derived from his grant.' 
The Commons, however, held their ground ; and while they brought in a 
bill to disable outlaws from sitting in the future, firmly asserted that 
all questions touching election disputes ought to be decided by the 
Commons' House. Eventually, James gave way. Both candidates were 
withdrawn, and a third chosen ; but the fruits of victory lay with 
parliament. Had James carried his point, he would, in reality, have 
secured the right to nominate members, and make election a sham. In 
this matter the Commons were guided by the advice of Sir Francis 
Bacon. Immediately afterwards, the Commons won another victory by 

Shirley's asserting, in the case of Sir Thomas Shirley who had been 

Case. arrested for debt since the election, the right of their 

members to immunity from arrest during the sitting of the House except 
for treason, felony, or breach of the peace. Though victorious in both 
cases, the members were seriously alarmed by James' remark about their 
privileges ; and before they separated they placed on record their opinion 
' that the privileges of their House, and therein the liberties and stability 
of the whole kingdom, had been more universally and dangerously 
impugned than ever, as they supposed, since the beginning of parlia- 
ments.' The prerogatives of the princes, they declared, were ever 



1604 James I. 



491 



nrrowing, but the privileges of subjects, if once lost, were 'not to be 
recovered but with much disquiet.' 

On matters of general politics the Commons agreed with the king no 
better than on matters of privilege. James, who in this respect was 
ahead of his subjects, pressed hard for a union of England and i t • -.u 
Scotland, and so far prevailed that commissioners met to Scotland, 
discuss the matter, and their report was presented in 1606. Considering 
the times, its proposals were most reasonable. The hostile border laws 
were to be abolished, and each kingdom was to cease from beino- an 
asylum for the criminals of the other. English farmers were not to 
send wool to Scotland, nor Scottish "farmers cattle to England ; but in 
other respects trade was to be free, and natives of either country were 
to be allowed to trade in the other. A more difficult question was 
that of the naturalisation of Scotchmen in England. The commissioners 
proposed that the Ante-nati — i.e. Scots born during the reign The Ante- 
of Elizabeth — should be naturalised by an Act of Parliament, "^^'' 
and that the Post-nati, born under the reign of James, should be 
declared naturalised from birth. But difficulties arose about the king's 
prerogative ; merchants feared for their trade ; officials dreaded to see 
Scotsmen in all the best posts ; and as few except James appreciated 
the inestimable advantage to both countries of complete amalgamation, 
the design was frustrated, and parliament did nothing but abolish the 
hostile border laws, and the Post-nati were declared naturalised by the 
judges. Incidentally the Commons, when asked to punish a member 
who had described the Scots as ' rebels, beggars, and traitors,' recorded 
their view that, being a member of the House, he was not liable to be 
called in question elsewhere. They then expelled him from the House, 
and sent him to the Tower. 

On religious matters the king and the parliament were also of different 
minds. The majority of the Connnons were desirous of carrying into 
effect some of the recommendations of the Puritan divines. Puritanism. 
Bills were passed to make subscription to some of the 
articles optional, to forbid all pluralities and non-residence, to require 
guarantees of ability to preach from candidates for ordination, and to 
forbid any one to be deprived of a living for objecting to the use of 
the surplice or cross. The bills fell through in the House of Lords ; 
but, nevertheless, they serve to show how thoroughly antagonistic was 
the attitude of the laity to that taken up by Bancroft and James. 
To any relaxation of the disabilities of the Koman Catholics, parliament, 
in its first session, showed itself distinctly hostile. 

The manifest hostility of parliament spread consternation among the 



402 The Stuarts 1604 

Roman Catholics, and the laure desperate men were ready to take up 

any rash plan. Of these the leader was Robert Catesb}^, who has been 

_, described as ' a born leader of men.' By birth a country 

The Gun- . . . . . "^ . . "^ 

powder gentleman of Warwickshire, his religious convictions had 

engaged him deep in politics, and he had already shared 
in Essex's conspiracy. He was over head and ears in debt, and no 
resource seemed too desperate to his mind. Accordingly, he conceived a 
plan for sweej)ing away the established government by blowing up the 
House of Lords at a time when both the king and the Commons would be 
assembled there for the formal ojDening of parliament ; and he associated 
with himself Thomas Percy, a connection of the earl of Northumber- 
land ; Thomas Winter, who had already been urging a Spanish inva- 
sion ; Guy Fawkes, a Yorkshireman who had fought on the Spanish 
side in the Netherlands, and others. The plan was well laid, and 
the conspirators hired some cellars under the House of Lords, where 
they stored their gunpowder. However, the date of the meeting 
of parliament was again and again put off, their funds ran short, 
and they had to let some rich men into the secret, among others 
Francis Tresham. This gentleman, who had already done much for 
the cause, had many friends and connections among the peers, and 
it is believed that his anxiety to save these led to the discovery 
of the plot. The exact method of its betrayal — an anonymous letter 
to his brother-in-law. Lord Monteagle — was well calculated both to 
warn the conspirators that their secret was out and to conceal the 
betrayer ; but Catesby and his friends were taken in by the determina- 
tion of the ministers not to act till the last minute. Parliament was 
to assemble on November 6, 1605, and everything was in readiness, 
when on the evening of the 4th the cellars were searched, and Fawkes 
and his gunpowder were discovered. MeanAvhile, the other conspirators 
were assembling at Dunchurch, in Warwickshire, intending, as soon 
as they heard of the catastrophe, to raise the country, and to seize 
the person of James' eldest daughter, Elizabeth, i However, when 
they were warned by their friends of Fawkes' fate, they fled into 
Worcestershire, and fought desperately for their lives at Holbeach 
House. By accident, however, their gunpowder exploded, and ruined 
all hopes of resistance. Catesby and Percy Avere killed by a single 
shot. Winter and other wounded men were taken to London, and 
having been tried with Fawkes, were put to death with all the 

, ^„ barbarity of the time. For the Roman Catholics, the 
Its Effects. „ ., „ 1 . . 

failure of these enthusiastic but misguided men was far 

better than their success could have been. Even as it was, the 



1605 James I. 493 

exasperation of the country, which drew little distinction between the 
action of a handful of fanatics and the feelings of their peaceable 
co-religionists, demanded severe measures. Accordingly, penal laws 
were passed, by which, in addition to their old disabilities, Eoman 
Catholics were forbidden to appear at court, to live in London unless 
engaged in trade, or to travel more than five miles from home. No 
Roman Catholic was to practise at the bar, or become an attorney or 
physician ; all Roman Catholic books were to be destroyed, and the houses 
of all Roman Catholics were to be always open for inspection. The 
severity of these enactments is a proof of the terror that prevailed ; but 
it is characteristic of the coolness of the English race that parliament met 
at the time appointed, and went on with its ordinary business in the most 
formal manner, as though nothing out of the common had happened. 
How far these restrictions, over and above the fines, were enforced 
sufficiently to be really a burden, it is difficult to say ; the law did not 
act unless it was set in motion by a private prosecutor, and against 
quiet and well-disposed persons their neighbours were not ready to 
inform. It was more serious that, for years after the Gunpowder Plot, 
the mass of Englishmen regarded the Roman Catholics as capable of 
any crime, however atrocious or silly, and that to propose any ameliora- 
tion in their condition was a certain road to unpopularity. 

From the very beginning of the reign, the disproportion between the 
revenue and the expenditure of the crown had been a source of 

grave anxiety. The non-parliamentary sources of revenue _. 

o J f J Finances. 

— the crown lands, feudal dues, fines from the law-courts 
and from the recusants — with the parliamentary grant of tonnage and 
poundage for life, had given Elizabeth an income of about ^300,000 
a year ; but, economical as she was, she had been obliged, during her last 
years, to sell land to the value of ^372,000 to pay off liabilities, and, 
even then, left behind £400,000 of debts. The journey from Scotland, 
the funeral of Elizabeth and his own coronation, cost the new king 
£100,000 ; so, had James been the beau-ideal of a careful financier, he 
would have had hard work to make both ends meet. As it was, James 
made the initial mistake of thinking that because he was leaving a poor 
country for a rich one, he would, therefore, be a wealthy king. He gave 
presents with a lavish hand, allowed his household expenditure to grow 
unchecked, and omitted to keep a careful eye upon the ever-increasing 
expenditure of the various government departments. In his second year 
he spent £426,000, and incurred debts to the amount of £735,000, and 
gave presents to the value of £40,000, and this ' needless and unreason- 
able ' expenditure, as he himself described it, soon brought the finances 



494 The Stuarts 1605 

into hopeless confusion. At lengtli in 1608 Cecil himself undertook 
their management. 

Two metliods of increasing the revenue occurred to the new treasurer: 
one to increase the duties levied as tonnage and poundage, the other to 
Increased exchange the fluctuating and irregular income from feudal 
Taxation, (j^^gg ^^(j purveyance for a fixed tax. His right to raise the 
duties dejDended upon a decision of the judges made in 1606 in the case 
Bate's ^^ ^ merchant named Bate. The trial arose out of the 

Case. refusal of Bate to pay a duty on currants, levied in lieu of 

a payment of £4000 a year, formerly paid by the Levant Company. The 
Commons supported the merchants, and also objected to a duty of 6s. 8d. 
a pound on tobacco, which James had imposed to check the practice of 
smoking. However, when the case was tried in the Exchequer Court, 
the judges, relying on precedents in the reigns of both Mary and Eliza- 
beth, decided that it was the king's prerogative to levy duties on exports 
and imports. Fortified by this decision, Cecil issued a new book of rates, 
by which, though some duties were lowered and others raised, he 
expected in the aggregate to produce an additional £70,000. Against 
this action the Commons, relying on the Confirmatio Chartarum, and 
on Edward iii.'s concession in 1340, loudly protested, but the right 
declared lawful in Bate's case was acted upon till 1641. 

Purveyance and the feudal dues had also been under discussion in 
parliament. Purveyance, or the right of the king to requisition 
The Great carts for his baggage and provisions for his followers, 
Contract, j^^^ been a source of complaint at least since the Norman 
Conquest. Nominally, everything had to be paid for at the market 
price ; in reality, it was hard to get payment at all, and the purveyors 
were stigmatised as 'Harpies.' The cart-takers were mentioned as 
specially exorbitant ; and the purveyors would cut trees in a man's 
garden to supply themselves with firewood. However, it was not easy 
to remove the grievance, as the Lords were in favour of compensation, 
which the Commons refused to pay ; and no settlement was arrived at. 
With regard to the feudal dues and the court wards, Cecil was not 
more successful. Wardship had always been a grievance ; and, with the 
disappearance of the military obligations of land ownership, all excuse 
for it had ceased. The three regular aids of Magna Charta (see page 
177) had not been levied since the days of Henry vii., but the collec- 
tion of an aid on the knighting of James' eldest son Henry recalled 
them to mind. Accordingly, the Commons were willing to treat 
for a commutation, and the sum of £200,000 a year had actually 
been agreed on, when a dispute on details caused the failure of 



1612 James I, 



495 



the plan ; and the Great Contract, as it was called, was finally aban- 
doned in 1611. 

On foreign politics James was no more in accord with his subjects 
than in other matters. At his accession, Barneveldt the Dutchman, and 
Rosny, afterwards duke of Sully, the illustrious minister p^^. • 
of Henry iv,, had come over with a view to persuading him Politics, 
to follow the policy of Elizabeth ; but James, who had never felt his 
pulse beat higher with the joy of victory over the Armada, was bent on 
making peace as soon as possible ; and, unluckily, his idea of peace was 
not the maintenance of English independence, after the manner of 
Wolsey and of Elizabeth, but a complete alliance with Spain. 
This policy was most unpopular, for many Englishmen ^^'"* 
regarded war with the Spaniards almost as a Christian duty, and seamen 
habitually made money by sacking Spanish towns and plundering 
Spanish treasure-ships. James, however, was bent on having his own 
way, and peace was made in 1604. 'God preserve our good neighbours 
in Holland and Zealand ! ' was the cry with which it was received in 
London. On the whole, however, the treaty itself was favourable to 
England, and the Dutch were strong enough to hold their own, till they, 
too, made peace in 1608. So long as Cecil, who had been created earl 
of Salisbury, lived, a fairly independent policy was followed, and 
friendly relations were maintained with France and the Protestant 
powers. 

After the war between the Spaniards and the Dutch was concluded, 
the attention of Europe began to be directed to Germany. There, in 
accordance with the treaty of Augsburg, concluded in 
1555, each district followed the religion of its ruler ; and, 
consequently, Germany was checkered with Lutheran, Catholic, and 
Calvinist states. Moreover, of late years, Catholicism, aided by the 
Jesuits, and supported by Austria and Spain, had been steadily gaining 
ground ; and it was believed that war between the Catholics and 
Protestants was merely a question of time. In 1609, difficulty arose 
about the succession to the duchies of Juliers and Cleves, and war was 
on the point of breaking out, when the assassination of Henry iv. of 
France postponed the conflict for a season. James, on the whole, 
inclined to the Protestants. His eldest son Henry was eager on their 
side ; and, in 1612, a marriage was arranged between the English 
Princess Elizabeth and Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, the 
head of the German Protestants. 

However, before the marriage was performed, in 1613, both Cecil and 
Prince Henry were dead. Cecil died in 1612, worn out by his official 



496 The Stuarts I612 

work. He was the last of Elizabeth's ministers, and though his con- 
nection with the impositions had lately made him unpopular, his loss 
Death of was deeply felt. The death of Prince Henry the same 
Prince^"*^ °^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^ great blow to the Court. Though only nine- 
Henry, teen, he had already made himself beloved by his genial talk 
and active habits. His saying about Raleigh : ' My father is the only 
sovereign in Europe who would keep such a bird in a cage,' had passed 
from mouth to mouth ; and his friendliness to the Puritans had 
provoked the doggerel rhyme : 

' Henry viii. put down the monks and their cells, 
But Henry ix. shall put down bishops and bells.' 

Unfortunately, the liberties he took during an attack of typhoid fever 
aggravated the malady, and in the autumn of 1612 he died. After the 
deaths of Cecil and Prince Henry, James felt himself free to direct his 
policy as he chose. Accordingly, he made further advances to Spain, 
and for many years looked forward to a marriage between his surviving 
son Charles and a Spanish princess as the thing of all others to be 
desired. He believed that such an alliance would enable him to 
arbitrate between Spain and the Protestant princes of Germany, and 
also that he would be able to pay his debts out of the large dowry 
which he anticipated from the Spanish king. 

Meanwhile, the energy of the country was finding new outlets. After 

the failure of Essex, Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, had become deputy 

Ireland. of Ireland. He belonged to a family of soldiers, and was a 

Mountjoy. thoughtful and persevering man. Accordingly, instead of 

following Essex's mistake, he adopted a plan suggested by the poet 

Spenser in his View of the Present State of Ireland, and erected a series of 

forts in aU the strategical points from Carrickfergus, on Belfast Lough, 

to Ballyshannon, on Sligo Bay. These forts were small, but strong, 

well garrisoned, and provisioned to stand a siege. They completely 

fulfilled their purpose of preventing the Ulstermen from gathering 

together for war ; and presently Tyrone submitted, and O'Donnell 

died. Mountjoy was succeeded by Arthur Chichester, an 

experienced officer, who had fought against the Armada 

and at Cadiz, and had been one of Mountjoy 's best men. Chichester 

was a man of high character and broad views. His great object was to 

present the English government to the Irish in the light of a strong and 

impartial power, capable of securing justice for the poor and the weak, 

and of curbing the lawlessness and avarice of the chiefs and of their 

high-handed followers ; and in this he, to a great extent, succeeded. 



1606 James I. 



497 



Hitherto, no serious attempt had been made to convert the Irish to 
Protestantism, the doctrines of which had nominally been adopted by 
the church. The Protestant bishops were, as a rule, 
absolutely unfitted for their posts ; the archbishop of ^^^'S^°"- 
Cashel held three bishoprics and seventy-seven benefices ; the Bible and 
prayer-book had not been translated into Irish ; only the devotion of 
the dispossessed priests had prevented the country population from 
relapsing into heathenism. Chichester, however, had the Bible and 
prayer-book translated, did something to reform the church, and 
allowed practical toleration to the Catholics. Unhappily, Chichester's 
policy was disliked by the chiefs, who preferred their old method of 
collecting irregular contributions to the English system of regular rents ; 
but when Tyrone demanded tribute as of old, the clansmen at once 
appealed to the government. Tyrone also refused to permit the presence 
in his country of a sheriff, and began to prepare for war. However, 
Chichester was too strong for him ; and, in 1609, he left the country. 

This offered a great opportunity for a permanent settlement ; and 
Chichester proposed that, after the followers of the earls and their 
dependants had received ample grants of good land, the re. The Ulster " 
mainder of the forfeited estates should be given to a Settlement, 
carefully selected body of Englishmen and Scotchmen, who had deserved 
well by their services to the state. Unfortunately for both countries, 
the very reverse was done. The best lands were given to the new 
settlers, and the refuse to the ancient Irish. As every man in an Irish 
sept held himself to be joint owner with his chief, this was regarded by 
them as the grossest injustice. The new settlers showed themselves 
men of energy, and in their hands Ulster, which had been the wildest, 
became the most prosperous district in Ireland : but the wrongs of the 
dispossessed Irish have never been forgotten. 

After the imprisonment of Sir Walter Kaleigh, the project of colonising 
Virginia was taken up by a corporation of merchants and others, styled 
the Virginia Company, and in 1607 a body of colonists was ^.^ .^.^ 
despatched to America. Among these was John Smith, a 
man distinguished, even in that age of adventure, by the variety of his 
experiences. Son of a Lincolnshire farmer, he early made his way to 
sea. He fought against the Spaniards in the Netherlands, and against 
the Turks in Hungary ; had been tossed overboard in the Mediterranean 
by his French fellow-sailors ; had been a prisoner among the Turks, and 
a slave among the Cossacks of the Don. Smith, though not in command, 
was in reality the life and soul of the enterprise, and the credit of its 
success was almost entirely due to him. Landing near the mouth of the 

2i 



498 The Stuarts I6O6 

Chesapeake, the settlers complimented the royal family by naming the 
headlands at its mouth Cape Henry and Cape Charles, and the site of 
their settlement Jamestown. Their difficulties were enormous, and were 
aggravated by the incompetence of their nominal leaders. Meanwhile, 
Smith's talent for adventure had not deserted him. Captured by the 
Indians, he first gained time by displaying to them the wonders of a 
compass, and afterwards was rescued from imminent execution by the 
entreaties of Pocahontas, the daughter of the savage chief. At length 
Smith was made governor, and things were going well, when the Com- 
pany, ignorant of the improvement, sent Lord de la Warr to act as 
president. However, before he reached Virginia, Smith had met with 
an accident and returned home. Deprived of his guidance, the colony fell 
into complete disorder ; provisions failed ; the barbarity of the settlers 
provoked the Indians to hostilities, and within six months sixty colonists 
alone were left alive. These were on the point of abandoning the place 
when Lord de la Warr arrived with provisions, and the settlement was 
re-established. From that date the prosperity of the colony was 
secure. While Smith and his followers were struggling on the 

„ , ^ mainland, another body of Englishmen were establishing 

Barbados. , , . , "^ ^ ^ * 

themselves m the Barbados, so that the year 1607 may be 

taken as the real commencement of our Colonial Empire. For some time 
an attempt was made to rule the colonies from London, but by degrees 
the necessity for local government made itself felt, and in 1619 the first 
regular Virginian parliament assembled. (See map for the year 1756.) 
The next settlers on the mainland were a very difterent set of men 
from the gentlemen whose descendants long described themselves as the 
New 'first families of Virginia.' The attempts of successive arch- 

England, "bishops of Canterbury to enforce uniformity created 
widespread discontent among the Separatists, and so early as 1606 a 
congregation of Independents from Gainsborough had removed in a body 
to Holland. In 1608 their example was followed by another congrega- 
tion at Scrooby in Nottinghamshire ; but these, dissatisfied with the 
town life of Leyden, their first refuge, made terms with the Virginia 
Company, and in 1620 sailed for America in the Mayflower. Accident 
led them to disembark near Cape Cod, and they called their settlement 
New Plymouth. Fortunately the Indians, who had been alarmed by an 
outbreak of small-pox, which followed close upon some outrages on 
previous settlers, were friendly, and by their aid the Englishmen were 
enabled to pass through the trials of the first winter. 

From the outset the New England Colony, as it was called, was in 
marked contrast to Virginia. The southerners were gentlemen, desirous 



1612 James I. 499 

of reproducing in America the easy country life to which they had been 
accustomed at ho]ue. They carved the country into large estates, and 
to supply labour for these, negroes were imported from Northerners. 
Africa. Tobacco was their chief article of commerce, and Southerners. 
a thriving trade soon secured the prosperity of the colony. The 
northerners, on the other hand, were men of middling estate, farmers, 
shopkeepers, and craftsmen, accustomed to work with their own hands. 
They reproduced in New England not the life of the hall but that of the 
village. The lands held by each were small, their houses clustered round 
the chapel, their manners were plain and manly, but their Puritanism 
caused refinement and culture to be somewhat despised. For slaves they 
had little need, though as yet they had no conscientious scruples against 
holding them ; but from the first the seeds of antagonism betAveen north 
and south were deeply laid. As yet, however, there lay between the 
two settlements not only much unoccupied territory, but also a Dutch 
settlement at New Amsterdam on the Hudson River. 

The flourishing trade which had grown up under Queen Elizabeth 
with India, Africa, and the ports of the Mediterranean, increased rajDidly 
under her successor. In those days few private persons ^ 

•^ ^ '■ Commerce. 

had wealth enough to fit out a shijD and to provide her with 
the armament necessary to hold her own against such hostile men-of-war 
or pirates as she was likely to meet, so companies were formed to carry 
on special branches of trade. Of these the most notable were the East 
India Company, the Smyrna Company, the Turkey Company, the Levant 
Company, the Muscovy Company for Eussia, and the Eastland for the 
Baltic, and the Merchant Adventurers for Holland and Flanders and 
Germany. The rights of these companies were regarded with jealousy as 
monopolies, and also as concentrating too much of the national trade in 
London. In 1604, for example, the customs of the port of London were 
worth ^110,000, while those of the rest of the country only produced 
£17,000. The consequent increase in the size of London was looked 
on with apprehension by the court ; but, the merchants being as a rule 
in opposition, it was a source of strength to the parliament. Never- 
theless, the Commons, in the interests of their constituents, would gladly 
have thrown trade open by abolishing the monopoly of the London 
companies, but the hostility of the Lords prevented them from carrying 
out their design. 

Throughout his life James had been prone to prefer the society of 
ill-educated, if amusing, favourites to that of wise statesmen. Royal 
and one result of the death of Salisbury was that such ''''°"" ^^' 
men, whose influence the treasurer had restrained, gained almost complete 



600 The Stuarts I612 

possession of the king's ear. In 1612 the leading favourite was Kobert 

Carr, a young Scotchman of handsome figure, to whom James had 

been attracted by his having the good fortune to break his 
Carr. « , ^ 

leg at one of the court tiltmg matches. Though Carr knew 

nothing of politics James gave him his confidence and made him earl of 

Rochester, and as it became known that nothing was to be got from 

James except on Carr's recommendation, the favourite was soon loaded 

with presents. By-and-by Rochester fell in love with the countess of 

Essex, the girl-bride of the heir of Elizabeth's favourite. Essex was a 

young man of good character and severe manners, and the countess, 

eager to marry Carr, brought a petition of a very disgraceful character 

for the dissolution of her marriage. James was foolish enough to aid his 

favourite, and, under the court's influence, the countess's jDrayer was 

granted. After her divorce she married Carr, who at the same time was 

made earl of Somerset. In politics Carr had few ideas, but his 

influence was fatal to economy, and within a year of Salisbury's death 

James' finances were more involved than ever. 

At length the advisability of calling another parliament began to be 

discussed. In regard to the functions of parliament there was at this time 

„ ,. much difi'erence of opinion. Some regarded it as an assembly 

Parliament. i i • 

useful only for granting money, and never to be called 

except in extreme necessity. Others, like Bacon, held parliament to be a 

necessary part of the machinery of government, from which alone the 

sovereign could learn authoritatively the wants of his subjects and so fit 

himself for exercising with success the duties of chief executive ofiicer. 

Few, if any, looked to parliament for the initiation of policy, still less as 

an assembly capable of exercising a dominant influence in the nomination 

of the king's ministers, as had been somewhat vaguely understood 

under the Lancastrian kings. However, as the king's necessities 

brooked no delay, and as certain of his friends ' undertook ' to secure the 

^, election of members favourable to the court, James was 

The . ' 

• Under- encouraged to issue the writs. When parliament met in 

1614 it was found that the attempts of the 'undertakers' 

had done more harm than good, and that the Conmions, though three 

hundred new members had been chosen, were as sturdy defenders of 

privilege as their predecessors. The chief point on which debate turned 

was the question of the impositions, and here the Commons were 

positive that ' redress of grievances ' must precede the voting of supply. 

Their persistence in this matter irritated James ; their outspoken 

language alarmed the court ; the Spanish party feared that any recon" 

ciliation between the king and the Commons would necessarily strengthen 



1615 James I. 



501 



the Protestant party ; and James, losing patience, dismissed the Houses 
before a single Act had been passed. This parliament was The Addled 
called in derision the Addled Parliament. Parliament. 

The same year James took a fancy to a young English gentleman 
George Villiers, a well-disposed young fellow of two-and-twenty, whom 
his mother had trained in all graceful accomplishments with 
a view to his success at court. The education of his mind 
she had neglected as unimportant. Villiers was befriended by those 
who disliked Somerset and the Scots, and was pushed on to be Somerset's 
rival. Bacon thought well of him, and hoped to see him raise the 
executive government to be as efficient as he wished it to be. Before 
long the new favourite had a party at his back ; but before the rivalry 
had become intense, Somerset was overthrown by a blow from an 
altogether unexpected quarter. At the time of the Essex pali of 
divorce Somerset had been the friend of Sir Thomas Somerset. 
Overbury, a gentleman still famous as the author of a book in which 
various typical characters are wittily described. He had aided Carr 
in writing letters to the countess of Essex, but was opposed to the 
divorce, and as he probably knew so much of the countess's secrets as 
to have her in his power, she became his bitter enemy. At the same 
time James, annoyed by hearing that it was said that 'if Rochester 
ruled the king, Overbury ruled Rochester,' offered Overbury a post 
abroad, and on his refusal sent him to the Tower. While there he 
was poisoned by an emissary of the countess. For two years no 
suspicions were raised, but at length the story leaked out. The earl and 
countess of Somerset and her agents were all tried and convicted ; and 
though he was probably innocent, there is no doubt of her guilt. The 
disgraceful circumstances connected with the whole affair inflicted a 
great blow on the reputation of the court, and did much to alienate from 
the crown the goodwill of the Puritan party. 

After the dissolution of the Addled Parliament, James remodelled 
the government according to his own ideas. One of his first steps was 
to dismiss Edward Coke from the post of chief justice Bacon and 
of the king's bench. Coke, who had no rival in knowledge ^°'^^* 
of the details of the common law, for which he had an intense respect, 
was neither a statesman nor a man of broad views on any subject ; but 
at this moment, when James' notions of high prerogative made any 
barrier valuable, his sturdy insistance on the sanctity of the law was of 
the highest importance. His views on the impositions had already 
brought him into opposition to the king ; and in 1615 he was dismissed 
from his post in order to prove to the judges that they held their posts 



502 The Stuarts 1615 

at the king's pleasure, not in name merely but in reality. Throughout 
his life the rival of Coke had been Francis Bacon, author of the Essays 
and of the Advancement of Learning ; and the one man was the antithesis 
of the other. While Coke was a stickler for technicalities. Bacon cared 
nothing for forms ; while Coke was always resting on the letter. Bacon 
searched for the spirit ; and while in general questions Coke was quite 
incompetent, Bacon was the most statesmanlike man of his time. Like 
most of the chancery lawyers who had been trained in the maxims of 
the Koman law, Bacon had a very high idea of the king's power ; and 
he believed that the executive officers of the king were much better 
judges of what should be done than an ill-informed House of Commons. 
James, however, was too self-satisfied to yield to Bacon's advice ; Bacon 
was too courtly to press his views on unwilling ears, and, in consequence, 
his advice was set aside for that of ignorant youths like Villiers, 
or mere time-servers without a tithe of Bacon's ability. The differences 
between Coke and Bacon were accentuated by a very ancient contest as 
to the jurisdiction of the courts of king's bench and chancery, each of 
which aimed at getting as many cases as possible for itself, and resented 
the interference of the other. For example, the common law courts 
refused to enforce the duties of trustees, which were recognised in the 
court of chancery ; so that little love was lost between the two branches 
of the law. Coke's fall was taken as success for Bacon ; and when, in 
1618, Bacon became lord-chancellor, his triumph was complete. His 
new position, however, did not add much to his political influence ; he 
was rarely consulted by the king, while he was expected to use his legal 
position for the advancement of the royal prerogative. 

Meanwhile, Sir Walter Kaleigh, the last of the Elizabethan heroes, 

was a prisoner in the Tower, writing a history of the world, and amusing 

himself with chemical experiments. However, in 1G16, he 

was released in order that he might take command of an 

expedition to Guiana. This country had been visited by him in 1595 

(see p. 474), and he had then learned from the Indians, whose favour 

he won by kindly treatment, the existence, on the banks of the Orinoco, 

of a mountain said to contain rich stores of gold. The need of joining 

the expedition against Cadiz, and other employments, prevented Kaleigh 

from returning, but the present miserable state of the royal finances had 

suggested to him the idea of using the prospects of obtaining gold as a 

means of securing his release. The plan succeeded ; but James, though he 

longed for the gold, dreaded war with Spain, nnd Ealeigh was carefully 

instructed to avoid hostilities with the Spaniards. This he had some 

hope of doing, because, when he was in Guiana, no Spanish settlement 



1617 James I. 



503 



lay between the gold mountain and the sea. However, ill-luck attended 
the expedition from the first ; and on its arrival in America, the crews 
refused to ascend the river unless Raleigh himself promised to await 
their return. Accordingly, the exploring party was placed under 
Captain Keymis, the old comrade of Sir Walter, and young Walter 
Ealeigh went with him. On their way, they learned that the Spaniards 
had moved their settlement, and that the route up the river was now 
blocked by the town of S. Thome. Instead of making a circuit in 
order to avoid the town, Keymis stormed it, and in the assault young 
Walter was killed. Keymis then became aware that an advance throuo-h 
the forest in face of the enemy was impracticable, and returned to 
the ships, where, overwhelmed by Raleigh's reproaches, he put an end 
to his life. Anxious not to return empty-handed, Raleigh then proposed 
to attack the Spanish treasure-ship ; but his captains refused to follow 
him, and Raleigh was compelled to return straight to England. 
Immediately on landing, he was arrested by the king's order. His 
action had, in fact, put James in a very awkward position. How James 
had ever hoped to avoid hostilities with the Spaniards, it is diificult to 
see ; but, apparently, he had hoped to keep what profit there was for 
himself, and to throw the blame, if any, on Raleigh. As it was, he had 
to choose between a declaration of war and the punishment of Raleigh, 
and his anxiety for peace at any price with Spain made him choose the 
latter. At first he offered to hand Raleigh over to the Spaniards, but, 
eventually, the case was investigated in England ; and as Raleigh, being 
technically a dead man (for he was still under sentence of death), could 
not be tried on a second charge, the sentence pronounced on him fifteen 
years before was carried into eff'ect. There was no doubt that Raleigh's 
attack on the Spaniards was a violation of modern international law ; but 
the theory of Elizabeth's sea-captains was, that 'there was no peace 
beyond the line.' His action was merely a repetition of conduct for 
which Drake and Hawkins had been rewarded ; but times had changed, 
and he had to pay with his life for errors committed in a course of action 
upon which he ought never to have been allowed to enter, and for which 
the real blame lay with the king. Though a man of genius, great both 
in thought and in action, Raleigh's character was by no means perfect. 
In regard to truth he was perfectly reckless : but his faults were 
forgotten in the ' tragedy of his death.' 

The disgraceful sacrifice of Raleigh, the extravagance of the court, the 
Overbury scandal, and the persecution of Puritans, had jhe Thirty 
made James' government both hated and despised, when, Y^^^^' "^^'■• 
in 1621, an opportunity ottered itself to the king to set himself right 



504 The Stuarts I617 

with his subjects by espousing the cause of the German Protestants. 

Since the marriage of Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, the Catholics 

and Protestants of Germany had become more and more clearly divided 

into two hostile camps ; and a small spark only was needed to set the 

accumulated fuel in a blaze. The spark came from Bohemia. In that 

country — in which, so far back as the days of Huss, the party of reform 

had found a stronghold — Protestantism was very strong. It had for 

years been the practice of the Bohemians to elect the head of the house 

of Austria their king, in spite of his being a Catholic ; but the Emperor 

Matthias compelled the Bohemian assembly to declare the throne 

hereditary in the Austrian family, and, in spite of his being celebrated 

as a persecutor of the Protestants, to take Ferdinand of Styria as his 

successor. However, on Matthias' death, the Bohemians altered their 

own minds, and offered the crown to the Elector Palatine, by whom it 

was accepted. Ferdinand, who had been chosen emperor, fought for 

his rights in Bohemia, and called on the Catholics to aid him, while 

Frederick appealed to the Protestant powers. The illegality, however, 

of his position in Bohemia made many hang back, and, in consequence, 

the Catholic troops were able, not only to turn him out of Bohemia, 

but even out of the Palatinate itself. As James was Frederick's 

ftither-in-law, he was naturally expected to have English support, and 

also that of the Danes and Swedes, while Spain came to the assistance 

of the emperor. These events revived in England all the old hatred 

against Spain ; and those who believed that the best way to aid 

Frederick was to fight Spain, were eager for a declaration of war ; 

while hundreds of Englishmen hurried off to Germany to fight for 

their popular princess — 'the queen of hearts.' James, however, still 

believed in negotiation, and was desirous, by the Spanish marriage, to 

connect himself with both parties. Nevertheless, in order that he 

might show himself ca]Dable of armed interference, he called a parliament 

in 1621. 

When parliament met, James did his best to conciliate the members 

by denouncing the 'Undertakers' of 1614 ; and he declared plainly his 

intention, if negotiations failed, of spending his blood for 
Parliament. ,, , p ^ ?. . i , / .. -, , -^^ 

the defence of his son-m-law s territory and the Protestant 

religion. In consequence, a considerable supply was voted ; but, as there 

was no immediate prospect of action, the members soon turned aside to 

the consideration of domestic grievances. In this they were led by 

Coke, who, since his dismissal from the bench, had resumed jDractice as 

a barrister, and had been returned to parliament as an opponent of the 

court. Their chief complaint was directed against the abuses connected 



1621 James L 505 

with monopolies. Under Elizal)eth these had been checked, but under 
her successor their number had increased to about forty of various kinds. 
Some, like our patents, were for the protection of inven- 
tions ; others, to encourage the introduction of new forms of ^°"°P°''^^- 
manufacture ; others were designed for the benefit of the state. Ac- 
cording to the notions of the time, monopolies were defensible enough ; 
but, in a court like that of James i., every institution was tainted with 
corruption, and both oppression and peculation were rife. The mono- 
polies specially singled out for attack were those of licensing inns, 
and of manufacturing gold and silver thread — which, in reality, was 
carried on by the king himself. Evidence of abuses was plentiful ; and 
as the country magistrates were aggrieved by the licences, and the 
wealthy goldsmiths by the prohibition to make thread, the country 
members of parliament and the London merchants made common cause 
against the court. The evidence pointed specially to Sir Giles Mom- 
pesson and to Sir Francis Michell, and the cases of both were referred 
by the Commons to the House of Lords after the manner of an 
impeachment. 

An even more serious case was that of Lord-Chancellor Bacon. The 
monopoly question had brought his name into notice ; and, presently, 
various suitors in the chancery court accused him of „ 

,...,, Bacon. 

receiving bribes. It did not appear that his justice had 
ever been perverted, l^ut it was shown that he had received sums of 
,£100, ,£300, and even ^700, from suitors, both before and after their 
cases had been decided. In those days of small salaries and high fees, 
public opinion was by no means clear as to what a judge might or 
might not receive with propriety ; and Bacon himself, ever careless of 
money matters, and inattentive to detail, had been guilty of great 
laxity : but the integrity of his judgments was unchallenged. The 
accusations, preferred by the Commons, were carefully investigated by 
the Lords ; and Bacon himself admitted the truth of the facts. The 
sentence of the Lords ordered Bacon to be confined in the Tower during 
the king's pleasure, to be incapable of holding office or of coming to 
court, and to pay a fine of ^40,000. The actual punishment was soon 
remitted by the king ; but the twofold value of the sentence was 
unaffected by this. In the first place, a good stout blow had been 
struck at the system of corruption, which had lately flourished^ un- 
checked ; in the second, the doctrine of the responsibility of the king's 
ministers to parliament had been placed above question. Durmg the 
reigns of the Yorkists and the Tudors, this theory had practically been 
in abeyance. Never since the impeachment of Suffolk, in 1450, had it 



506 The Stuarts I62i 

been enforced. But now that the practice had been revived, there was 
little chance of its falling into desuetude ; and, for one hundred years, 
there was hardly a parliament in which a bill of impeachment was not 
introduced. 

After the prosecution of Bacon and Michell parliament separated for 

a short adjournment, and when it met again the whole attention of the 

Foreign House was given to foreign affairs. The great object of the 

Affairs. members was to hold James to his declaration, that if 

negotiations failed he would risk blood and treasure for the Protestant 

cause, and many members were in favour of an open declaration of war. 

Such were not the views of James. His desire was for a marriage 

_, between Prince Charles and the Infanta of Spain ; his mind 

The AT- f ' 

Spanish was powerfully influenced by the Spanish ambassador 
Gondomar, and he knew that unless he could secure tolera- 
tion for the Roman Catholics such a match was impossible. The temper of 
the Commons, on the other hand, was shown by their decision that towards 
the war subsidy recusants should pay a double share, by a petition for 
putting the laws against recusants into full force, and by another for the 
marriage of the prince to a Protestant. What the Commons feared was 
that toleration for recusants would prove to be merely the thin end of the 
wedge towards a re-establishment of Roman Catholicism. As a young 
member, John Pym, put it : 'If the Papists once obtain a connivance, they 
will press for a toleration ; from thence to an equality ; from an equality 
to a superiority ; from a superiority to an extirpation of all contrary 
religions.' Under the influence of Gondomar and Buckingham James 
roundly bade the members not to interfere in ' mysteries of state,' and 
attacked their privilege of free speech by declaring his ability, whether 
in or out of session, to punish members for their conduct in the House. 
This brought matters to a crisis ; and the House, led by Coke and Thomas 
Wentworth, member for Yorkshire (afterwards the famous earl of 
Straiford), enrolled on their journals their opinion, ' That the liberties, 
franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of parliament are the ancient and 
undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England,' and 
that ' in the handling and proceeding of these businesses every member 
of the House hath, and of right ought to have, freedom of speech.' 
When the Commons sent their first petition James showed his apprecia- 
tion of the position by ordering seats to be set for ' the ambassadors,' 
as though the House of Commons were a sovereign power. After ten 
days' reflection he sent for the journals of the House, and tore out the 
obnoxious protest with his own hand. Parliament was then dissolved, 
without even passing a subsidy bill ; Coke, Phelips, and Mallory were 



1624 James I. ^m 

sent to the Tower, and Pym was ordered to confine himself to his lionse. 
Gondomar took James' action as ' a resohition to leave all 
and to attach himself to Spain.' All hope of England Ji!^n"of"' 
giving effective aid to the German Protestants was now ^^"^*^^"- 
at an end. 

James, however, by no means despaired of effecting something by 
negotiations, and his idea of bringing about a general reconciliation 
between the Catholic and Protestant powers, for which the 
keynote was to be given by the marriage of the Prince of Spanish 
Wales to the Infanta, was not without a certain nobility. ^^*'^^- 
Unfortunately, however, the hostility of parliament to the Catholics, 
the determination of the emperor to punish Frederick for taking 
Bohemia, and the fixed principle of the Spaniards not to make war 
upon the House of Austria, were facts which could not be overcome. 
Nevertheless, so sanguine was the prince, and so overweening was the 
belief of Buckingham in his own powers, that the two young men set off 
on a romantic journey to Madrid, where they hoped to The Madrid 
conclude the marriage treaty and bring back the Infanta in Jo^r^^y- 
triumph. This was quite a false step. No sooner was Charles at 
Madrid than he found himself compelled by fear of failure to make one 
concession after another, and finally swore, on behalf of his father and 
himself, to give full immunity to the English Catholics, and to get 
parliament to confirm his action w'thin three years. Finding, however, 
that the Infanta would not be allowed to return with him, even if he 
married her, Charles left a form of process to authorise someone else to 
represent him at the marriage ceremony, and then hurried home. When 
he reached England without his bride the joy of the nation knew no 
bounds ; but cautious men saw that by going as far as he had there was 
no choice between concluding the marriage and open war. Charles' 
honour seemed to be bound up in the completion of the match, for which 
elaborate preparations were going forward at Madrid ; but three days 
before the ceremony Bristol, the English ambassador, was ordered to 
make fresh demands, and the marriage was indefinitely postponed. 
Subsequent knowledge places the conduct of Charles in a very bad light, 
but at the time his popularity was great ; and James, having seen the 
ftiilure of his negotiations, practically withdrew from public aflfairs, and 
allowed Buckingham and Charles to take charge of the preparations for 
an attempt to recover the Palatinate by arms. Accordingly, a parlia- 
ment elected when the hostility to Spain was at its height assembled in 
1624. Hardly a voice was raised for peace ; the one question was 
whether it was better to attack the Palatinate directly, or to bring our 



508 The Stuarts 1624 

main force to bear upon Spain. Finally it was decided to begin by an 
attack on the Palatinate, and twelve thousand Englishmen were placed 
for the purpose under Count Mansfeld, a clever but unscrupulous 
soldier of fortune, who was acting for Frederick. The affair was 
terribly mismanaged ; the English, who would have fought readily 
The German against Spain, showed little inclination to enter upon a 
Expedition, -wild-goose cliase in Germany ; the soldiers, when they 
arrived in Holland, were sent up the Khine in open boats, half-starved 
and wretchedly clad. Numbers died, and the chief result was to fill 
the country with the conviction that Charles and Buckingham had 
no skill in administration. 

Meanwhile, the earl of Middlesex, better known as Lionel Cranfield, 

the clever and economical lord-treasurer, was impeached and punished — 

nominally for malversation, really because he opposed the 

Impeach- . ^ • ^ r^i 1 • ^ • • 1 ^ n l^ 

ment of war — a proceedmg m which Charles, with inconceivable folly, 
took a leading part. Monopolies, except for new inventions, 
were abolished, and a request made by parliament for the enforcement 
of the laws against recusants, at the very time when a secret agreement 
was being made by James and Charles to suspend these laws as a 
condition of a marriage between Charles and Henrietta Maria, sister of 
the French king, Louis xiir. 

The death of James i. followed soon on his retirement from active 
political life. Worn out by repeated attacks of gout and ague, his mind 
and body had long been giving way ; but at times the old wit flashed 
forth, and not long before his death he is said to have told Chnrles, 
a jiropos of the impeachment of Middlesex, that ' he would live to have 
his bellyful of impeachments.' He died in March 1625. 



CHIEF DA TES. 

A.D. 

Hampton Court Conference 1604 



Gunpowder Plot, . ..... 

Death of Robert Cecil, .... 

The Addled Parliament 

Commencement of the Thirty Years' War, 
Impeachment of Bacon, .... 
Charles and Buckingham visit Spain, 
Monopolies declared Illegal, 



1605 
1612 
1614 
1618 
1621 
1623 
1624 



CHAPTEE II 

PART I 
CHARLES I.: 1625-1649 
Born 1600; married, 1625, Henrietta Maria ; beheaded 1649. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 

France. Spain. Emperors. 

Louis XIII., d. 1643. Philip iii., d. 1631. Ferdinand ii., d. 1637. 

Louis XIV., d. 1715. Philip iv., d. 1665. Ferdinand in., d. 1657. 

Quarrels with his first Parliament — The Petition of Right — The Rise of Laud and 
Wentworth — Imprisonment of Eliot — Arbitrary Rule— Wentworth in Ireland 
—Religious Difficulties in Scotland— First Bishops' War— The Short Parlia- 
ment — Second Bishops' War. 

At his accession Charles was twenty-five years old, and his character 
was fully formed. In all that concerned the externals of royalty he was 
admirable. Unlike his father, his look and deportment charies' 
were regal; but he had little of James' good-nature, Character, 
and his reserve, which was largely the effect of shyness, prevented 
him from mixing with his subjects on such terms as to learn their true 
opinions, as Elizabeth and Henry viii. had always been able to do. 
Unfortunately, the delicacy of his constitution as a child had caused his 
lessons to be excused, and consequently he had none of the solid fund of 
information in history, politics, and religion for which his fiitlier had 
been distinguished. James, in fact, had been learned but inetfective ; 
Charles was ill-informed and obstinate through being able to see only one 
side of a question. Charles, too, had been brought up as a spoilt chdd, 
always expecting to have his own way ; and Sir Ferdinand Fairfax said 
of him, ' The king in his own nature is very stiff.' WoiJ.se thim all these 
faults, which in many ways were rather to be counted misfortunes, 
Charles was wanting in ingenuousness. This arose largely from his lack 



510 ' The Stuarts 1625 

of imagination, which prevented him from seeing what his promises really- 
meant, or what they would seem to mean in the eyes of those to whom 
they were made. Almost the only thing Charles derived from his father 
was his overweening belief in the power and prerogatives of a king. 
He held himself entitled to exercise all the powers of the Tudors, 
without regard either to the changes in the times which he might have 
observed, or to differences in character of which he could hardly be 
expected to be a fair judge. At the date of Buckingham's arrival at court 
Charles had been fifteen, and as by the folly of James the two young 
men had been thrown together, Charles had learned to look on the 
ignorant and self-confident Buckingham as a model of all that was 
excellent, and nothing had since been able to dissipate the illusion. 
„ , . , Nor was Buckingham by any means a mere darlino; of the 

Buckingham. , . . . 

court. There was in him a certain magnificence which 
differentiates him altogether from favourites of the Gaveston type, and 
places him more on a level with Elizabeth's Leicester. He was eager 
after great things, and dreamed of renewing in his own time the glories 
of Elizabeth ; but had no idea of taking efficient means to turn his 
dreams into realities. 

Charles began his reign by a fatal mistake. In the negotiations for 
a marriage with Henrietta Maria it had been found that the French 
The Roman would not accept less favourable terms for the Koman 
Catholics. Catholics than had been granted at the demand of Spain, 
so it had been agreed that the Roman Catholic disabilities should 
be suspended. As he had distinctly promised the parliament of 1624 
that favour to the Roman Catholics should form no j)art of the 
marriage contract with France, this act put him in an utterly false 
position, and compelled him either to break his word to parliament 
or to the king of France. This double-dealing, however, was charac- 
teristic of Charles' method, and goes a long way to explain his sub- 
sequent disasters. Charles, blind to his mistake, and hoping to win 
advantages from France, completed his marriage, declared war on Spain, 
and summoned a parliament to vote the necessary supplies. When 
First parliament met, the lead in the Commons was taken by 

Parhament. pi^^eiipg^ -^yho had already played a large part in the later 
parliaments of James i., and he was supported by Edward Coke, Sir 
John Eliot, Sir Thomas Wentworth, and John Pym. It was soon j^er- 
ceived that between king and parliament the seeds of disagreement were 
many. While Charles was bound by his promise to France to suspend 
the Roman Catholic disabilities, the Commons petitioned that the laws 
against recusants might be strictly enforced. While Charles eagerly 



1625 Charles I. 



511 



demanded a liberal war grant, the Commons held back till they knew on 
what it was going to be spent and who would direct the expenditure. 
While Charles was promoting Montague, a clergyman wh(J had written 
against Calvinism, the Commons were preparing to impeach him. An- 
other trouble was added by the action of the Commons, who, anxious to 
have the question of impositions settled, voted tonnage and poundage 
for one year only, instead of for life as had been usual since the days 
of Henry vi. Even this vote was not completed, for a hasty prorogation 
caused it to fall through in the Lords. 

The prorogation was due to the plague, and in a few weeks the 
Houses reassembled at Oxford ; but the interval had brought fresh 
troubles. As part of the plan for joint operations against The Oxford 
Sjjain, England had lent one man-of-war and seven merchant ^^^^mg. 
ships to France. It was, however, shrewdly suspected that the vessels 
would be used not against Spain, but against the Huguenots of La 
Eochelle ; for Kichelieu, the French minister, was keenly alive to the 
danger to France caused by the semi-indej^endence enjoyed by the 
fortified Huguenot towns, and it Avas believed that he would not enter 
actively on a foreign war till he had made all secure at home. In 
reality Kichelieu had no intention of interfering with the rights of ivor- 
shij) granted by treaty to the French Protestants. In England, however, 
he was generally thought to be a bigoted persecutor. The sailors abso- 
lutely refused to serve in their vessels, and, with one exception, they all 
came home. At the same time rumours about the marriage treaty leaked 
out, and when it was found that Henrietta Maria was enjoying full 
liberty of worship, and that convicted Catholic priests were being par- 
doned and released, the indignation of the country knew no bounds. 
Accordingly, the meeting of parliament witnessed a fresh attack on the 
policy of the government ; and though Buckingham wished to quarrel 
with France by repudiating Charles' promise of indulgence to the 
Koman Catholics, the Commons were going on to an impeachment of 
the all-powerful minister when Charles stopped the proceedings by a 
dissolution. 

The dissolution of parliament, without making any further grant, 
placed Charles in a very awkward position, as he was unable to fultil his 
promises of subsidies to Mansfeld or to Christian of Den- Expedition 
mark, his uncle, who was now leading the North German Pro- 
testants, or even to properly equip his own fleet. However, Buckingham— 
always hopeful and confident— inspired him with the belief that if, before 
the next meeting of parliament, a successfid expedition could rival the 
great exploit of 1596 by sacking Cadiz and capturing the Spanish 



512 The Stuarts 1625 

treasure fleet, the nation would recognise that he had been right, and that 
parliament had been wrong. Accordingly, all the resources of the court 
were devoted to fitting out a fleet, the command of which was entrusted 
to Sir Edward Cecil, a grandson of the great Lord Burleigh. Cecil 
had seen much service in the Dutch army, and, in anticipation of his 
triumphs, he was created Viscount Wimbledon. The second in command 
was the earl of Essex. Wimbledon, however, had had no experience of 
independent command ; and if he had, little difierence would have been 
made, for his ships were ill-found and i^ill-victualled, and his pressed 
soldiers were unwilling to fight. Only a commander of the greatest 
genius could have efiected much with such materials, and Wimbledon 
failed utterly. A delay in the attack enabled the Spaniards to secure 
their ships in the inner harbour ; the soldiers, being landed without pro- 
visions, drank themselves drunk ; the treasure fleet eluded their grasp ; 
and the expedition returned stricken with disease, as complete a failure 
by sea as that of Mansfeld had been by land. 

This disaster destroyed the castle in the air on which Charles and 
Buckingham had so long been gazing, and when parliament was called 
Failure of they had nothing whatever to show to excuse the illegalities 
the Court. q£ whicli they had been guilty. Moreover, the trick which 
had been played on the French king in the matter of the Catholics had 
estranged the two courts ; Henrietta Maria was not happy in her relations 
with the king ; Richelieu Avas pushing on his measures against the 
Huguenots ; and as his attempts to efi'ect a compromise had come to 
nought, he was preparing for a regular siege of La Rochelle. This 
Charles regarded as a slight upon himself, for he had attempted to 
mediate between Louis and his Protestant subjects, so the two allies 
against Spain were rapidly drifting into open war. 

Conscious of his difficulties, but believing that the disagreement with 
his first parliament had been due to the wrongheadedness of a few indi- 
The Second viduals, Charles resorted to trickery. Before issuing the 
Parliament. yfYiis,, he made Phelips, Coke, Wentworth and others 
sherifts of their respective counties, so that they were ineligible for 
election ; but their place was taken by others who, if less able, were 
equally indignant with Buckingham's management of afiairs. Besides, 
even in selecting sherifi's, the name of one man had been omitted who, 

„,. more than all the rest, was to be a thorn in the side of 

Eliot. ' . 

Charles. That man was Sir John Eliot. Eliot was a 

Cornish squire, who owed his exemption to the fact that in old days he 

had been a friend of Buckingham, and had been his vice-admiral in 

Devonshire ; but he had seen enough to convince him that Buckingham 



1626 Charles I. 513 

was ruining the coimtiy, and there was now no stouter opponent of the 
government than he. Moreover, Eliot was a born leader of men, and his 
recorded speeches prove that he was one of the greatest of parliamentary 
orators. When parliament met, Eliot took the lead, and was supported 
by Pym, Sir Dudley Digges, and others. They directed their attacks 
on Buckingham as the 'grievance of grievances,' and finally 
articles of impeachment were drawn up against him. These ment^of " 
articles, as was likely enough, contained much that was ^"^^'"S^^"^- 
false and exaggerated. Buckingham had made mistakes, but he had 
not robbed the state to serve his own ends, or sacrificed Enolish in- 
terests for his own profit. Charles at once sent Eliot and Dio-o-es to the 
Tower ; but the Commons were determined to have them out again or 
'proceed to no business,' and the king, anxious for his subsidies, was 
compelled to give way. Similarly the House of Lords insisted on the 
release of the earl of Arundel, so that Charles met with no more encour- 
agement in one House than in the other. So ignorant was Charles of the 
feeling of the nation that he took the opportunity to press the election of 
Buckingham as chancellor of Cambridge University. The Commons 
retaliated by drawing up a general remonstrance in which the whole 
policy of the government was attacked, and by pressing on the pro- 
secution of Buckingham. Their action marks a decisive period in 
English history. If their claim to have Buckingham dismissed were 
granted, it would mean that henceforth ministers would be respon- 
sible to parliament and not to the king. It had not been so under 
Elizabeth, and Charles was determined that it should not be so under 
him. In his eyes the function of parliament was ' to counsel, not to 
control ' ; and to put a stop to the proceedings he again dissolved 
parliament. If the reverse were granted, it would follow that the 
king reigned, but did not govern ; and Charles was the last man to 
admit this. 

As no grant had been made to him by parliament, Charles now 
attempted to raise a revenue by demanding from each county a ' free 
gift.' This was to be collected in each shire by the justices The Free 
of the peace, and to secure their co-operation he dismissed 
from office Eliot, Phelips, Digges, Wentworth, and all others from whom 
resistance might be feared. At first the measure was fairly successful ; 
but by degrees the spirit of resistance awoke, and from county after 
county news of refusals came in. Indignant with this, Charles attempted 
a forced loan ; but this the judges at once refused to accept as legal, and 
Chief Justice Crew was dismissed for his independence just as Coke had 
been before him. The objections of the judges, however, were a signal 

2 K 



514 The Stuarts i626 

for general resistance, and Charles, furious at his discomfiture, sum- 
moned the leaders before the council, and committed them to the 

Tower. His action soon produced a fresh crisis, for it was 
Arbitrary 
Imprison- naturally asked whether the king had a right to imprison a 

man Avithout trial before his peers, and Magna Carta was 
quoted against him. To test the case, five knights, who had been uu- 
prisoned for refusing to contribute to the loan, joined in appealing to 
the court of king's bench for a writ of Habeas Corpus with a view of 
obtaining their release, on the ground that they had committed no 
offence which would justify their imprisonment. The gaoler returned 
answer that they were imprisoned by the king's special command. On 
the ground of precedent, there was no doubt whatever that the council 
had frequently sent dangerous persons to prison, and kept them there 
without trial ; but the lawyers who aj^peared for the knights appealed 
against the precedents of later years to the ancient principles of the 
constitution. On the main question the judges gave no decision, but 
they re-committed the prisoners to wait till the king's charges were 
Billeting ready. With poorer men Charles dealt even more harshty. 
Soldiers. gome were threatened with impressment for the war ; 
others were eaten out of house and home by having the hungry and 
unpaid soldiers billeted in their houses. There was no class which had 
not taken part in the resistance, and no class escaped the attacks of 
the court. 

Meanwhile, as had been long foreseen, the relations between England 
and France had developed into open war, partly from the causes men- 
War with tioned above and partly because the English had seized 
France. French vessels on the plea that they were carrying ' con- 
traband of war ' to the Spanish Netherlands ; for which the French 
had retaliated by seizing the English wine fleet as it was clearing out 
of Bordeaux harbour after paying the ordinary dues. Obviously the 
easiest way to injure France was to aid the Rochellese, whom Richeheu 
The Isle of ^^^ besieging ; and for this purpose an expedition was sent 
^h^- to the Isle of Rhe, which commanded the entrance to the 

harbour of La Eochelle. Buckingham took the command in person ; but 
though he showed many of the qualities of a great commander, the 
expedition had been so badly organised, and the pressed men were so 
unwilling to fight, that the aftair was a failure, and the troojDs came back 
to England in complete disgrace, ' Since England was England,' men 
said, ' it received not so dishonourable a blow.' This, of course, was an 
exaggeration, as each generation is prone to magnify both its successes 
and its defeats ; but the bitter feeling aroused was very great. 



1628 Charles I. 



515 



Still, unless Charles was to abandon all attempt to be a power on the 
continent, money and troops must be had somehow ; and every sugges- 
tion of the council having failed, nothing remained but to ^he Third 
summon a parliament. As a measure of conciliation, the Parliament, 
political prisoners were released, and this time no attempt was made to 
interfere with the election. Consequently all the old opposition members 
regained their seats, and the array of talent which the courtiers had 
against them was stronger than ever. Before parliament met, the leaders 
decided not to renew the impeachment of Buckingham, but to give their 
whole attention to the illegalities Avhich had been perpetrated since the 
last dissolution. Accordingly, Coke attacked the arbitrary imprison- 
ments, Eliot the forced loan, Wentworth the general lawlessness of the 
agents of the court. The gist of the matter clearly lay in the question 
of arbitrary imprisonment ; and Coke formulated the inquiry, ' Whether 
a freeman could be imprisoned by the king without setting down the 
cause.' Under the lead of Sir Thomas Wentworth, who cared little 
about the past provided suitable arrangements could be made for the 
future, a bill was drawn up by a committee consisting of himself, Eliot, 
Coke, Pym, and Phelips, to lay down the law afresh ; but Charles, hear- 
ing of their intention, sent to inquire whether it would not be sufficient 
for them to rely on his 'royal word and promise.' In reply, the Com- 
mons, giving up their bill, drew up a Petition of Eight, to petition of 
which, unlike a bill which would receive the royal consent Right, 
at the end of the session, they would get an immediate answer, so that 
they might know how to act with regard to a grant of five subsidies 
which they had under consideration. On the other hand, the petition 
simply stated the law as it was, and made no allowance for the case of 
exceptionally dangerous times, when special powers might be needful. 
The petition was accepted by the House of Lords, and formally pre- 
sented to Charles. After appealing to the de Tallagio non Concedendo 
(see page 223) and Magna Carta, it proceeded to ask : ' That no man 
hereafter be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, 
tax, or such like charge, without common consent by act of parlia- 
ment . . . and that no freeman be imprisoned or detained ; and that 
your majesty would be pleased to remove the said soldiers and mariners ; 
and that the aforesaid commissions for proceeding by martial law may 
be revoked, and that no commissions of like nature may issue forth, lest 
by colour of them any of your majesty's subjects be destroyed or put to 
death, contrary to the laws and franchise of the land.' It was only after 
long hesitation that Charles was brought to give his consent ; but at 
length he yielded, and the five subsidies were granted him as the price 



516 The Stuarts 1628 

of his consent. The Commons fondly hoped that their victory was 

decisive. 

However, they did not aljandon their policy of placing on record 

their opinion of the proceedings of the government ; and for this purpose 

„ ,. . drew up a 'remonstrance' in which the evils in the church 

Religion. . ' 

were laid to the charge of Laud, and those in the state 
to Buckingham, whom the king was plainly asked to dismiss from his 
service. Buckingham would gladly have met his accusers, for he com- 
pletely believed in his own infallibility, but Charles gave a simple 
refusal. Checked in this direction, the Commons gave their attention to 
the old question of tonnage and poundage ; but as they designed a 
thorough examination of the customs, which would take much time, it 
was proposed to pass a temporary measure, allowing them to be collected 
till next session. To this Charles refused to agree ; and the Commons, 
accordingly, taking up new ground, declared that the collection of ton- 
nage and poundage without grant of parliament was contrary to the 
Petition of Right. Charles' reply was an instant prorogation. 

During the recess several events of importance happened. The first 
was the translation of Bishop Laud from the remote diocese of Bath 
William and Wells to the important see of London. William Laud 
Laud, ^^g hoT^Ti in 1573. He was the son of a Reading clothier, 
and was educated at St. John's College, Oxford. When he reached 
Oxford he found that the theological views of the university were 
strongly Calvinist. His own were Arminian — that is to say, he belonged 
to the party who, while as Protestants they denounced the errors of 
Rome, refused to accept the doctrines of Calvin as the only alternative, 
and laid stress upon Freewill as opposed to the Calvinist doctrine of 
Predestination. In ceremonies Laud tried to adhere to the old practices 
of the Church of England, testing their authority by what was known of 
the habits and ideas of the primitive fathers of the church, who 
lived in the days which followed the death of the apostles. As was 
natural, such men were disliked and distrusted both by the Roman 
Catholics and by the Puritans ; by the former because they rejected the 
authority of the pope, by the latter because they still retained much of 
the ceremonial of the ancient church. Laud, however, succeeded in 
winning over Oxford to his way of thinking, and as his views were 
approved at court, he was made dean of Gloucester, bishop of St. 
David's, and bishop of Bath and Wells in rapid succession. Under 
James, who appreciated his abilities but feared trouble from his activity, 
his preferments were all at a distance from court ; but Charles, with 
less caution, made him bishop of London, ^nd accepted him as his 



1628 Charles I. 517 

ecclesiastical adviser. Laud was a pious and earnest man, thoroughly 
convinced that he was right and that the Puritans were wrong. M^ore- 
over, he was out of touch with the earnest men of that party, and failed 
to give them due credit for their zeal after godliness and morality. On 
the other hand, his virtues were equally unappreciated by them ; so that 
the breach between the Puritans and the court clergy rapidly grew 
wider. 

London being a Puritan stronghold, the new bishop soon found him- 
self at variance with many of his clergy, and came to be regarded by the 
mass of the nation as a bigoted persecutor. Charles, on the other hand, 
had complete faith in him, and was foolish enough to allow his name to 
be identified with Laud's most unpopular measures. The points around 
which strife was most bitter were the position of the communion table 
or altar, and the rights of itinerant preachers. In regard to the former, 
the name itself was a matter of dispute ; and while Laud thought it should 
be placed at the east end of churches and treated with great reverence, 
the Puritans liked to have it in the nave near the pulpit, and did not treat 
it with any special respect. Of late years the Puritan arrangement had 
been generally adopted, even in cathedrals. So Laud's attempt to compel 
the clergy to adopt his views caused bitter strife in many places. In regard 
to the question of itinerant preachers and lecturers, the Puritans laid 
great stress on their value, and many of their best ministers travelled 
from place to place. Laud, on the other hand, wished to compel the 
clergy to preach only in their own churches, or where they were specially 
licensed by their bishop. Not only did Charles favour Laud, but he 
gave all the crown patronage to men of Laud's school. Cosin was made 
bishop of Durham ; Neile, bishop of Winchester ; Juxon, bishop of Lon- 
don ; Montague, bishop of Chichester ; Mainwaring received a good 
living ; while their opponents were left unpromoted. In return. Laud 
and his friends were indefatigable in preaching and writing in favour of 
the royal prerogative ; while the persecuted Calvinists made common 
cause with the opposition. In this way the parties of political and 
religious discontent became identified. 

About the same time that Laud became bishop of London, Went- 
worth separated himself from the leaders of the Commons. Wentworth 
belonged to an ancient Yorkshire family, and was born in ^g^tworth. 
1593. He was educated at C'ambridge, and after foreign 
travel settled down at Wentworth Woodhouse, his country seat near 
Ptotherham, where he devoted himself to county business, and to tlic 
chase and other field sports, in all of which he was an adept. He sat in 
several parliaments of James', but did little till Buckingham's inefficiency 



518 The Stuarts 1628 

roused him. All along his main idea had been to secure good and 
efficient government ; he cared nothing ahout Puritanism, and, like 
Bacon, he expected more good to come from the intelligent government 
of well-informed ministers than from the interference in business of an 
ill-informed House of Commons. Apparently he thought that the 
Petition of Eight would put a stop to illegality in the future, and was 
now willing to give Charles a fresh trial. Accordingly he retired to 
the north, accepted a peerage as Baron Wentworth, and presently 
took office as president of the council of the north, where his great 
administrative powers had scope to display themselves. Wentworth 
could never have worked with Buckingham, whose abilities he de- 
Murder of spised, and whose foreign policy he detested ; but in 
Buckingham. 1(329 Buckingham was assassinated at Portsmouth by 
John Felton. 

Meanwhile the king, who strongly believed that the Petition of Bight 
had never been meant to forbid the collection of tonnage and poundage. 
Tonnage and which amounted to a fourth of his revenue, had been 
Poundage. taking the duties as before. Eesistance, however, was 
made ; and Alderman Chambers, when brought before the Exchequer 
Court, asserted that ' in no part of the world were merchants so screwed 
and wrung as in England, and that in Turkey they have more encourage- 
ment than in England.' For these words he was brought before the 
court of Star Chamber, which fined him ^2000, and sent him to prison 
till he should acknowledge his fault. To his honour. Chambers refused 
to do anything of the kind. 

When parliament met for the session of 1629, the attention of the 

members was at once given to the question of tonnage and poundage. 

What stood in the way of their making the usual grant 

was the vexed question of the impositions, which had been 

in dispute for twenty years. Had the tonnage and poundage question 

stood alone, the obvious compromise was to accept the duties as they 

stood ; but, hoping for better terms, the members would not give way, 

and soon left it for the even more pressing question of 

e igion. j.gj— Qjj^ jj^ ^]^-g^ jg^j ]gy j;iiot, the house adopted an 

extreme position, and acted as though an attack was being organised 
against the Keformation. Their main assault was directed against 
a declaration put forth by Charles, which proclaimed silence on dis- 
puted points, and enjoined all men to accept without question the 
interpretation of the Articles which was set forth by the bishops. It 
had really, however, under a show of fairness, played into the hands of 
the Arminians. Against this Eliot loudly protested, and thundered 



1629 Charles I. 519 

against the proposal to take as final the opinion of such partisans as 
Montague and Laud. Unfortunately, the House of Commons was 
equally unfitted to be a final authority on matters of faith ; and tolera- 
tion of opponents was equally foreign to the thoughts both of the 
bishops and of the Puritans. Actuated by exactly the same feeling 
which made Laud hale the Calvinist preachers before the court of 
high commission, the Commons demanded that ' the authors and abettors 
of Popish and Arminian innovations ' should be punished, and preferment 
given to their opponents. Every day the completeness of the gulf 
which divided Charles from the mass of the nation was becoming more 
apparent. 

When the Commons returned to tonnage and poundage, avoiding 
direct attack, they summoned to the bar the custom-house officers. The 
plan failed ; for Charles assumed complete responsibility for Tonnage and 
the acts of his officers. He ordered the Commons to adjourn Pou^idage. 
for a week, and when the House re-assembled, another adjournment was 
ordered. This Eliot refused to accept, and was followed by other mem- 
bers. Holies and Valentine held the Speaker by force in his chair, and 
insisted on Eliot's right to speak. Then, amidst a scene of tremendous 
excitement, while the king's messenger was knocking, three resolutions 
were carried, which coupled together the views of the House on the two 
great questions of the day. They ran thus : — 

1. ' Whosoever shall bring in innovation in religion, or by favour seek 
to extend or introduce Popery or Arminianism, or other opinions dis- 
agreeing from the true and orthodox church, shall be reputed a capital 
enemy to the kingdom and this commonwealth.' 

2. ' Whosoever shall counsel or advise the taking and levying of the 
subsidies of tonnage and poundage, not being granted by parliament, or 
shall be an actor or an instrument therein, shall be likewise reputed an 
innovator in the government, and a capital enemy to this kingdom and 
commonwealth.' 

3. 'If any merchant or other person whatsoever shall voluntarily 
yield or pay the said subsidies of tonnage and poundage, not being 
granted by parliament, he shall likewise be reputed a betrayer of 
the liberty of England, and an enemy to the same.' 

The House then adjourned. The resolutions show the Commons at 
their best and their worst. If their first resolution had been carried out 
religious freedom would have been as impossible under their rule as it 
was under that of Laud ; the second and third closed the loophole for 
arbitrary taxation which had been left open by the Petition of Right. 
It was not, however, to be expected that Charles would accept either. 



520 The Stuarts 1629 

He would not throw over Laud ; he could not give up without a 
struffo-le a source of income which had been orranted as a matter of 
course to his predecessors. He therefore dissolved parliament, and set 
himself to the task of moulding the nation to his own view. His 
first action was to arrest Eliot, Holies, Valentine, Strode, Selden, and 
five other members of the lower house. When questioned by the 
council, some prevaricated and some gave way : but Eliot, 

Arrest of ' ^ ^ . 

Eliot and supported by Strode and Valentine, took the bold course 
of replying, ' I refuse to answer, because I hold that it is 
against the privilege of the House of Parliament to speak of anything 
which was done in the house.' Charles was furious, and spoke of him as 
' an outlawed man, desperate in mind and fortune.' In due course the 
prisoners applied for bail ; but the decision was put oif till after the long 
vacation, and meanwhile they remained in the Tower. Eventually the 
court of king's bench fined Eliot £2000, Holies 1000 marks, and 
Valentine £500. Some gave way, but Eliot, Valentine, and Strode 
persisted. Charles would show no mercy. His chief displeasure fell on 
Eliot as leader. One by one the indulgences of a state prisoner were 
cut ofi^. His health sank ; but a request for country air was refused, and 
when he died it was b}^ the express orders of Charles that his remains 
were laid, not in his family burying-place, but in the graveyard of the 
Tower. Strode and Valentine persisted in their refusal, and were not 
released till 1640, on the eve of the meeting of the Short Parliament. 
Few among their contemporaries saw the significance of the stand they 
made ; but by after ages Eliot has been recognised as pre-eminently a 
martyr, and Strode and Valentine as confessors for freedom of speech and 
freedom of action in the House of Parliament. Charles had now for the 
time given up the idea of working with a parliament ; it remained to be 
seen whether his abilities were equal to the task of reconciling his 
subjects to arbitrary power by the efficiency of his administration, and 
whether the force of circumstances would not inevitably drive him to 
acts of tyrannj^, of which, when he set out, he had no conception. 

Eleven years of arbitrary government followed the dissolution of 
parliament in 1629. During the early part of this period Charles' chief 
Peace adviser was Kichard, Lord Weston, afterwards earl of 
Policy. Portland, who was lord-treasurer tiU his death in 1635. 
Weston had been raised to power by Buckingham ; but had no 
sympathy with his ambitious schemes. Like Middlesex, he preferred 
peace, and was desirous of bringing the finances into order by a rigid 
economy. His manners were rough and overbearing, and he had fcAv 
friends. Laud directed the king's conscience, but so long as Abbot lived 



1633 Charles I. 521 

had no ofScial authority except in his own diocese of London ; Went- 
worth was chiefly occupied by the afiairs of the north. By the advice 
of Weston and Wentworth peace was made with France in April 1630 
and with Spain in November of the same year. After this, Charles 
still clung to the idea of a restoration of the Palatinate to Frederick, 
and hoped to effect it sometimes by allying with Spain, and sometimes 
by common action with France, but as he took no active part in the 
hostilities of the continent, his approaches were regarded by both sides 
with equal contempt. 

In spite, however, of all Weston's economies, the treasury was still 
unfilled. It is true that tonnage and poundage began again to be paid, 
for the merchants feared bankruptcy and saw no hope of Financial 
assistance from parliament. The conclusion of peace was difficulties. 
also a great relief to the expenditure ; but Charles himself was far from 
economical, and Henrietta Maria, as her husband said, 'was a bad 
housekeeper,' so in everything that was done the need of bringing money 
into the exchequer was constantly kept in view. It is well to divide 
Charles' attempts to raise money under three heads : (1) those under- 
taken solely to get money ; (2) those in which public advantage was 
the ostensible object ; and (3) those primarily designed for the 
benefit of trade. In the first class, the collection of tonnage and 
poundage stands first. At the beginning of his reign Charles might 
defend himself on the ground that he was only doing what James i. had 
done between the death of Elizabeth and the formal grant of tonnage 
and poundage by parliament ; but the resolution passed before the last 
dissolution had deprived him of this excuse. Distraint of knighthood 
stands next. There was no question that, according to the letter of 
the law as it stood, the king had a perfect right to compel every land- 
owner to the value of £40 a year to be knighted, or to pay a fine. 
Nevertheless, as the right had not been enforced for one hundred years, 
the gentry were naturally irritated when Charles insisted on his powers. 
Next stands the inquisition on the boundaries of the forests. These 
had been fixed by Edward i. just after the confirmation of the charters ; 
but Charles' lawyers insisted that large tracts which had been forest 
under Henry ii. had then been omitted, and insisted on their resump- 
tion, and those landowners in whose hands these were had to pay fines to 
secure their titles. This touched the landowners on all the great forests, 
and Rockingham forest, for example, was extended from six miles to 
sixty. It is true that the fines were small, and that no one was stripped 
of his property ; but the irritation was excessive, and as in the case of 
distraint of knighthood, it affected a class who had been untouched 



522 The Stuarts 1633 

by tonnage and poundage, and who had little connection with the 
Puritanism of the towns. The second class of measures might have 
been defended according to the ideas of the age, on the ground that their 
object was good, and that the making of money was only a secondary 
object. The depopulation of the country, and the rush of population to 
the towns, was as much a subject of solicitude then as it is now ; and on 
the one hand, Sir Antony Eoper and others were fined for pulling down 
houses on their estates and letting arable land go out of cultivation ; 
and on the other, London builders were mulcted by the court of Star 
Chamber for building houses in town, and householders for overcrowd- 
ing their houses with lodgers. 

In those days no one doubted that one of the functions of government 
was the regulation of trade. Monopolies to individual courtiers were so 
Regulation unpopular that they had been forbidden in 1624, but the 
of Trade, practice of handing over a special trade to an incor- 
porated company does not appear to have been reckoned the same 
thing. The view was, that goods would be better supplied by an autho- 
rised body than by private competition ; but as such corporations were 
ready to pay for their privileges, a ready way of raising money was also 
presented. Accordingly, the right of supplying London with coal was 
reserved to a corporation of shipowners, who were to pay Charles one 
shilling a chaldron, and to charge the public seventeen shillings a chaldron 
in summer and nineteen shillings in winter. The manufacture of soap 
was restricted to another company, who paid a royalty of ^8 per ton ; 
starch to another ; and the trade in bricks, beer, wine, and other articles 
was similarly regulated. Generally speaking, more harm than good was 
done by the regulation, and it caused great irritation among the trading 
classes. 

In the winter of 1631 Wentworth was appointed lord-deputy of 
Ireland. Since Chichester's retirement in 1615, Ireland had been ruled 
by Sir Oliver St. John and by Henry Cary, Lord Falkland. 
These men had adopted the system of Chichester, and had 
followed up the plantation of Ulster by settling Englishmen in the 
counties of Wexford, Longford, Westmeath, and Leitrim. Their great 
difficulties had arisen from the insufficiency of the revenue for the 
expenses of the army, and Falkland had been obliged to bargain for 
some concessions from Charles in return for a grant of £4000 a year for 
three years. These concessions were known in Ireland as ' the graces,' 
and the chief points were : (1) The substitution of an oath of allegiance 
for the oath of supremacy ; (2) the abolition of the one shilling fine for 
non-attendance at church ; and (3) the recognition of a sixty years' 



1633 Charles I. 523 

title to the possession of land as good even against the claims of the 
king. It was understood that these were to be confirmed by act 
of parliament, but when Wentworth took office no parliament had met. 

In accepting the post, Wentworth desired to show what an excellent 
thing absolute power was in the hands of an able man. He believed 
that all private interests ought to give way to the good of 
the state ; that all men should work with a single eye to ^°^ 

the attainment of efficiency, and that neither rank nor wealth should secure 
offenders from punishment. This system he called ' Thorough.' Went- 
worth could hardly have gone to any country where such a system would be 
more out of harmony with the habits of the officials with whom he had to 
deal. Since Falkland's departure the government had been General 
carried on by a committee of officials, men, as he said, ' intent Corruption, 
upon their own ends,' typical of whom was Eobert Boyle, who, having 
landed in 1588 with .£27 in his pocket, had contrived in the service of the 
state to become the largest landowner in Ireland, and to secure the dignity 
of earl of Cork. Under them disorder reigned supreme. The finances 
were in a complete confusion, the army existed ' rather in name than in 
deed,' and the civil service had become a byword for peculation and 
jobbery. Wentworth set himself at once to the work of reforming the 
instruments with which he was to carry out his policy. That policy, as 
in the case of all Englishmen of the time, was based on a belief that the 
one salvation for Ireland lay in forcing the Catholic and Celtic population 
of the country to adopt the religion and habits of Protestant Englishmen. 
The only difterence between Wentworth and his fellows was that while 
they entered upon the work with selfish motives and with their eyes 
fixed on their own interests, he devoted himself heart and soul to what 
he believed to be the interests of the state. His general aims were to 
raise the material condition of the mass of the Irish by showing them 
the road to material prosperity ; and to improve their moral and political 
condition by the diffusion of education and the propagation of the 
Protestant religion. He hoped that a few years of his rule would make 
such a change in the condition of Ireland that no one would wish to go 
back to the old state of things. 

Wentworth's first care was to reorganise the army. He saw every 
soldier himself, arranged for their regular pay, and enforced discipline on 
both officers and men. He found the seas infested with ^^^^^ 
pirates, so he fitted out two warships of his own and soon ^°j:^[?j^g_ 
made navigation safe. He introduced flax from Holland, 
and Dutch flax-spinners and weavers to teach its use ; and he advanced 
money of his own to start a cannon foundry. His great hope was to 



524 The Stuarts 1633 

make England and Ireland interdependent, so that each might feel itself 
more prosperous for its connection with the other. Ireland was to huy 
England's cloth ; England, Ireland's linen ; the English traders were to 
victual their ships with meat grown on Irish pastures, and pickled with 
Cheshire salt ; while the king was to benefit by a salt duty paid by the 
Irish farmers. 

For moral improvement Wentworth trusted to a reform of the 
church. On his arrival he had found the condition of the Irish 
Reforming Protestant Church as bad as it could be. Churches were 
the Church, jq ruins ; while the land which should have supported 
them was in the hands of men like the earl of Cork, who was getting 
J 1000 a year from lands belonging to the cathedral of Lismore, the 
right over which he had contrived to acquire for the sum of £20. 
Numbers of livings had to be thrown together to make up a miserable 
pittance for a single clergyman ; while tithes had been filched right and 
left by the laity and the crown. Few of the clergy could speak Irish, 
and fewer still had the slightest sympathy with the feelings of their 
nominal parishioners. One church in Dublin wag used as a stable, 
another as a dwelling-house, and the earl of Cork had just placed a huge 
monument to his wife on the site of the high altar of Dublin Cathedral. 
Bedell alone among the Irish bishops could talk Irish ; and the conditions 
of his cathedral, where the prayers were read in the native tongue, and 
of his diocese, where alone Protestantism was spreading, only served to 
throw into darker shadow the rest of the island. To clean such an 
Augean stable as this was too much for one man's lifetime ; but what 
he could do Wentworth did. He restored the Dublin churches to their 
proper uses, drove out the tobacconists whose shops occupied the vaults 
of the cathedral, and compelled the earl to remove his wife's tomb 
to another part of the building. He gave up the tithes belonging to 
the crown, encouraged Bedell in his work of completing the translation 
of the Bible which Chichester had initiated, and even compelled con- 
vocation to make the articles and canons of the church a little less 
obtrusively Protestant. 

His dealings with parliament were less satisfactory. In those days 
the Irish parliament made no pretence of representing the nation. Its 
The Irish members were the representatives of the dominant caste 
Parliament, only, and, moreover, were sharply divided into Catholics 
and Protestants, corresponding, roughly speaking, to the old and the 
new settlers. When it met, Wentworth used the Protestant majority 
to vote a large subsidy to the crown, and then informed them that the 
' graces ' would not be conformed till next session. When that came, it 



1636 Charles I. 525 

was annoimced that the ' graces ' would only be passed in a mutilated 
form, and in particular that that which referred to titles would be 
omitted. The discontent was great, but Wentworth would take no 
'nay,' and, with the aid of the Protestant majority, passed through a 
series of laws of his own devising, which were well calculated to improve 
the condition of the country. 

Unfortunately for Wentworth, his proceedings had deeply angered 
the old officials, such as Cork, while his next step prevented him 
gaining any credit. His more than brutal conduct to Lord 
Mountmorris —who had been condemned to death by court- Connaught 
martial in order to drive him from office — raised powerful P^^"t^t'°"- 
enemies to his remedial measures among the Irish population. It was 
now seen that the real object of omitting the title 'grace' was to enable 
Wentworth to carry out a plantation in Connaught, over which the 
crown had an ancient claim. Without doubt, Wentworth believed that 
to take away a portion of the land and give it to English settlers, 
and to apportion the rest among individual owners, would be more 
conducive to progress than the existing system of common ownership ; 
but he did not take account of the fact that common ownership was 
dear to the Celts, and that the Irish preferred the casual though often 
exorbitant demands of their chiefs to the regularly recurring rent- day 
of an English landlord. Moreover, the attack on the Connaught titles 
was in direct violation of Charles' own word, in face of which no land- 
owner could feel secure. Wentworth, however, was pushing forward 
his scheme, when, in 1639, his attention was called off by other events. 

While Wentworth had been carrying out his system of ' thorough ' in 
Ireland, Charles and Laud had held on their English policy, undeterred 
by any doubt about its ultimate success. The public expres- Domestic 
sion of opinion, both on politics and religion, was sternly Pohcy. 
repressed. The means of doing this was placed in the (,Qm.tof 
hands of the crown by the constitution of the courts of Star 

■^ Chamber. 

Star Chamber and High Commission. So long as the Star 
Chamber was dealing either with the ill deeds of turbulent subjects or 
with suits between private individuals, its members, who were made up 
of privy councillors and of the two chief justices of king's bench and 
common pleas, did their work both quickly and well. The legal 
knowledge of the judges, combined with the common sense of the privy 
councillors, was a security for substantial justice, and many preferred to 
have their cases tried before it rather than before the ordinary courts ; 
but so soon as it had to deal with cases in which the defendants were 
charged with attacking the policy of the king's ministers, its members 



526 The Stuarts 1633 

ceased to be judges and became partisans. Similarly, the court of High 
Commission did very weU so long as it was dealing with the moral 
High Com- errors of clergymen, or with the matrimonial delinquencies 
mission. Qf i\^Q laitj'', but changed its character as soon as it had 
before it a Puritan clergyman or writer whose views were antagonistic 
to those of the bench of bishops. Then, too, the sjDCcial powers of these 
courts — their right to put questions to the accused, and the practice of 
trying cases without a jury — became simply engines of tyranny. In 
justice to the members, however, it must be borne in mind that such 
cases formed a very small proportion among those brought before them, 
though, naturally, they are those which are best remembered. 

Of this type, that of Alderman Chambers was one, and another was 
that of Dr. Leighton. Leighton was a Scottish Presby- 

Chambers . * ,.. ,. ,, 

and terian, settled in London as a physician, who, m 1628, had 

got uj) a petition to the parliament in favour of the abolition 

of Episcopacy. This he had elaborated into a book called Zion's Plea 

against Prelacy. This attacked the bishops in no measm^ed terms, spoke 

of Buckingham as Goliath, and of Henrietta Maria as ' a daughter of 

Heth,' a ' Canaanite,' and an ' idolatress.' The only defence capable of 

being pleaded for him is, that in the long run even the abuse of free 

expression of opinion is better than its repression — a doctrine far in 

advance of the time — and Leighton was ordered to be flogged, pilloried, 

and deprived of his ears. In 1634 the court had before it 
Prynne. 

William Prynne, a barrister of great learning but little 
humour, who had published a book called Histriomastix^ or the Player^s 
Scourge. For many years a controversy had been raging about the 
morality of stage plays, which had undoubtedly deteriorated since the 
days of Shakespeare ; and Prynne was merely representing the views of 
his party when he denounced the drama as utterly pernicious. The king 
and queen, however, were constant playgoers ; and Henrietta's taking 
part in a masque made Prynne's strictures on the characters of female 
actors particularly galling. Prynne was sentenced to be imprisoned for 
life, expelled from Lincoln's Inn and from the bar, deprived of his 
university degree, to be set in the pillory, and to have both his ears cut 
off. The sentence, however, does not seem to have caused much 
excitement. Prynne's language had been outrageous ; and even John 
INIilton, Puritan as he was, wrote Comus, and introduced into it a female 
part, to show that the drama was as capable of giving instruction in 
good morality as in bad. 

In 1633 Laud became archbishoi^ of Canterbury. His elevation to power 
gave him a larger sphere for activity ; and as see after see fell vacant 



1637 Charles I. 527 

his friends were raised to the bench of bishops. Neile was made arch- 
bishop of York ; Wren became bishop of Norwich, and a few years hiter 
of Ely ; Juxon succeeded Laud at London. Soon, Williams Laud's 
of Lincoln, the old friend of James i., was the only bishop of Policy. 
Puritan leanings. Laud's activity was endless. With the High Com- 
mission court at his back, he rigidly enforced his own system on Puritan 
rectors and vicars. To the horror of the Puritan party, he took up the 
cause of those who saw no harm in giving up Sunday afternoon to 
recreation, and republished James' book of sports — which permitted 
archery, dancing, and other athletic exercises on Sunday afternoons — 
and ordered it to be read by the clergy, whether they approved of it or 
not. Of Laud's personal character, and of the integrity of his motives, 
it is impossible to speak too highly ; but his zeal was wholly untempered 
either by sympathy or by discretion. It was right that he should be no 
respecter of persons, and that immorality should be as severely censured 
in the noble as in the peasant ; and few can object to the archbishop's 
efforts to restore order and decency in the churches ; but Laud forgot 
that such severity can only be maintained if it falls in with public 
opinion, and that, by setting against him the Puritan clergy — who, 
though they disagreed with him on external ceremonial, were as eager 
as himself for reformation in morality — he was not only estranging 
valuable allies, but paving the way for his own overthrow by an alliance 
of the discontented parties. If he had struck at irregularity of conduct 
and left doctrine alone, or if he had struck at doctrine but been blind 
to irregularity, he might have succeeded. To do both was fatal to his 
hopes, for it made Laud's system unpopular with so many that any 
attack upon it was sure to find numerous sympathisers. 

Among other means of repression, Laud's hand had been heavy on the 
press, and no book opposed to his view had a chance of obtaining a 
licence to be printed. In consequence, secret presses were ^^^ y>t&ss 
set up, and books were sent to be printed in Holland. 
Among the leaders in this paper-war were Prynne, Henry Burton, a 
London clergyman, who had been a court chaplain, and Bast- p ^^^ 
wick, a Colchester physician — all university men. In 1637 Burton, and 
all of them appeared before the Star Chamber. Prynne's 
offence was the writing of two books— one, A Divine Tragedy LateJy 
Acted, in which he had collected all the examples he could find of sudden 
death or accident overtaking Sabbath-breakers, which he connected with 
the king's 'declaration of sports' ; and another. News from fysivich, in 
which the bishops were charged with deliberately paving the way for a 
reintroduction of Popery. Burton had published two sermons entitled 



528 The Stuarts 1637 

For God and the King, in which he had fiercely attacked Laud's most 
cherished ceremonies ; and John Bastwick's Litany of John Bastivick 
contained the prayer, ' From "bishops, priests, and deacons, good Lord, 
deliver us.' No wonder the court was angry, and its sentence savage. 
The three were ordered to lose their ears (some relics of Prynne's yet re- 
mained to him), to stand in the pillory, to be fined, and to be imprisoned 
far from their friends at Carnarvon, Lancaster, and Launceston. When 
Prynne had been sentenced before, he had met with little sympathy, but 
now the three were regarded as popular martyrs ; 100,000 men went out 
to escort Burton to Highgate. Even in these distant prisons friends were 
found, and eventually Charles had to transfer his prisoners to the 
Channel Islands, to be still further out of reach of their supporters. 
It was not only the views of the men which excited sympathy. The 
fact that the degradation of the pillory was inflicted on men of position 
and learning roused indignation in quarters where Puritan feeling was 
practically unknown. 

Meanwhile, the financial measures of the government were irritating a 
class of persons more numerous even than those who were alienated by 

Laud's relioious policy. From ancient times it had been the 

Ship-money. ^'^ ^ , . . „ , i • ■, ■, 

custom of the country that m tmie oi war the ships needed 

to supplement the royal fleet should be supplied by the seaport towns. 
Inland towns had as a rule been exempted, but Elizabeth had required 
Leeds, Halifax, and Wakefield to join with the port of Hull in con- 
tributing a ship. No requisition had ever been made except in the 
time of actual war. However, in 1634, Charles and his advisers 
decided that, though the country was at peace, there were good 
grounds for increasing the strength of the navy. In this they were 
probably perfectly right, for the growth of the Dutch navy was be- 
coming a menace to our trade, and piracy was also common ; but if so, 
it was in accordance with the principles of the constitution that the state 
of the case should be explained to parliament. The adviser 
of the measure was Noy, the attorney-general, a man said 
by Clarendon to have prided himself 'on making that law which all 
other men believed not to be so.' At the moment, Charles was seriously 
thinking of allying himself with the Spaniards in a war against the 
Dutch ; but as he dared not disclose his design even to the privy council, 
he put forward the excuse that the money was wanted to provide defence 
against pirates, who undoubtedly infested the coast, and had just 
plundered the vessel in which Wentworth's luggage was 

First ^^rits. 

being taken from Chester to Dublin. The writs were 
addressed only to seaport towns. The London inprdiants grumbled, 



1637 Charles I. 



529 



and other places followed their example. Meanwhile, Noy had died 
and early in 1635 he was followed by Weston, earl of Portland. The 
treasury was then placed under a board, of which Laud was the leadino- 
spirit, and presently Juxon became treasurer. The readiness with 
which ship-money had been paid suggested the idea of a second im- 
position ; and in 1635 a second set of writs was sent gee 
out, this time addressed to inland as well as seaport towns Writs, 
and suggesting no special reason for the call, except the general need 
of preparations in which it was obviously the duty of every one to 
take his share. The sum asked for was not large ; but men now 
began to see that if it were paid, a precedent would be created, by 
which the king might free himself from the necessity of callino- a 
parliament, and might thus become as free from control, and as much 
the master of the property of his subjects, as a king of France. Thouoh 
the money was paid, the grumbling increased, and men began to talk of 
the king's conduct as a violation of the ' fundamental laws of Endand.' 
Meanwhile, the issue of a new book of rates, in which a new Book 
the duties were raised to produce an additional ^10,000, o^^-^^es. 
showed that Charles was rapidly getting complete control over the 
purses of his subjects; and when next year a third set of ^, . , 
ship-money writs came out, the tide of indignation swelled Ship-money 
apace. Nobility, gentry, and commonalty were united 
against the tax, and Robert Rich, earl of Warwick, wrote that the men of 
Essex would not consent to ' so notable a prejudice to the liberties of 
the people.' Lord Saye and Sele and John Hampden, a young Bucking- 
hamshire squire, determined to test the legality of the levy in a court of 
law. The king, however, was blind to the danger, and — relying on an 
opinion given by the judges that when the kingdom was in danger the 
king might levy ship-money — went on with the collection, and prepared 
to recover the Palatinate by attacking Spain at sea, while the French 
forces acted by land. Up to this time Wentworth, though he had been 
in constant correspondence with Laud, had not been consulted by 
Charles. His opinion was now sought. His reply adopted the ship- 
money policy, and, indeed, expressed a desire that Charles would extend 
the system so as to provide an army. His answer, therefore, thoroughly 
identified him with the system of Charles and Laud. Though his letter 
was a secret, popular instinct, therefore, was right when it coupled the 
names of Wentworth and Laud as the representatives of the new policy, 
both in church and state. 

In December 1637 Hampden's case was argued before the court of 
exchequer. His lawyers, St. John and Holborne, argued that though 

2 L 



530 • The Stuarts 1637 

in an emero-ency the king could judge of the amount of the danger which 
justified the collection of ship-money, yet that the proper mode of pro- 
Hampden's cseding was through parliament ; and that in the present 
Trial. case no emergency existed to justify any other method. Of 

the twelve judges, seven decided for the king ; Croke, Hutton, and 
Denhani gave their voices for Hampden on the merits of the case ; and 
two voted for Hampden on technical grounds. Charles, therefore, won 
by a bare majority ; but though victory rested with the court, men felt 
that Hampden's advocates had had the best of the argument. Finch's 
judgment, that ' all Acts of Parliament binding the king not to 
command the subjects, their persons and goods, and I say their money, 
too, are void,' is said by Lord Clarendon to have made ship-money more 
'abhorred and formidable than all the commandments by the council 
table, and all the distresses taken by the sheriffs ' ; while Berkeley's 
phrase, ' The law knows no such king-yoking policy,' was passed from 
mouth to mouth. Charles, however, was delighted. The danger of 
meeting parliament was now removed ; Laud's policy was safe ; there 
was no fear of a deficit in the revenue, and he insisted that all arrears 
must be paid up at once. For a moment it looked as if parliamentary 
government were really at an end. 

During the trying times which followed the dissolution of 1629, the 
settlement in America had made rapid strides. The New Plymouth 
/pj^g colonists had been men of low estate ; but in 1629 a number 

Colonies, of Independents of good position, headed by John Win- 
throp, a Suffolk squire, and Eaton, who had been English ambassador at 
the Danish court, determined to found a new settlement where they could 
enjoy greater freedom, both in religion and politics, than seemed possible 
in England. They settled on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, and made 
New Salem their capital. Winthrop was a man of the highest character, 
and the influence of his name led to a large emigration from the eastern 
counties. But though the exiles had fled from persecution in England, 
they had no thought of establishing toleration in their new home. Two 
brothers, who showed a preference for the Book of Common Prayer, 
were shipped home at once ; and it was resolved that no one who was 
not a member of an Independent church should have any voice in the 
affairs of the colony. One who ventured to criticise the proceedings of 
the rulers was whipped, had his ears cropped, and was fined .£40 — exactly 
as though a Puritan branch of the Star Chamber had been established 
Question of ^^ New England. When news of these proceedings came to 
Toleration. ^}^q p^^pg qj- x^aud, he at once obtained authority from the 
king to inquire into the matter, with the result that an order of council 



1637 Charles I. 53-1 

was issued forbidding any nobleman or gentleman to leave the country 
without the royal licence, and any of lower rank without a certificate of 
conformity. Yet in spite of these precautions three thousand new 
settlers went out in 1635 alone, and the colonists prepared to offer armed 
resistance to any attempt on Laud's part to compel conformity by force. 
Still, even in the colony, voices were raised for freedom of worship and 
thought. In 1631, Eoger Williams joined the emigrants, 
and eventually became pastor of a church at Salem. His ^'^^'^"^^• 
view was that matters of religion were almost wholly outside the sphere 
of the civil government, and his preaching of this doctrine brought him 
into collision with the authorities. His banishment was ordered ; and in 
1636 Williams and five others made their way in a canoe to Rhode 
Island, and there founded a new colony of their own. In 1635 another 
friend of liberty arrived in Sir Harry Vane, son of Sir Harry Vane a 
member of the English privy council. Vane was then 
twenty-three, and had already made a reputation for great 
ability and for unflinching attachment to principle. Accordincrly, in 
1636, the colonists elected him governor ; but his views on religious 
liberty did not square with those of Winthrop, and, having carefully con- 
sidered his position. Vane enunciated the famous sentiment that religious 
intolerance, wherever it might be found, ' was fatal both to religious 
vitality and to political life.' Finding, however, that his views met 
with little acceptance, and that he was not re-elected, he returned 
home. 

Meanwhile, the practical question of toleration had been solved by the 
little colony of Maryland. The founders of this colony were the 
Calverts, the head of whose family was Lord Baltimore. Toleration 
They were more or less declared recusants, and by favour ^ Maryland, 
of Charles their charter was so drawn as to admit of the introduction 
of religious liberty. They called their settlement after Queen Henrietta 
Maria. From the first, the settlers in Maryland included both Pro- 
testants and Roman Catholics ; and, each finding the necessity of the aid 
of the other, questions of religious difference were carefully ignored, and 
in the first free assembly complete freedom of worship and perfect 
political equality were secured to members of all religions by law. To 
Maryland, therefore, belongs the honour of being the first of modern 
states to solve the thorny question of the true attitude of the state 
towards the religious difi'erences of the community, which was equally 
an enigma to Eliot and to Laud. 

In face of the resistance of the New England colonists, Laud drcM- 
back from his designed interference ; but in Scotland he was not so easily 



532 Tlie Stuarts 1637 

diverted from his purpose. Since the accession of James, the govern- 
ment of the Scottish Presbyterian Church, as established by Knox, had 
Laud in been considerably modified. According to the original de- 
Scotland, gjgjj^ j^g government was to be strictly republican, and was 
to be carried on by kirk sessions, presbyteries, and provincial synods, the 
affairs of the whole being regulated by a general assembly of elected 
clergy and laymen. Over this, James had succeeded in establishing 
bishops, but they had no jurisdiction and were not even episcopally 
consecrated. He had also secured the nominal acceptance by a General 
Assembly of the Articles of Perth, the chief of which enjoined kneeling 
to receive the communion, and the observance of Christmas Day, Good 
Friday, Easter Day, and Whitsunday. These changes, however, were 
disliked by the mass of the people, and the Scottish ministers still 
used extempore prayers, and denounced Catholics and Arminians as much 
as they liked. This state of aftairs did not commend itself to Charles or 
to Laud, who had accompanied him to Scotland in 1633. Accordingly 
A new the Scottish bishops were ordered to prepare a liturgy based 

Liturgy. Qjj ^Yint of England, and when it had been revised by Laud 
and Wren, each parish in Scotland was ordered to provide itself with 
two copies. Such a proceeding was certain to rouse the bitterest 
hostility in Scotland, The Scots fully believed that the whole scheme 
was designed as a step towards the re-introduction of popery ; and 
they hated the prayer-book, partly because it was the work of the 
bishops, much more because it was an importation from England. 
Charles had, in fact, contrived to wound in their tenderest points both 
the religious and national susceptibilities of his Scottish subjects. 
Of this, however, he had no idea. The new state of things would 
be more orderly than the old, and that seemed to him sufficient 
argument. Accordingly, in the summer of 1636, at the time when 
Hampden and Saye were preparing their case against ship-money, the 
Riot in iiew liturgy was for the first time read in St. Giles' Church, 
Edinburgh. Edinburgh, and the result was such a riot that the reader 
was thankful to have escaped with his life. In this resistance all classes 
were engaged ; and nobles, like the earl of Montrose, ministers, like Alex- 
ander Henderson, and lawyers, like Johnstone of Warriston, stood side by 
side with the people in resisting the innovations. During 1637 petitions 
and replies went backwards and forwards between Scotland and London ; 
but no conclusion was arrived at, though the resistance grew stronger 
The through the creation of a body of ten commissioners, 

' Tables.' known as ' the tables,' who were appointed by the malcon- 
tents to look after their interests, and who formed the germ of a 



1638 Charles I. 533 

popular and national government independent of Charles. At length, 

in 1638, it became clear that nothing but the united efforts of all 

classes could secure the Scots against Charles' obstinacy ; and, by the 

advice of Johnstone, a covenant was drawn up by himself and Henderson 

which bound all who signed it to 'defend the aforesaid 

The 
(true reformed) religion, and to labour by all means lawful National 

to recover the purity and liberty of the gospel, as it was ^°^^"^"*- 
established and professed before the aforesaid innovations . . 
which have no warrant in the Word of God, and do sensibly tend to 
the re-establishing of the popish religion and tyranny.' This document 
was signed by all classes amidst the utmost enthusiasm ; and, indeed, 
it required a bold man to refuse his assent : ' for such as refused to 
subscribe were accounted by the rest who subscribed as no better than 
papists.' 

Charles, therefore, saw that he must either fight or yield ; but the 
former was difficult, for the Scottish nobility, unlike the English peers, 
were at the head of a tenantry bound to fight in their ■^A/'eakness 
defence, and Scotland was full of able officers like Alexander °^ Charles. 
Leslie, who had learned their business fighting in the Protestant cause 
in Germany and Flanders. Against them Charles had no military force 
whatever ; and his commissioner in Scotland, the marquess of Hamilton, 
pointed out that for a time, at any rate, concession was absolutely neces- 
sary. Accordingly, an assembly of the Scottish church was permitted 
to meet at Glasgow in November, 1639. Contrary to Charles' intention, 
the assembly was composed largely of lay members, and its temper was 
shown by the election of Alexander Henderson as its moderator or 
president, and of Johnstone of Warriston as its clerk or secretary. 
To this body the presbytery of Edinburgh referred the cases of the 
bishops. In vain the bishops protested against the claim of the 
assembly to act as their judges. The assembly was so clearly against 
them, that Hamilton used his authority as royal commissioner and 
declared that body dissolved. The assembly, however, encouraged 
V)y the earl of Argyll, continued its sittings, and without _ 

•^ oJ 3 o Episcopacy 

further ado episcopacy and the service-book were alike and the 
abolished. That Charles would consent to these changes ^boSd. 
without resistance was incredible, and both parties pre- 
pared for war. In Scotland, however, Charles' friends, except in the 
neighbourhood of Aberdeen, were completely outnumbered, and it was 
plain that if the Scots were to be subdued English soldiers must be 
raised to do it. By the summer of 1639 Charles had collected on the 
Scottish border a force of some 20,000 men, partly impressed from the 



534 The Stuarts 1638 

northern counties, partly composed of noblemen called to do service 

under their feudal tenure; but it was a mere shadow of an army — ill-led, 

ill-drilled, ill-paid, and utterly without heart for its work ; 
Prepara- ... 

tions for while on the Scottish side of the Tweed there lay, under 
Leslie, 16,000 Scots of good fighting quality, well armed, 
and officered by men who had learnt their work in Germany and 
Flanders. However, after the two armies had faced one another for 
a few weeks, Charles saw that whatever he might effect ultimately 
he had no course now but to yield ; and though he refused to recognise 
the legality of the late assembly, he assented to the holding of a new 
one, the acts of which were to be confirmed by the Scottish parliament. 
The new assembly sim23ly re-enacted the acts of its predecessor, and the 
parliament, in which the exclusion of the bishops had destroyed the 
king's influence, was on the point of confirming the acts of the assembly, 
when Charles, who perhaps had hardly realised that he was expected to 
give his consent to a foregone conclusion, attempted to stop its proceed- 
ings by a forced adjournment till the summer of 1640. The Scots took 

^, ^ his action as a new declaration of war, and spent the 

The first , . mi V i 

Bishops' interval m perfectmg their preparations. The short and 
bloodless campaign on the Tweed became known as the 
first bishops' war. 

Meanwhile Charles, urged by Laud, had summoned to his side by far 
the ablest councillor at his disposal ; for in September, 1639, Wentworth 
Wentworth caiiie over from Ireland, and at once took his place as 
in England, leading minister. Hitherto he had had little or no share 
in English affairs. Wentworth was as clear as Charles that Scotland 
must be coerced, but for that he saw that extraordinary exertions would 
be necessary. He, therefore, persuaded Charles to summon a parlia- 
ment. If that body supported the king, well and good ; if not, the 
king must take his own way, and the blame would rest, not on him, but 
on his undutiful subjects. To show how heartily the privy councillors 
were with Charles, Wentworth advanced <£20,000 to the king, others did 
the like, and in this way ^150,000 was raised. On the other hand, a 
proposal that London should do the like met with no response. To 
show Wentwor til's new influence and the king's approval of his work in 
Ireland, Wentworth was made earl of Strafford. About the same time 
Finch, the speaker of 1629, and the most violent supporter of ship- 
money, was made lord keeper of the great seal. On the other hand, as 
a conciliatory measure. Strode and Valentine were released from the 
Tower. 

Charles' fourth parliament, known as the Short Parliament, met in 



1640 Charles I. 535 

April, 1640. The king's hope was to play off the English against 
the Scots. Great stress was laid by his friends on the danger likely 
to arise to England from a Scottish invasion ; attention The Short 
was also drawn to a letter addressed by the Cove- Parliament, 
nanters to the king of France, and it was asserted that when a tonnage 
and poundage bill had been passed, and a subsidy voted, there would 
be plenty of time for the members to consider their special grievances. 
Had the discontent of England been as slight as Charles and Strafford 
believed, their plan might have succeeded ; but the attitude of parlia- 
ment soon undeceived those who were sanguine of an easy session. 
When parliament was not sitting the men of each county knew little of 
what was going on in another ; the clergy of each diocese had little to 
do with their neighbours ; and consequently there was no widespread 
public opinion ; but when parliament met a public opinion soon sprang 
into existence, leaders and spokesmen were found, and the nation 
became once more articulate. 

The task of putting into words the grievances of the nation fell to John 
Pym, who stepped into the place left vacant by the deaths of Eliot, 
Coke, and Phelips, and by the defection of Wentworth. Pym , j^ p ^^ 
was now fifty-six years of age, and had sat in all the par- 
liaments summoned since 1621. Pym was a Somerset squire who had 
studied the law, and had also held a post in the exchequer. Conse- 
quently he had more acquaintance with the business of state than 
most of the Puritan party. He owed his seat in the House to the 
influence of the earl of Bedford, and so had the ear both of the 
House of Commons and of the small group of Puritan peers, of whom 
Bedford, Essex, Saye and Sele, and Brooke were the chief. Pym's speech, 
while moderate in tone, placed in clear relief the real facts of the 
political situation. Parliament, he said, was to 'the body politic 
as the rational faculties of the soul are to a man,' and he traced the 
whole of the grievances, both in church and state, to ' the intromission of 
parliaments.' He proposed that the two Houses should join in petitioning 
the king for a redress of grievances. This raised the old question 
whether"^ votes of supply should or should not precede the redress of 
grievances, and in it Charles and his parliament were completely at 
variance. By Strafford's advice the king appealed to the Lords ; but 
though that House voted that supply ought to come first, the Commons 
maintained their ground. Stratibrd then persuaded Charles to give up 
ship-money, to ask only for a moderate supply. Charles, however, 
insisted on asking for twelve subsidies, and this the Commons would not 
vote until they learned whether Charles would also abandon the practice 



536 The Stuarts 1640 

of calling on the counties to provide ' coat and conduct money ' for the 
men levied from each county. As it happened, ship-money had fallen 
most heavily on the southern shires ; but the new demand had pressed 
most on the northern counties ; and Yorkshire, whose contribution to the 
last levy of ship-money had only been ^12,000, had had to pay £40,000 
in provisions and equipments for its levies in the newly-raised army. 
Charles, however, pressed for twelve subsidies, and the Commons pro- 
_ . , . posed to meet his demand by a petition that he would come 

Dissolution ^ . ^ i 

of Pariia- to terms with the Scots. This, doubtless, seemed to Charles 
little less than a demand that parliament, and not he, should 
direct the policy of the country, and before the petition could be voted 
parliament was dissolved. Convocation, however, sat a few 
days longer, and, besides voting a liberal grant out of their 
own pockets, drew up a body of canons for the regulation of the church. 
It was now Strafford's turn to try whether he could be more successful 
than Charles. In the council he declared his view that parliament 
Strafford's having failed, the king must assume a practical dictator- 
Views, ship. Half measures would never do. Charles' one hope 
lay in success against the Scots. ' Go on vigorously,' said Strafford, ' or 
let them alone. . . . Go on with a vigorous war as you first designed, 
loose and absolved from all rules of government. . . . You have an army 
in Ireland you may employ here to reduce the kingdom.' In these views 
he was fully supported by Laud. Strafford, however, soon found that 
it was easier to speak than to act. Neither the characters of Charles or 
his ministers fitted them to carry out his ideas of 'thorough.' The 
Londoners refused to pay a loan, and though Strafford declared that no 
good would be done with the Londoners till some of them were hanged, 
Foreign Aid ^^e rest of the privy council held back. Charles' idea was 
solicited. ^Q apply to foreign courts for aid. Solicitations were made 
to Denmark, Holland, Spain, and even to the pope, but he had no idea 
of vigorous action for himself. Worst of all, Strafford himself fell ill, 
and while he was incapacitated, confusion grew worse confounded. 

In August the Scots, led by Alexander Leslie, took the decisive 
measure of crossing the Tweed. Before their well-drilled troops Charles' 

_, „ , mutinous levies retreated in confusion at Newburn on the 
The Second 

Bishops' Tyne. An attempt was made to dispute the passage, but the 
military measures were badly taken, and the Scots poured 
into Yorkshire. The whole plan of defence seemed to have given way, 
and Strafford confided to his friend, Eadcliffe, that 'never man saw 
so lost a business ... a universal affright of all ; a general disaffection 
to the king's service : none sensible of his dishonour. In one word 



1640 Charles I. 537 

(I am) here alone to fight with all these evils, without any one to help. 
Charles' great hope had been that the advance of the Scots would rouse 
the national spirit ; but for the first time Englishmen regarded a victory- 
won by foreign troops on English soil as a triumph for themselves and 
took advantage of Charles' misfortune to press for a new parliament. In 
reply Charles fell back on a precedent of Edward i., and called a meeting 
of the Magnum Concilium, or council of peers. This assembly met at 
York, but while the members pledged their credit to raise 
money, they reiterated the demand for a parliament. The ment sum-' 
king, seeing no other course open to him, made a truce with "^°"^"' 
the Scots, agreed to pay them J25,000 a month, and summoned a 
parliament to meet on November 3, 1640. 

Between the issue of the writs and the meeting of parliament, meet- 
ings were held at Kij)on between English and Scottish commissioners, 
and it was agreed that till a full treaty were signed, the Treaty of 
Scots should occupy Northumberland and Durham, and ^^pon- 
that ,£25,000 a month should be paid for their maintenance. One 
month's instalment was arranged for ; the second would come due after 
parliament met ; so that unless Charles could persuade parliament to find 
the money, an immediate advance of the Scots might be looked for. The 
existence of the Scottish army was, therefore, a complete guarantee 
against an immediate dissolution. 

CHIEF DATES. 

A.D. 

Petition of Right, 1628 

Murder of Buckingham, 1629 

Laud becomes Arclibisliop of Canterbury, . 1633 

Wentworth becomes Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 1633 

Scottish troubles begin, 1637 

Hampden's Trial, 1637 

First Bishops' War, 1639 

Short Parliament l^*^ 

Second Bishops' War, 16*0 



CHAPTEE III 

CHAKLES I. 

PART II 

The Com position of the Long Parliament — The Trial and Death of StrafTord — 
Reforming Measures^ — The Religious Question and Division of Parties — 
Impeachment of the five Members— Opening of the War — First Civil War — 
Imprisonment of the King — Second Civil War — Trial of Charles. 

On November 3 the members of the celebrated Long Parliament met 
at Westminster. Among the Lords the most noticeable figures were 
Archbishop Laud, with his friends Juxon, Mainwaring, The Long 
Wren, and Montague, and his old opponent, Williams, Parliament, 
bishop of Lincoln. Strafford was not present at the opening of parlia- 
ment, so the most conspicuous personages among the lay Leading 
peers were the earl of Bristol, anxious to find some means of 
preserving an efficient monarchy ; Lord Finch, former speaker and sup- 
porter of ship-money ; the earl of Bedford, titular leader of the Puritans 
and patron of Pym, with his friends the earls of Essex and Warwick ; 
Viscount Saye and Sele, whose talent of intrigue had gained him the 
title of ' old subtlety ' ; Edward Montagu, Lord Kimbolton (afterwards 
earl of Manchester) ; and Kobert Greville, Lord Brooke. Leading 
Among the Commons the leaders were John Pym, John o"^"^° 
Hampden, and John Selden, already well known ; Denzil Hollis, and 
William Strode, who had held Finch in his chair in 1629 ; Oliver St. 
John, Hampden's counsel in the ship-money trial ; Sir Arthur Hazelrig, 
Oliver Cromwell, and Sir Harry Vane, all stout Puritans; Bristol's 
eldest son, Lord Digby, clever but ostentatious ; Edward Hyde, formal, 
painstaking, and church-loving ; Lucius Carey, Viscount Falkland, most 
thoughtful of those who admired neither Laudism nor Puritanism; 
Edmund Waller, the poet— all of whom were one day to be royalists ; 
William Waller, Kalph Hopton, and Ferdinand, Lord Fairfax, who, 
with Essex, Cromwell, and Manchester, were to be the leaders m 
the war ; and Sir Simon d'Ewes, from whose painstaking not^e-books 



540 The Stuarts 1640 

we learn most of what is known of the daily life of the great assembly. 

The mass of the members were country gentlemen and lawyers. The 

merchants were few ; and most members were university men, in no way 

disposed to violent reforms, and by no means sympathetic with persons 

whose rank and habits differed from their own. 

In those days there were no regular parties, and men sat as they 

liked in different parts of the house, and consequently it was some time 

before the members found their level. From the first, how- 
Appearance . 
of the ever, the most conspicuous man was John Pym. Pym's 

strong point was his excellent debating power, and consum- 
mate prudence, with which he united an instinctive knowledge of what 
the bulk of his party reaUy desired. He shared all their weaknesses 
and prejudices ; and consequently he was always in touch with his fol- 
lowers, and never lived in a region apart. For instance, Pym was quite 
of opinion that Laud and Strafford had been engaged in a systematic 
plot — the one to overthrow Protestantism, the other parliamentary 
government ; and he also believed that self-seeking ambition was the 
mainspring of Strafford's conduct. This is now known to be a caricature 
of Strafford's real position ; but it was then the universally accepted 
explanation of his conduct, and Pym merely shared the belief of others. 
This added to his influence, and he soon became so powerful in the House 
that his enemies called him King Pym. 

So universal was the above-mentioned belief, that the policy of 
Strafford and Laud was without supporters ; and the house, with 

e fT H pi'^ctical unanimity, agreed to impeach Strafford and Laud, 
and those of the judges and bishops who had been their 
chief allies. A committee was named to inquire into the results of 
their government. By this time Pym had in his possession a copy 
of the notes of Strafford's speech to the privy council (see page 536), 
which had been taken by the elder Vane. The younger Vane had found 
them among his father's papers, and had given a copy to Pym and kept 
one himself ; and on this Pym was preparing to charge Strafford with 
high treason. Meanwhile, Strafford himself had reached London, His 
safest place was at the head either of the English or Irish army ; but 
Charles had implored him to come, and had given his kingly word that 
he ' should not suffer in his person, honour, or fortune,' On his arrival, 
Strafford at once gave his voice for a policy of counter-attack, 
and argued that Charles should carry the war into the enemy's 
country by himself impeaching the Puritan leaders of treasonable corre- 
spondence with the Scots. Warned of what was in store, Pym struck 
first; and, on November 11, the earl was accused, on behalf of the 



1640 Charles I. 



541 



commons of England, of the crime of high treason, and sent to the 
Tower. 

In December he was followed by Laud, on a charge which amounted 
to ' endeavouring to subvert the laws, and the religion by those laws 
established.' In the eyes of his contemporaries, Laud was 
almost, if not quite, as important as Straftbrd. Since ^" * 

Buckingham's death he had been the king's chief confidential adviser, 
and all Charles' measures had received his hearty approval. He had 
been an energetic member of the courts of Star Chamber and Hio-h 
Commission ; the power he wielded in the church was immense, not 
only through his personal influence, but because he had filled the bench 
of bishops with his own friends ; and, the reversal of his policy was, 
therefore, considered by the Puritan members as of the first importance. 

On the other hand, there were many members who drew a distinction 
between the existing bishops and the principle of Episcopal government. 
These were wishful for church reform, but wished also to ^ church 
preserve the existing church system, partly because they Party, 
liked the order and regularity of the church, partly because they 
feared that a church governed by presbytery would be, at least, as in- 
tolerant as one ruled by bishops. Among these defenders of Episcopacy 
were Hyde, Falkland, Digby, and Selden ; and it began to be plain that, 
though there was, so far, unanimity in politics, the house would, in eccle- 
siastical matters, be divided into Episcopalians and anti-Episcopalians. 

With Laud and Straff'ord, the Commons also proceeded against Chief 
Justice Finch, who, at the ship-money trial, had declared that ' acts of 
parliament made no difi'erence ' ; Berkeley, who had said ^^^^^ 
' that the law knows no such king-yoking policy ' ; Secre- Ministers 
tary Windebank and others. Finch and Windebank 
made their escape to the continent, and the proceedings against 
the rest came to nothing. While punishing Charles' ministers, parlia- 
ment was not altogether oblivious of their victims. Prynne, Bastwick, 
Burton, Chambers, and Lilburne, who had been imprisoned by the 
unpopular Star Chamber, were released. An immense throng of sympa- 
thisers welcomed their return to London, and some reparation was made 
for their suff'erings. 

It is certain that nothing had done so much to encourage Charles and 
his friends as the uncertainty whether a parliament would ever sit to 
inquire into their acts. To remove this doubt for the ^^^ 
future, a Triennial Act was passed, by which it was ordered Tnenniai 
that more than three years should never elapse without a 
parliament being summoned; and, to ensure its meeting, provision 



542 The Stuarts 1640 

was made for the holding of the elections even if no summons was issued 
by the king. It was also provided that, when parliament had met, it 
should sit at least fifty days before it was dissolved. The second read- 
ing of this Act was moved by Oliver Cromwell. 

These measures occupied the autumn and winter of 1640 and 1641 ;. 
and in March the trial of Strafford began in Westminster Hall, 
Trial of ^J^^ himself acting as chief of the managers for the 
Strafford. Commons. Their real difficulty was to prove that Strafford 
had been guilty of treason. It was easy to show that Strafford had been 
guilty of some violations of the law and of numerous high-handed acts, 
but, against this line of argument, Strafford's defence that no number of 
misdemeanours amounted to one treason was conclusive. Strafford, in 
fact, was being tried not for treason against the king, but for treason 
ao-ainst the state — two ideas which, when treason had been defined in 
the reign of Edward iii., had admitted of no distinction. All along, 
Pym felt that his best course was to rely on Strafford's speech in the 
council chamber, that ' you have an army in Ireland you may employ 
here to reduce this kingdom,' because if ' this kingdom ' were England 
the words might be twisted to mean 'levying war against the king.' 
Vane, however, refused to admit that ' this kingdom ' meant England, 
and other privy councillors declared that they did not remember the 
words at all. Then Strafford's threat to hang the London aldermen was 
inquired into, but that clearly was not treason. Strafford's commission 
as general was shown to empower him to put down rebellion ; but it was 
replied that the same words occurred as a matter of course in such a com- 
mission. The case of the Commons was, therefore, breaking down, and they 
asked to be allowed to put in additional evidence. Strafford, of course, 
asked leave to do the same. The trial was, therefore, adjourned. 

Pym now felt that the time had come to reinforce the elder Vane's 
evidence by his son's notes, and the same day they were produced in the 
Strafford's House of Conimons. Questioned as to what had become of 
Attainder, ^.j^^ original, the elder Vane explained that it had been burnt 
by the king's orders. Upon this the more violent section of the Puritans, 
among whom Sir Arthur Hazebig was j)rominent, brought in a Bill of 
Attainder, and it was at once read a first time. Next day the Lords 
called on Stratford to make his defence at once. Strafford's arguments, 
as before, were that that could not be treason as a whole which was not 
treason in any separate part, and that it was unjust to punish a man for a 
crime not provided for in lawc Pym replied that arbitrary rule 
invariably degraded the subject, and asked whether it were not greater 
treason to ' embase the s]3irits of the king's subjects, than to embase the 



1641 Charles I. 543 

king's coin.' Meanwhile, the extreme men were pressing on the Attainder 
Bill, on the ground that Strafford had 'endeavoured to subvert the 
fundamental laws of England.' In spite of this, Pym and Hampden 
still wished to carry through the impeachment, but eventually both 
houses decided that Strafford's fate should be determined by the 
Attainder Bill, That bill passed the Commons by 204 votes to 59 ; 
Digby and Selden, both of whom had been managers for the Commons 
in the impeachment, voting in the minority. On this Charles wrote to 
Strafford, again assuring him that, ' upon the word of a king, he should 
not suffer in life, honour, or fortune.' In the House of Lords parties 
were more evenly divided, the real question being whether anything 
short of Strafford's death would prevent Charles from again employing 
him. Many agreed with Essex that ' stone dead hath no fellow ' ; others, 
like Bristol and Bedford, would have been satisfied with his perpetual 
imprisonment. Pym, however, had an argument, which he believed 
would convince the Lords. He had known for some time that both 
Charles and Henrietta Maria had been in correspondence with members 
of the English army in the north, with a view to a march The Army 
on London and the rescue of Strafford from the Tower, and ^^°^" 
he determined to use this information to frighten the reluctant Lords. 
Accordingly, on May 5, Pym made a statement to the House of 
Commons in which he not only showed that an army plot was in 
existence, but also hinted that a French force was on its way to attack 
Portsmouth, where it was to be met by the queen. The excitement was 
intense. The members were ordered to find out what arms were 
possessed by their constituents ; the city trained bands turned out ; 
Charles was requested to detain his courtiers, and to prevent the queen 
from going to Portsmouth. In London a petition for Strafford's death 
was signed by 20,000 persons, and the names of those who had voted 
for Strafford were printed and circulated as ' Straffordians.' Amidst 
this excitement the bill passed the House of Lords. Even Bristol 
withdrew his resistance, and Bedford, had he wished to be present, was 
dying of small pox. Strafford's fate now rested with Charles, strafford 
For more than two days he hesitated. On one side was beheaded, 
honour, on the other the fear that refusal would be visited on his 
queen and children. Strafford himself, true even now to his own 
policy of ' thorough,' wrote that ' he would willingly forgive Charles for 
his death if it would lead to better times, and that his consent would 
more acquit him therein to God than all the world could do beside.' 
At length, worn out with anxiety, and comforted by a distinction made 
by Bishop Williams between his public and private conscience, Charles 



544 The Stuarts I64i 

gave his consent, and on May 12, in the presence of 200,000 persons, 

Strafford's head was struck off on Tower Hill. Strafford died, not so 

much for what he had done, but for what he might do. His own 

maxim, that 'the safety of tlie state is the highest law,' was turned 

against himself, and when he died, the popular leaders felt that their 

greatest and most dangerous opponent was gone. 

On the same day when the royal consent was given to Strafford's 

death, Charles also agreed to a bill by which it was provided that the 

_. ,. ^ existing parliament should not be dissolved without its own 
Parliament . 

not to be assent. This measure, the gravity of which was hardly 
against noticed at the time, and which was chiefly intended to 
Its will. induce men of money to lend with greater confidence on 
the credit of parliament, was in reality of the highest constitutional 
importance, for on it rested the legal position of the parliament during 
the civil war. By it the king was debarred, not only from dissolving 
parliament with a view to another lease of arbitrary power, as in 1629, 
but also from testing the feeling of the country by a general election. 
It, therefore, elevated the existing parliament into an oligarchy, indepen- 
dent not only of the caprices of the king but also of the opinions of the 
electors ; and it further entailed the consequence that, as neither 
parliament nor king had any legal power of ridding itself of the other, 
in event of a quarrel between them nothing would remain but to resort 
to arms. Shortly afterwards a grant of tonnage and poundage was 
made, followed by a poll-tax graduated from ^100 to 6d. ; and terms 
were arranged with the Scottish army in August, and both it and the 
English forces in the north were disbanded. 

During the spring and summer of 1641, both Episcopalians and anti- 
Episcopalians vied with each other in their eagerness to rid the country 
of all the abuses and weapons of arbitrary power. The 
courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, and with 
them the councils of Wales and the north, were abolished. Under Falk- 
land's lead the House condemned the ship-money judgment as unconsti- 
tutional, and an Act, introduced by Selden, declared ship-money illegal. 
Selden, too, had been the introducer of Acts, by which distraint of knight- 
hood had been abolished, and the forests restored to the limits which 
existed before Holland's commission. Those who had collected tonnage 
and poundage duties, which had not been voted by parliament, were de- 
clared delinquents. These measures were passed with virtual unanimity, 
for as yet Charles had no party in the House ; but the least attempt to 
deal with ecclesiastical affairs brought the hostility of the two parties 
into clear relief. 



1641 Charles I. 



545 



This divergence showed itself first in a debate held in February on a 
petition signed by 15,000 Londoners, and asking for the abolition of 
Episcopacy 'root and branch.' This contrasted with a 
petition of 700 clergymen, who asked for its reform. In andBfan°ch' 
this debate Falkland, Hyde, Digby, and Selden separated P^*^t^°"- 
themselves from their usual friends ; on the other hand, a bill to 
exclude the bishops from the House of Lords, and from the fulfilment of 
secular duties, passed the Commons readily, for the existing bishops had 
few friends, and were regarded as the authors of the Scottish war. It 
was, however, rejected by the Lords, who disliked the interference of the 
Commons in the constitution of the upper house. After Straflford's 
death, Oliver Cromwell, the younger Vane and Sir Arthur Hazelrig 
procured the introduction of a bill based on the London petition and 
called the Root and Branch Bill, for the total abolition of Episcopacy 
and for appointing a mixed commission of laity and clergy to exer- 
cise ecclesiastical jurisdiction in each diocese, but it was vigorouslv 
opposed by the Episcopalians. The Lords, on the other hand, had 
appointed a strong committee, with Williams at its head, to consider 
' all innovations in the church concerning religion,' and had endeavoured 
to secure temporary peace by ordering the bishops to see that the Lord's 
table should ' stand decently in the ancient place . . . where it hath 
done for the greater part of these three score years last past.' It was 
expected that Williams' commission would report against Laud's innova - 
tions, and in favour of an Episcopacy of limited powers. 

The controversy was by no means confined to parliament. Both 
sides appealed for popular support. Bishop Hall, of Exeter, pub- 
lished a Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Farlia- Popular 
ment by a Dutiful Son of the Church. On the other side '^''^'^^s. 
appeared An Answer to a Humble Remonstrance, by Smectymnuus, a 
name composed out of the initials of five Puritan divines— Stephen 
Marshall, Edward Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and 
William Spurstow. Usher, archbishop of Armagh, too, was in the field 
with a plan for making the bishops into chairmen of councils of pres- 
byters, without whose advice they were not to act. Last, but not least, 
John Milton contributed a tract entitled Of Reformation touching 
Church Discipline in England, and the Causes that have hitherto hindered 
it, in which he denounced the bishops without mercy, and held up 
Episcopacy as the real cause why the Reformation had not accomplished 
all that zealous Protestants desired, and he followed it up with other 
pamphlets in the same strain. The consequence of all this violent 
recrimination was to make the ecclesiastical question assume larger pro- 

2 M 



546 The Stuarts I64i 

portions in the popular mind than that of constitutional reform, and 
to make religion and not politics the dominant factor in deciding to 
which party men should ally themselves. 

In August Charles somewhat hurriedly decided that his presence was 
required in Scotland ; and on August 10 he set out for Edinburgh, 

Charles in followed by a committee appointed by parliament, of which 

Scotland. Hampden and Fiennes were the chief, ostensibly to attend 
the king, in reality to watch his proceedings, and report to the houses 
at Westminster. In Scotland Charles' great desire was to secure such a 
pacification as to leave him free to deal with England, possibly even to 
make Scotland a basis of operations against the English parliament. 
Accordingly he agreed to all the Scottish demands, laid himself out to 
secure popularity, and was studiously polite to Argyll, Henderson and 
the other popular leaders. In Scotland, however, as in England, Charles' 
court was a centre of intrigue, and some of the violent nobles, headed by 
the earl of Crawford, irritated by the new-found power of the gentry 
and commonalty, formed a wild scheme for arresting Argyll, Hamilton, 
and Lanark, who were now making common cause, and possibly of 
putting them to death. This affair is called the ' Incident,' and though 
Charles' share in it, if any, is obscure, the effect was to ruin his popu- 
larity, and to add to the power of Argyll, who became little less than an 
uncrowned king of Scotland. To the last, however, Charles clung to 
the hope of finding aid in Scotland, and before he left made Argyll a 
marquess ; Leslie a peer, under the title of earl of Leven ; and Johnstone 
of Warriston a knight. 

During Charles' visit to Edinburgh, he had never ceased to busy him- 
self in collecting evidence of collusion between the leaders of parliament 
Hopefulness ^^itl the Scottish invaders. By this means he hoped to 
of Charles. strike a fatal blow at Pym and his friends. His spirits 
also were raised by the obvious growth of the Episcopalian party, at 
the head of which he decided to place himself, and despatched home 
a manifesto to the Lords, stating that ' he Avas constant to the discipline 
and doctrine of the Church of England, established by Queen Elizabeth 
and his father, and that he was resolved — by the grace of God — to die 
in the maintenance of it.' 

After Charles' departure, the Koot and Branch Bill was dropped, and 
parliament occupied itself chiefly about the practical business of carrying 
Practical ^^n the government, which Charles had of late wholly 
Government, neglected. By an ' ordinance,' agreed to between the two 
Houses, the weapons of the northern army were stored in Hull, and the 
Tower of London was carefully guarded. There was less unanimity in 



1641 Charles I. 



547 



deciding on the steps to be taken to secure order in public worship until 
ii final settlement should be made. Some wished to sanction alterations 
in the Book of Common Prayer ; others opposed them. Eventually an 
appeal was issued to worshippers ' to quietly attend (await) the reforma- 
tion intended, without any tumultuous disturbance of the worship of 
God and the peace of the kingdom.' On September 9 both Houses 
adjourned till October 20, leaving Pym as head of a committee which 
was to sit in London and watch events. During the recess it is probable 
that a party took shape which believed Charles had granted enough, and 
that a free hand should now be given to him to show, if he chose, that he 
had separated himself from the days of Strafford. The great obstacle to 
the growth of such a party lay in the difficulty of trusting Charles ; for 
those who knew him best were most sure that, if he had the means, he 
w^ould take the first opportunity to go back to his old ways. Still, if 
Charles could contrive to effect a junction between this party and the 
Episcopalians, he might again hope to have a majority ; and his chances 
of doing so were increased by the fact that many who cared little about 
religion were disgusted by the claims of ignorant and uncultivated men 
to dictate the religion of their superiors in rank and education. 

Meanwhile, that solution of the religious question which was ultimately 
to be accepted had been proposed. Henry Burton, the old victim of the 

Star Chamber, had published his Protestation Protested, in _. 

, . , , The Re- 

which he put forward the scheme of a national church ligious 

recognised by the state, with perfect toleration for Non- * 

conformists ; and Lord Brooke, in A Discourse ope7iing the nature of that 
Ejnscojyacy luhicJi is exercised in England, had pleaded for complete 
freedom of speech and thought. Unluckily, the views of Burton and 
Brooke were held by a mere fraction of their contemporaries. 

Hardly had Parliament resumed business when terrible news came 
from Ireland. For years nothing had stood between Ireland and 
rebellion but the knowledge of England's strength ; and The Irish 
now that Strafford was gone, and it was known in Ireland Rebeihon. 
that there was no goodwill between king and parliament in England, 
Ireland's opportunity seemed to have come. Circumstances had for a 
moment combined together two parties long opposed— the old Anglo- 
Norman settlers, who were mostly Roman Catholics, and who wanted 
toleration for their religion, and the dispossessed Celtic landowners, who 
wanted the restoration of their lands. Accordingly, preparations were 
made for a widespread revolt, which was to take place on October 23. 
Its leaders were Roger More, a man of good character and high motives ; 
Sir Phelim O'Neal, Avho claimed to be the representative of the O'Neals 



548 The Stuarts I64i 

of Ulster, and Lord Magiiire. Of this plot the authorities at Dublin 
were in ignorance till the night of October 22, when they learned from 
an informer the plans of the rebels, and had barely time to arrest Lord 
Maguire and to throw a garrison into the castle. The next day all 
the north of Ireland was in a blaze. The idea of a deliberate massacre 
had been rejected by the rebels, but there is no doubt that there was a 
great deal of promiscuous slaughter, and that much barbarous ill-usage 
was suffered by the English settlers, who, without warning and in bitter 
weather, were turned out 'of house and home by the triumphant Irish. 
For a moment it seemed as if England's hold over the country was 
irretrievably lost, and it was certain that, if it were to be maintained at 
all, instantaneous action must be taken. 

The first result of the reception of the news at Westminster was to 
compel Pym and his friends to decide whether they would prefer to 

The Army iii^ke sure of Ireland — at the risk of providing Charles 

question. with an army which might be used against themselves — 
or whether they would risk the loss of Ireland till they had made sure 
of the rights of England. Eventually it was decided to ask for a large 
contingent from Scotland, which might balance any force ultimately 
entrusted to Charles. The army for Ireland was to consist of ten 
thousand English and ten thousand Scots. 

The growth of the Episcopalian party, the appearance of another party 

which looked with suspicion on further encroachments on the royal 

prerogative, coupled with the fresh difficulty caused by 

The Grand 

Remon- the Irish rebellion, and the apprehension of further court 
s ranee. intrigues, determined Pym and Hampden to appeal to the 
nation to support parliament against the king. This they did in the Grand 
Remonstrance. This famous document consisted of two hundred and six 
clauses. It began by accusing the Papists, the king's evil counsellors, 
and the bishops, of a set design to subvert the fundamental laws of the 
kingdom, and to bring in Popery : and as proof of this, it recounted all the 
arbitrary acts and mistakes of the king since the beginning of his reign, 
both in politics and religion. Against these were set in contrast a list 
of the good deeds of the parliament, and a statement of the future 
policy of the parliament in politics and in religion, the chief points of 
which were proposals that the king's counsellors should for the future be 
named in accordance with the wishes of parliament ; and in religion, the 
assembly of a synod, consisting of English and foreign divines of the 
Protestant faith, ' to consider all things necessary for the peace and good 
government of the church.' The scheme drawn up by this synod was 
to be confirmed by parliament, and then enforced on the nation at large. 



1641 Charles I. 



549 



To the political part of this manifesto even Hyde and Falkland did not 
demur ; but the religious clauses met with the fiercest opposition, for 
they foreshadowed a state of things in which those who did not happen 
to agree with the views of the parliamentary majority would be subjected 
to a persecution exactly analogous to that carried on by Laud in 
England and by Winthrop in America. The whole of the Episcopalian 
and royalist parties allied against them, and, eventually, they were 
carried by only one hundred and fifty -nine votes to one hundred and 
forty-eight. The majority at once clinched their victory by ordering 
the Eemonstrance to be printed. Thus they appealed to the nation 
against the king ; but, in doing so, they published a declaration of 
policy which all supporters of the Episcopal Church, and lovers of the 
liturgy, would certainly take as a threat of persecution. 

The Grand Eemonstrance passed the Commons at four o'clock on the 
morning of November 23 ; and on the 25th, Charles re-entered 
London. He was well received, and in high spiiits. Never 
since the assembly of parliament had his afiairs looked so again in 
hopeful ; and when he assured the citizens that he would ^'O^'^o"* 
govern according to the laws, and repeated his message that he would 
maintain the Protestant religion as it had been established in the time 
of Queen Elizabeth and his father, to the hazard of his life and all that 
was dear to him, there seemed a fair prospect that he would not be 
left unsupported. Even in the city there had been a reaction in his 
favour among the richer citizens, stimulated partly by the heavy taxation 
levied by parliament for the payment of the Scots, partly by a feeling of 
annoyance at the violence of the sectarians. On the other hand, a 
feeling of apprehension exhibited itself at Westminster, which was 
increased when Charles removed the guard which Essex had placed 
round the Houses, and substituted one commanded by the earl of 
Dorset, a zealous opponent of Puritanism. Dorset and his men soon 
came into collision with the crowds of Puritan symjjathisers who 
swarmed in Palace Yard, and it was with difficulty that bloodshed was 
prevented. Dorset's men were then withdrawn, and the Westminster 
magistrates provided a guard. It was not without reason that the 
Commons were apprehensive, for the wildest schemes were being 
discussed at court, and projects for seizing the Puritan leaders were 
already in agitation. As usual, the queen's household was the centre of 
intrigue. On December 21, Balfour, the trusty lieutenant of the 
Tower, who had refused to connive at the escape of Strafford, was 
removed, and Lunsford, a debauched and desperate man, appointed in 
his stead. Again, as in the case of Dorset, Charles drew back before 



550 The Stuarts I64i 

the storm this appointment had raised, and Lunsford was soon dismissed. 
The removal of Dorset and Lunsford, however, was not enough to restore 
the confidence of the Houses. Day after day saw scuflles between the 
officers who crowded round Whitehall and the apprentices whom curio- 
sity attracted to Westminster ; and it was in these that the famous 
names of Cavalier and Roundhead were first heard. 

Meanwhile, the best chance for Charles to regain power in a constitu- 
tional manner lay in a disagreement between the two Houses. Of this 
Secession of there had lately been some symptoms ; for the majority of 
the Bishops, h^q peers were Episcopalians, and, even in politics, many 
members were not prepared to follow Pym in any further curtailments 
of the royal authority. But any hopes of this were frustrated by an 
ill-judged act of the bishops. The Puritan apprentices had been speci- 
ally outspoken in their attacks on the bishops. On December 27, 
Williams, who had lately been made archbishop of York, tried to arrest 
with his own hands one of the noisy lads. They then proceeded from 
words to blows. Terrified by this violence, only two bishops ventured 
to the House ; and on the 28th, twelve of them, with Williams at their 
head, drew up a protest against the legality of all proceedings entered 
upon in their absence. The Lords took this protest as an insult, and 
readily joined the Commons in an attack on the bishops. Pym pressed 
for their impeachment, and before night Williams and his fellows were 
in custody, and the two Houses were once more united. 

Meanwhile, Charles was the victim of his old tendency to vacillation. 

On January 1 he thought of making terms with the popular leaders, and 

sent for Pym to ofier him the chancellorship of the ex- 

Impeach- '' 7v» t i 

mentofPym chequer. Two hours later, the post was onered to and 
accepted by Culpepper, while Falkland became secretary of 
state. Hyde also might have had office, but he believed that he could 
serve the king better as an independent man. Hardly had Charle!> 
taken this step, when he heard that the Commons were considering the 
desirability of impeaching the queen of treason. If the truth about the 
queen's intrigues with the pope and the Irish rebels, or even about her 
share in the army plots, were once known, there could be no possible 
doubt of her guilt ; and to save her, if possible, Charles, urged by her 
and Digby, fell back on Strafford's advice— to carry the war into the 
enemy's country by impeaching the leaders of the opposition. It was 
decided, therefore, to impeach for treason Pym, Hampden, Holies, 
Hazelrig, and Strode, and eventually the name of Lord Kimbolton, a 
peer and eldest son of the earl of IManchester, was added to the list. 
Accordingly, on January 3, 1642, the attorney -general. Sir Edward 



1642 Charles I. 



551 



Herbert, came clown to the House of Lords, and in the king's name 
accused the six leaders (1) of endeavouring to subvert the fundamental 
laws and government ; (2) of inviting a foreign power charges of 
to invade England ; (3) of having raised and counten- treason, 
anced tumults against king and parliament ; (4) of levying war upon the 
king. There was no doubt that each of these charges might be con- 
strued as treason; and in the strict legal sense (1) was true, for if 
Strafford had conspired to alter the Elizabethan constitution by diminish- 
ing the power of the parliament, Pym had equally conspired to alter it 
by diminishing the power of the king. When his charge had been 
made, Herbert asked for the arrest of the accused ; but abeady Charles' 
action had produced the opposite of what he intended. The Lords 
parried his attack by appointing a committee to examine Herbert's 
procedure ; and so clear did the mistake seem to Digby that he at once 
left the House. Meanwhile, the Commons had learned that the studies 
of the accused had been sealed up by Charles' order, and while this was 
under debate, the sergeant-at-arms arrived to demand the accused 
members in the king's name. As the arrest of impeached persons was a 
matter for the Lords, the Commons claimed privilege of parliament, so 
Charles' scheme was completely baffled. Had Charles had the courage 
needful for a revolutionist, he would have seized the members in their 
beds, but his desire to keep within the letter of the law prevented his 
doing this ; and next day, after a morning of hesitation, he decided to 
make the arrest himself at the House. It is said that Attempt to 
he was stung to do this by the reproaches of his queen, ^^^1 Mem- 
who urged him ' to pull out the rogues by the ears.' How- bars. 
ever this may be, about three o'clock Charles set out from Whitehall, 
accompanied by at least three hundred cavaliers. His resolution, how- 
ever, was well known and his march was slow ; the Commons had not 
only heard of his intention but were warned when he left Whitehall, 
so that the accused were taking boat for the city at Westminster stairs 
as Charles was arriving in Palace Yard. Leaving the greater part of his 
men draw^n up in Westminster Hall, Charles and a number of the officers 
made their way to the members' lobby, where the officers stayed, while 
Charles himself entered the House. Finding the accused absent, he en- 
quired from the Speaker ' where they were' ; but Lenthall, falling on his 
knees, assured him that ' he had neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak, 
but as the House was pleased to direct him'; and Charles, again baffled, 
retired from the House, with loud shouts of ' Privilege of parliament ' rmg- 
ing in his ears. Meanwhile, the officers in the lobby had been divestmg 
themselves of their cloaks and cocking their pistols, evidently bent on a 



552 The Stuarts 1642 

resort to force, from the odium of which Charles had only been saved by 

the timely flight of Pym and his comrades. ' They are gone ! ' was the 

cry of the soldiers ; ' and now we are never the better for our coming.' 

Next day, Charles was in the city, demanding from the common council 

of London the arrest of the traitors ; but the councillors were as firm as 

the Commons ; and inside and outside the Guildhall, the shout of the 

citizens was for jjrivilege of parliament. 

Meanwhile, parliament had formally adjourned till the eleventh, but 

daily held an informal sitting in the city, in which they declared that it 

„ , ^ was the law of the land that ' the king cannot arrest for 

Result of 1 1 . • f 1 . 

Charles' treason,' and also accepted the principle that a member 

cannot be ari:ested unless parliament was satisfied of the 
truth of the charge.' Charles, on his side, was resolute, and had the five 
members of the Commons publicly proclaimed traitors in front of White- 
hall. In response, the London trained bands were called out and placed 
under the command of Philip Skippon, a strong Puritan and a practical 
soldier. The sailors on the Thames volunteered to defend the Houses on 
the river-side. The result, therefore, of Charles' attempt on the members 
was not only to unite both Houses against him, but to make the five 
members into the heroes of the day. There could be no doubt that the 
eleventh would witness their triumphal return to Westminster, and that 
in all probability an attempt would be made to arrest the queen. To 
save his wife, and to avoid being a witness of his own humiliation, 
Charles left Whitehall on January 10, never to return to it till he came 
back to die. 

On leaving London, the king and queen betook themselves to Hampton 
Court, and thence in turn to Windsor, Canterbury, and Dover. On 
The Queen February 23, the queen sailed to Holland, taking with 
goes abroad, j^^j. j^g^. gj^^^gg^ daughter Mary, who had been formally 

married to William of Orange in the preceding May. She took also 
with her the magnificent crown jewels which were intended to be 
pawned in Holland for money which was to pay a foreign army to land 
on English soil. Digby.also crossed the seas, and the queen's hopes 
were high that she might soon return with an overwhelming force at her 
back. From Dover Charles made his way to Greenwich, where he 
secured the person of the Prince of Wales, and at the beginning of 

March he was at Newmarket. Meanwhile, constant mes- 
between ^°" sengers had passed to and fro between the king and the 
ParHa^ent parliament. Both houses were now in accord, as was shown 

when a new bill for excluding the bishops from the House 
of Lords was passed without difticulty, and to it Charles, willing to 



1642 Charles I. 



553 



sacrifice the prelates, consented. Parliament then took in hand the 
Irish war, and despatched 3400 troops to that country. To raise money, 
parliament, which was as entirely out of sympathy with the Irish Celts 
as ever Strafford had been, devised the ingenious plan of apportioning 
2,500,000 acres, which were to be forfeited by the rebels, among a body 
of adventurers who should contribute among them £1,000,000. To this 
also Charles consented, though he seems to have been aware that such a 
proceeding would only make the reconquest of the rebels more arduous, 
by giving them the courage of despair. 

In ordinary circumstances, the king would himself have taken com- 
mand of the troops for Ireland ; but so little did parUament trust 

Charles, that it not only kept the Irish war in its own 

r The 

hands, but also took into consideration a plan for depriving Militia 

Charles of any hold over the armed forces of England. ^'"* 
Since the reign of Edward vi. the county militia had been in the 
hands of lords-lieutenant named by the king, and from time immemorial 
the governors of all the fortresses of the kingdom had been appointed 
by the sovereign ; but now parliament passed a militia bill, by which it 
transferred both these appointments to itself, naming Lord Saye and 
Sele, for example, lord-lieutenant of Oxfordshire, and Sir John Hotham 
governor of Hull. On March 9, the consent of the king was asked to 
this bill. Charles flatly declined, saying, ' you have asked that of me in 
this, which was never asked of a king, and with which I will not trust my 
wife and children.' Parliament then decided to make the militia bill an 
' ordinance of parliament,' and to enforce it without the king's consent, 
and the parliamentary lords -lieutenant were directed to enter upon the 
duties of their office. This action of the Houses was distinctly both 
illegal and unconstitutional, and gave the king the advantage of stand- 
ing up as the champion of legality ; but at first he got little advantage 
from it, for on political grounds he had as yet no party, and when he 
reached York, on March 19, he met with but a cold reception. 

About this time, however, a change occurred. Ever since the attempt 
to seize the five members the religious question had been in the back- 
ground. It now came to the front, and with it Charles' ^j.^^^}, ^f 
hopes of support. The chief cause of this was the pre- a Royalist 
sentation to parliament of a petition from the gentlemen 
of Kent, which embodied the ideas of the Episcopalian party. The 
petitioners asked (1) that 'the solemn liturgy of the church might have 
freedom from interruptions, scorns, profanations, threats, and force ot 
such men as do daily deprave it ; and (2) that Episcopal government be 
preserved.' With these desires Charles was in full sympathy, and if he 



554 The Stuarts 1642 

could only convince those who held them that he had really broken 
with his political past, and would for the future keep strictly within the 
lines of the constitution, he might still lead a party. This service was 
done for him by Hyde. Edward Hyde represented in his own person 
exactly the idea which Charles wished to present to the country. He 
had voted for the death of Strafibrd, but against the abolition of 
Episcopacy. He had taken an active part in removing all the old abuses, 
but he had opposed the new-fangled militia bill. He now stood forth as 
the champion of legality, and Charles accepted him as his constitutional 
adviser. As if to play into the king's hands, parliament emphasised its 
hostility to the old religious settlement by taking proceedings against 
the Kentish petitioners. From that moment men were forced to side 
definitely either with king or parliament, even though they did not fully 
agree with either. Lovers of Episcopacy and of the prayer-book saw 
their only chance of keeping these in the success of the king ; men who 
preferred any other form of religious worship or of church government 
were equally forced to side with the parliament. The idea of toleration 
for all religions had not as yet any supporters. 

Still the formation of these parties, bringing the nation face to face 
with civil war, made both sides pause, and for a moment a compromise 
seemed possible, when an ill-considered act of Charles 
refused revived and intensified the suspicions of the parliament, 
to Hun°" "^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ attempt on Hull. Immediately on the de- 
parture of the king from London attention had been 
attracted by the importance of Portsmouth and Hull, in which, with the 
Tower, the chief stores of arms were kejDt. Hull was especially 
valuable, because in it were accoutrements for 16,000 men which had lain 
there since the disbanding of the northern army, and also because it was 
the most convenient port for the landing of Dutch or Danish troops. 
Accordingl}', Charles ordered the earl of Newcastle to secure it ; but 
parliament was beforehand with him, and sent Sir John Hotham to hold 
the place. After the passing of the militia ordinance, his position was 
confirmed, and he was ordered not to deliver it up except by ' the king-'s 
authority, signified unto him by the Lords and Commons now assembled 
in parliament.' This order was obviously illegal, and Charles, urged by 
the queen, determined himself to demand admission into Hull. Accord- 
ingly, on Aj)ril 23, he appeared before the gates ; but Hotham was true 
to his trust, and Charles, having had the parliamentary governor 
proclaimed a traitor, returned discomfited to York. This clear attempt 
to secure arms destroyed all chance of accommodation ; and parliament 
had the stores removed to London. So inevitable had war become, that 



1642 Charles I. 555 

both sides devoted their main attention to making the other appear the 
aggressor. 

On June 2, parliament despatched to the king nineteen propositions, 
in which he was asked to allow parliament to name his council, officers 
of state, governors of fortresses, and judges ; to confirm the 
militia ordinance ; and to permit a reformation of the Nineteen 
church to be carried out in accordance with the views ^'■°P°sitions. 
of parliament. Of course he refused ; and on June 15, a cleverly 
worded counter-manifesto was issued at York, in which his chief 
adherents declared their belief that the king had no intention of making 
war on the parliament, and that all his efi'orts were directed to the firm 
and constant settlement of the true Protestant religion ; the just 
privileges of parliament ; the liberty of the subject ; the law, peace, and 
prosperity of this kingdom. Hitherto the great obstacle to Cliarles' 
gaining a party had been his unceasing efi'orts to secure foreign aid 
against his own subjects. Fortunately, however, for him, they had all 
failed, and the protestation of York was the firstfruits of a determination 
to appeal to the loyalty of Englishmen. Encouraged by his success, 
Charles next day issued ' commissions of array,' giving authority to his 
friends in each county to call out the trained bands, and _ 

'' _ Commis- 

though in the south-eastern shires the population stood by sions of 
the parliamentary lords-lieutenant, in the north and west 
the orders of the commissioners were accepted. Hitherto, also, want 
of money had put him at a decided disadvantage, but at this crisis the 
Catholic marquess of Worcester and his son Lord Herbert came to his 
assistance, and furnished him with no less than i'95,000, raised on their 
own security. The queen, too, had succeeded in raising a further sum 
by pledging the crown jewels. 

The process of drifting into war then went on apace. On July 4 a 
committee of safety was appointed, of which the leading meml)ers were 
Essex, Saye and Sele, Pym, Hampden, Fiennes, Holies, and Drifting 
Sir William Waller, and a few days later it was decided to '"*° ^^'■• 
levy 10,000 men for active service. On July 11 the Houses declared that 
Charles had begun the war. On July 12 Essex was named commander- 
in-chief. On July 15 the first blood was shed at Manchester in a conflict 
between Lord Strange (afterwards earl of Derby) and some townsmen 
who were trying to carry out the militia ordinance. On July 17 there 
was fighting in Charles' presence before the walls of Hull. In August 
parliament borrowed i'100,000 from the sum voted for the Irish war. 
On August 18 the adherents of the king were declared by parlia- 
ment to be traitors, and on August 22 Charles unfurled the royal 



556 The Stuarts 1642 

standard at Nottingliam. Such were the steps by which Englishmen 
found themselves divided into two bodies, each ready for war, but each 
declaring that they entered on it with reluctance,and that the responsibility 
for bloodshed lay with the other side. Even after his standard had 
been raised, Charles made two more efforts for peace, and finally, on 
September 6, Falkland was authorised to notify personally to the 
parliamentary leaders that the king was still ready to listen to any 
reasonable proposals, and in particular that he would ' consent to 
a thorough reformation of religion.' Unfortunately this message was 
secret, and to Charles' open offer that he would take down his standard 
if both sides withdrew the accusation of treason against the other, 
parliament replied by demanding that the expenses incurred in prepara- 
tions should be defrayed out of the estates of those whom parliament 
should declare to be 'delinquents.' This reply, obviously suggested 
by the policy which both king and parliament had adopted towards the 
Irish rebels, was worth 10,000 men to the king. Hitherto men had 
hesitated to commit themselves to a war for the maintenance of bishops 
or for the sake of a sentimental loyalty, but now that their estates were 
in danger there was no more hesitation, and Charles soon found himself 
at the head of an army of enthusiastic soldiers. 

The cleavage between the two parties did not follow any accurately 
marked geographical line. In every county there were some for the 
The Two king and some for the parliament. High churchmen almost 
Parties. invariably followed the king. Eoman Catholics invariably 
did so, for they well knew that no mercy for them would follow a 
Puritan victory. Anti-Episcopalians and Separatists, of course, supported 
the parliament, for earnest Puritans believed that Puritanism contained 
all that was best in the religion of the Reformation, and felt certain that 
in fighting Charles they were engaged in a holy war. Men who had no 
strong religious views were diversely arranged. Those who laid stress 
upon the necessity of curbing the prerogative supported Pym ; others, 
actuated by traditional loyalty, followed Charles. Most men of pleasure 
felt instinctively that the adoption of Puritanism would be so disastrous 
to their way of life that they were bound to resist it, and they, too, followed 
the king. Roystering swordsmen like Lunsford took the same side, 
much to the confusion of idealists like Falkland. If the arrangement of 
classes be examined, it will be found that the bulk of the parliamen- 
tarians were recruited from the townspeople, especially from the 
Londoners, and from the yeomen classes in the country ; but that their 
leaders were taken either from the nobility or the gentry. Generally 
speaking, however, the gentry supported the king, and, where they did 



1642 Charles I. 



557 



so, carried their tenants with them. Men of equal nobility and purity 
of motive were to be found on either side, and there were plenty of men 
of accomplishment and culture who supported the parliament, though, 
as a rule, the cultivated classes felt themselves repulsed by the harsh 
and rigid ideal of the Puritans. As an example of the former, we 
may take Colonel Hutchinson, of whom his wife writes that 'he could 
dance admirably well, but neither in youth nor in riper years made any 
practice of it ; he had skill in fencing, such as became a gentleman ; he 
had a great love of music, and often diverted himself with a viol, which 
he played masterly ; he had great judgment in paintings, gravings, 
sculpture, and all liberal arts, and had many curiosities of value of all 
kinds.' 

For practical purposes, however, a line drawn from Hull to Gloucester 
and thence to Lyme, will serve for a dividing line, for east and south 
of this the majority of the population, or at any rate Geographical 
the most active spirits, supported the parliament ; north divisions, 
and west the majority was for the king. (See map of civil wars on 
page 538.) Some exceptions, however, there were. The university of 
Oxford was for the king. So, too, was Cambridge ; but its power of aiding 
him was at once destroyed by Cromwell. The clothing towns both of 
the West Kiding of Yorkshire and of Somerset were for the parliament. 
The seaports, as a rule, Avere more parliamentarian than the country. 
These divisions were not unlike those noticed in the Wars of the Eoses. 
The towns and richer districts were with the parliament, as they had 
been with the Yorkists ; the poorer and more backward followed the 
king. 

It was a matter of the greatest importance to the jiarliament that 
the fleet under the earl of Warwick was wholly on its side. In conse- 
quence, the king had the utmost difficulty in getting supplies from 
abroad, while the parliamentarians were not only able easily to move 
their troops by sea, but to enable the seaport towns to make a most 
valuable resistance to Charles' land forces. Parliament threw itself 
vigorously into the prosecution of the war. Saye went down to Oxford 
to overawe the university. Sir William Waller took charge of the 
operations against Portsmouth, and forced Goring to sur- opening of 
render it on September 7. Kimbolton (now earl of Man- ^^^ ^^'■• 
Chester), Hampden, Fiennes, Holies, and others raised regiments at their 
own expense. London sent 8000 men, and soon 20,000 nien were 
wearing the orange scarf which denoted a parliamentary soldier. The 
mustering was marked by the plundering of the houses of royalists and 
Roman Catholics, and the destruction of the ornaments and communion 



558 The Stuarts 1642 

rails in anti-Puritan churches. On September 9 Essex took formal 
leave of the Houses, and, carrying with him a coffin and a winding- 
sheet, to show his resokition, set off for Northampton, whence he designed 
an immediate march upon Nottingham. 

However, when he reached Northampton he heard that Nottingham 
had already been evacuated by the king. Charles, who had been hin- 
Charies at dered in his preparations by the difficulty of procuring arms, 
Shrewsbury, j^^d wiscly changed his ground to Shrewsbury, the natural 
trysting-place for the forces assembling from Wales and the north. On 
the way he had reassured his soldiers by a declaration that he would 
maintain all the acts of the present parliament to which he had assented, 
and had appealed to the religious feelings of his men by declaring that 
on the field of battle they would find arranged against them ' Brownists, 
anabaptists, and atheists.' Decidedly the most vigorous soldier in his 
army was his nephew, Prince Rupert of the Palatinate, a young man of 
twenty-three, who had in him the making of a good soldier. He was 
bent on securing success by every means in his power, and his high- 
handed method of collecting supplies soon gained him among the 
parliamentarians the sobriquet of 'Prince Robber.' Him Charles 
named commander of the horse. Several officers were named generals 
of the royal army, but in practice Charles kept the chief direction in his 
own hand. The first serious fighting took place near Wor- 

Worcester. o & r- 

cester, where Rupert, covering the retreat of Sir John 
Byron, wlio was conveying to the king some of the treasures of the Oxford 
colleges, scattered one of Fiennes' cavalry regiments, and saved the 
much-needed supplies. The chief result of the action, however, was to 
inspire the royalists with the belief that the Puritan cavalry were a con- 
temptible force. In this, one parliamentarian officer was quite prepared 
to agree with them. Speaking to his cousin Hampden, Oliver Cromwell 
freely criticised the cavalry of his own side. ' Your troops,' he said, 
' are most of them old decayed serving-men and tapsters, and such kind of 
fellows, and their troops are gentlemen's sons and persons of quality. 
Do you think that the spirits of such base and mean fellows will ever be 
able to encounter gentlemen that have honour, courage, and resolu- 
tion in them ? ' Hampden agreed with the criticism, but was doubtful 
whether anything could be done ; and in his practical way, Cromwell at 
once set about getting together a troop of his own which he designed to 
be of a very different quality. To meet Charles' move to Shrewsbury, 
Essex placed garrisons in Warwick, Coventry, Northampton, and other 
towns, and himself occupied Worcester. 

On October 12 Charles broke up from Shrewsbury, and, cleverly 



1642 



Charles I. 



559 



avoiding the garrisoned towns, marched straight for London. Essex 
started in pursuit, and on October 22 the two armies were within a few 
miles of each other, Charles at Edgecote, near Banbury ; 
Essex at Kineton. The roads along which the armies were Mi^rc"on 
advancing met at Banbury, but Charles was somewhat in ^""'^o"- 
advance. On hearing, however, of the proximity of Essex, Charles 
turned out of his road and took up a strong position on Edgehill, a line 
of high ground overlooking the flat valley of the Avon. Over this 
ridge Essex's route lay. The king had with him 14,000 men. Essex 
had with him not more than 10,000 ; but Hampden, with two more 
regiments, was only one day's march behind. For defence Charles' 




wBm Parliament 

I I Royalists 



BATTLE OF EDGEHILL, OCTOBER 23, 1642 

position was very strong, but he could not wait to be attacked. His 
provisions were running short ; he was in a hostile country where the 
blacksmiths refused to shoe his horses ; and he had in his rear Banbury, 
one of the most parliamentarian towns in England. Moreover, few 
royalists had the least doubt that an easy victory awaited them ; and, 
accordingly, in the afternoon of Sunday, October 23, the king's army 
marched down the hill and attacked Essex. 

As was usual in those days, both armies were drawn up with their 
cavalry on the wings and the infantry in the centre. The weapons of 
both were the same. Each foot regiment was composed of Battle of 
pikemen in the centre and musketeers on the flanks. The E ge i . 
lines were usually ten deep, for each musketeer, as he fired, retired to 



560 The Stuarts 1642 

the rear to load ; and nine men had to do this before the first was ready 
ao-ain. In this way a continuous fire was kept up. When charged by 
cavalry, the musketeers took refuge among the pikemen, who presented 
to their assailants a solid front of glittering spear-points. The usual 
plan of attack was for the whole line, infantry and cavalry, to advance 
simultaneously till they came to close quarters, when the cavalry 
charged and the infantry fired at each other, till one side or other gave 
way, or an attempt was made to get to closer quarters still, and fight 
hand to hand. The battle began about tlu'ee o'clock, when little more 
than two hours' light remained. Of late years cavalry had almost 
always contented themselves with firing pistols at each other, and had 
rarely charged home, but Eupert led his men right into the ranks of the 
enemy, and the new device carried all before it. On the right wing 
Rupert's men pursued their opponents into Kineton, and then setting 
upon the baggage, got completely out of hand. On the left Wilmot was 
almost as successful. Only two regiments of horse stood their ground 
under Balfour, the late commander of the Tower of London and Staple- 
ton. Oliver Cromwell also contrived to keep his own troop together. 
With the foot, however, it was difierent. Unlike the ' decayed tapsters 
and serving-men,' out of whom the cavalry were composed, the stout 
Puritans who filled the ranks of the infantry held their ground well, 
and when the first confusion was over the royalist regiments of foot 
found that they had met their match. Gradually the tide of battle 
turned, and when in the shades of evening Rupert at length returned, 
he found his uncle's men withdrawing to the hill, while Hampden's 
fresh troops were hurrying up to support the tired soldiers of the parlia- 
mentarian army. When darkness settled upon the field, both armies 
occupied their morning position, and next day neither was desirous 
of renewing the fight. During the course of the day Essex, whose 
great object was to reach London before Charles, broke up his camp, 
and made a flank march to Northampton, while Charles moved on to 
Oxford. 

From Oxford Charles continued his advance on London, but the 
slowness of his movements gave Essex time to make his roundabout 
Turnham march, and when the royalists reached Kingston they found 
Green. their old antagonists of Edgehill again barring the road. 

Nor was Essex left without reinforcements. The imminent danger of 
London, and especially the tidings brought to the city of the j^lundering 
of Rupert's foragers, instead of cowing the citizens roused them to 
resistance. Men, women, and children toiled at the earthworks, which 
were hastily thrown up to defend the capital, and the trained bands, 



1643 Charles I. 561 

with Skippon at their head, mustered with alacrity in defence of their 
families and their faith. From Kingston, Charles' troops advanced 
to Brentford, which they occupied after a fierce encounter ; but the 
masses of citizen soldiers drawn up on Turnham Green caused the 
cavaliers to pause, and, after an ineffective cannonade, Charles marched 
his army back to Oxford. 

The indecisive character of the fighting naturally caused negotiations 
to be opened ; but these and subsequent attempts failed, partly because 
Charles was unwilling to make terms with opponents whom he expected 
very soon to subdue by force ; partly because on the religious question 
compromise was impossible between two parties, each of which was fight- 
ing not for liberty but for domination ; and partly because Charles' 
attempts to get aid either from foreign princes, or from Ireland, or from 
the fomenting of treachery among the parliamentarians, were constantly 
coming to light, so that earnest men became more and more convinced 
that the only road to permanent peace lay through a complete victory 
over the king. 

The next year, 1643, saw fighting going on all over England. Essex 
and the king faced one another on the road between Oxford and 
London. In the west, Sir Ralph Hopton led the Cornish- campaign 
men against the parliamentarians of the Somersetshire °f^^43- 
clothing towns under the earl of Stamford ; in the Severn valley. Sir 
William Waller, with Bristol and Gloucester at his back, was barring 
the road to Oxford against Charles' Welsh allies ; Meldrum and Crom- 
well, having secured the eastern counties, were directing their operations 
against Newark in order to secure command over the Great North Road ; 
in the north Ferdinand, Lord Fairftix, and his son Sir Thomas, led their 
tenants and the clothiers of the West Riding against Newcastle, who at 
the head of an army gathered from the northern shires, and largely 
recruited with Roman Catholics, was trying to secure Yorkshire for the 
king. During the spring the parliamentarians did well, especially Sir 
William Waller, who earned himself the title of William the Conqueror ; 
Sir Thomas Fairfax, who stormed Leeds, and Cromwell, chaigrove 
who for the first time routed a body of royalist cavalry near ^^ 
Grantham. In the summer, however, fortune favoured the king. On 
June 18, at Chaigrove Field, the noble-minded Hampden was mortally 
wounded in an attempt to cut off a party of Oxford raiders led by 
Prince Rupert ; the earl of Straftbrd was routed at Stratton in Cornwall 
by Hopton and Grenville ; and when Sir William Waller attempted to 
check their forward march he was worsted in an indecisive battle at 
Lansdown, near Bath, where Sir Bevil Grenville fell, and utterly routed 

2 N 



562 The Stuarts 1643 

at Roundway Down near Devizes on July 10. This disaster was soon 
followed by the loss of Bristol, which Fiennes surrendered to Prince 
Rupert on July 26. Rupert's success, however, was dearly purchased 
by the loss of five hundred ' incomparable foot,' while the pillage to 
which the parliamentarians of the place were subjected made resistance 
elsewhere more desperate. In the north, the arrival of Henrietta Maria, 
who, in spite of the parliamentarian fleet, made good her landing at 
Bridlington, spurred Newcastle on to more strenuous exertions, and on 
Adwalton July 30 the Fairfaxes were beaten at Adwalton Moor (pro- 
^°°^- nounced Atherton) near Bradford, and compelled to take 

refuge in Hull, which the vigilance of the inhabitants had saved from 
a contemplated surrender by the treacherous Hothams. Only in the 
eastern counties had the parliamentarians met with uniform success, and 
there a victory at Gainsborough, won on July 28, had given additional 
proof of the efficiency of Cromwell's troojiers. 

Had Charles been engaged in an ordinary war, these successes in 
the north and west would at once have been followed by a general 
advance on London ; but in both armies local feeling was so strong that 
the men were with difficulty induced to fight at all out of their own 
counties, and had as yet no idea of subordinating the defence of their 
own homes to the general success of their side. Charles also was 
hampered by the fiict that so many important fortified towns were in the 
hands of the parliamentarian garrisons, whose presence was a constant 
dauger to the estates of all royalists in their neighbourhood. Hence, 
when Charles desired a general advance, the Yorkshiremen would not 
move till Hull was in their hands ; the men of Cornwall and Devon 
were equally desirous to secure Exeter and Plymouth ; while the 
Welshmen would not cross the Severn while Gloucester still remained 
unconquered. In these circumstances, Charles had no choice but to 
engage in a series of sieges. He himself besieged Gloucester ; New- 
The Siege of castle besieged Hull, and Rupert's younger brother. Prince 
Gloucester. Maurice, whom Charles had made commander in the 
west, marched against Exeter and Plymouth. Meanwhile the parlia- 
mentarians, who were confronted with a similar difficulty, had met it by 
a plan of associated counties. Warwickshire and Stafibrdshire had been 
the first to combine under Lord Brooke, whose unlucky death at the 
siege of Lichfield not only deprived the parliamentarians of an able 
commander, but England of one of its most tolerant and high-minded 
men. The example of Warwickshire and Stafibrdshire was followed by 
the fen districts, who soon had on foot an admirable force, of which the 
commander was the earl of Manchester, but of which Oliver Cromwell 



1643 Charles I. 563 

was the heart and soul. Fortunately, too, for the parliament, the men of 
the London trained bands were willing to march anywhere that their 
services were required. Accordingly, it was on the Londoners that 
Pym called for a force to relieve Gloucester ; and now that definite work 
was to be done, the slackness which Essex had found so hard to contend 
with disappeared, and at the head of 15,000 citizen soldiers, well clothed, 
well armed, and convinced that ' God had called them to do the work,' 
he was soon on the way to Gloucester. He arrived just in time, for 
only three barrels of gunpowder were left, Avhen Rupert's cavalry, having 
failed to check the advance of Essex, Charles, not choosing to fight with an 
untaken town in his rear, raised the siege, and allowed Essex to march in 
unopposed. His arrival was regarded as a special interposition, and the 
pious citizens inscribed over a gate the words, ' A city assailed by man 
but saved by God.' 

It now became Charles' object to cut ofi" Essex's return to London, 
and, repeating the strategy of Edgehill, he barred his march at 
Newbury ; but this time he compelled Essex to make the First Battle 
attack. A furious battle followed, in which the parlia- <^f Newbury, 
mentarians, fighting among enclosures, had a decided advantage ; and the 
loss among the cavaliers, especially the leaders, was so severe that 
Charles did not venture to renew the fight, but fell back on Oxford, and 
left Essex to march home unoj)posed. 

At Newbury perished Lord Falkland, perhaps the most really tolerant 
and fair-minded man then living. His loyalty and attachment to the 
church led him to ofi'er his services to the king : but a ^ ,, , ^ 

. Falkland, 

short experience of the royal camp convinced him that he 

had little or nothing in common with the roystering soldiers and selfish 
pleasure-seekers who surrounded him. He would have been equally 
out of harmony with the violent and narrow-minded Puritanism which 
filled the hearts of the most earnest supporters of the opposing side. 
Feeling this, and hailing death as a relief, he rode at a gap where the 
bullets were raining thickest, and so perished. Falkland's life might have 
been happy and free under Elizabeth ; among the statesmen of the Revolu- 
tion his character would have been invaluable ; but in the times in which 
his lot was cast he found himself ineffective, unappreciated, out of harmony 
with his surroundings, and a speedy relief was all he had to ask. 

The battle of Newbury was fought on September 20, and formed 
a turning-point in the war. Exeter had fallen on Sep- 

o ^ Parliamen- 

tember 4, but Plymouth, aided by the parliamentarian fleet, tarian 
proved impregnable — alike to force and to treason. Crom- 
well again routed the cavaliers at Winceby on October 11, and as they 



564 The Stuarts 1643 

chased the royalists over the Lincolnshire wolds they heard from 
Hull the booming of the cannon which covered a successful sally 
of the garrison, which forced Newcastle to raise the siege on the 
following day. The year, therefore, though checkered, closed well for 
the parliament. 

The events of the campaign of 1643 afforded clear evidence that 
neither party had a decided advantage, and, before it was 

Reinforce- , . . „ . ' , r^y ^ 

ments over, both were negotiatmg tor reintorcements — Charles 

°° ^ ° ■ with the Irish ; parliament with the Scots. 
During the civil war, the Irish rebellion of 1641 had developed into 
a national movement, in which the Celtic population, with whom it had 
The Irish Originated, were joined, for the first time in Irish history, 
Rebellion, i^y the descendants of the ancient Anglo-Norman settlers. 
The united parties called themselves ' confederates,' and were opposed 
by the English army under Ormond, and by a Scottish contingent 
under Munro. On the whole, the fighting was favourable to the 
insurgents ; and by 1643 the confederates were in possession of the 
whole of Ireland, with the exception of the coast-line near Dublin and 
another small strip along the shores of Belfast Lough. Since the begin- 
ning of the rebellion, Charles had been engaged in secret negotiations 
The Cessa- '^^^^^ the confederates, and he now ordered Ormond to bring 
tion. the fighting to a close by an agreement called the Cessation. 

This would set free Ormond's troops for service in England. Charles 
had also in view the arrival of a contingent of 10,000 confederates. 
Accordingly Ormond's men were landed in Devonshire and Wales, 
and attached themselves either to Hopton's force, or to a new army 
which was raised on the Welsh borders under Lord Byron (formerly 
Sir John). 

The parliamentary negotiations with the Scots were conducted by a 
committee, of whom the leading spirit was Sir Harry Vane. The Scots 
were willing enough to aid the parliament, but were anxious 
to make it part of the bargain that the English should 
accept the Scottish form. of Presbyterianism. To this, however. Vane, 
who feared the intolerance of the Presbyterians, objected ; and, eventu- 
ally, it was agreed that the English Church should be modelled ' accord- 
incr to the example of the best reformed churches, and according to the 
Word of God,' a phrase which gave ample latitude of interpretation. On 
their part, the Scots agreed to cross the border with 20,000 men, whose 
expenses were to be borne by the parliament. The treaty thus drawn 
up was known as the Solemn League and Covenant, and must be care- 
fully distinguished from the Scottish covenant mentioned before (see 



1644 Charles I. 555 

page 533). It was signed on September 25, 1643, and was sworn to by 
all members of parliament. 

The alliance between the parliament and the Scots was the last 
triumph of Pym's policy, and he died on December 8, 1643. Pym's 
great achievements had been to concentrate the attention of r> , 

^ fym s 

his countrymen on the importance of religion, not only for Death. 
its own sake, but as an element in the political hfe of the nation. As he 
once said, ' the greatest of our liberties is religion.' His conception of the 
constitution was the harmonious working of king and parliament ; and 
the phrase ' the orders of the king signified by both houses of parlia- 
ment ' exactly explains his position. After his death, no member of the 
House succeeded to his supreme authority. The two most prominent 
civilian members were probably Holies and Sir Harry Vane, and the 
chief soldiers Waller and Cromwell. Holies led those who wished to 
close the war by negotiation ; Vane those who believed that peace could 
be secured only by decisive victory in the field. In this absence of any 
accepted leader, and in view of the need of working harmoniously with 
the Scots, the executive power was placed in the hands of a committee 
of both nations, of which the chief English members were Essex, Man- 
chester, Holies, Vane, Waller, and Cromwell ; and the leading Scots, 
Maitland, afterwards notorious as the earl of Lauderdale, and Johnstone 
of Warriston. 

During the winter Charles, by the advice of Hyde, summoned those 
lords and commons who supported him to meet in session at Oxford. 
The Oxford parliament met in January, and comprised a ^he Oxford 
large majority of the peers of the kingdom, and about a Parliament, 
third of the members of the House of Commons. It had, however, 
no Speaker or any of the insignia of the House, and its claim to be a 
parliament at all was hardly recognised even by royahsts. Its chief im- 
portance lay in a resolution passed by it complaining of the iniquity of 
calling in the Scots, and the evidence shown of the objections enter- 
tained by the gentry who sat in it to Charles' employment of Roman 
Catholics. 

The year 1644 opened well for the parliament. In January Sir 
Thomas Fairfax, hurrying from Lincolnshire, utterly routed Byron at 
Nantwich, and compelled most of his troops to surrender. Battle of 
Nor was this all, for the mass of the troops from Ireland took Nantwich. 
service under their conqueror. In April a similar disaster overtook 
Hopton's force, which was routed at Cheriton by Sir Battle of 
William Waller, who had come to be reckoned ' the best Cheriton. 
chooser of ground ' among the officers of the parliament. Nantwich and 



566 The Stuarts 1644 

Cheriton, therefore, destroyed Charles' hopes from Ormond's aid, and he 
fell back on his negotiations with the ' Confederates' of Kilkenny. 

Parliament was more fortunate. On January 19 the Scots crossed 
the Tweed, under Leven, Baillie, and David Leslie ; and Newcastle 
The Scots in ^oved northwards to meet them, leaving an outpost at 
England. Selby to defend York. However, in April, Sir Thomas 
Fairfax stormed Selby and compelled Newcastle to return to York, 
closely followed by the Scots. The army of the association, under 
Manchester and Cromwell, then marched into Yorkshire. Before the 

Siege of ^^^ ^^ ^^^^ month York was formally besieged by the three 

York. allied armies. Feeling the importance of saving it, Charles 

ordered Eupert to collect an army for its relief. While Newcastle was 
besieged at York, Charles seemed likely to be hemmed in at Oxford ; 
for Essex, with his own army, and Waller, with a force raised in London 
and the home counties, were advancing against the town. Charles, how- 
ever, cleverly slipped between the two and marched into Worcestershire. 
When his escape was known, it was decided that Waller should besiege 
Oxford, and that Essex should march into the western counties, relieve 
Lyme, secure Plymouth, and, if possible, defeat Prince Maurice. 

The separation of the parliamentary forces gave Charles a decided 

superiority over either of them. Turning on Waller, he beat him in an 

action at Cropredy Bridge, which so dispirited Waller's 

Cropredy amateur citizen soldiers that they one and all made off 
^ ■ home ; and this disaster, and the superior mobility of the 
cavaliers, convinced Waller that nothing but the organisation of a 
regularly paid and disciplined force could enable the parliamentarians to 
win. Waller being thus disposed of, Charles hurried after Essex, who had 
been carrying all before him in the west, and had compelled Henrietta 
Surrender at Maria to fly to France. Deceived, however, by delusive 
Lostwithiei. hopes of Cornisli assistance, Essex advanced so far that 
retreat was impossible; and, at Lostwithiei in September, Charles hemmed 
him in with a force so overwhelming that the parliamentary foot were 
compelled to capitulate, the horse with difficulty cut their way through 
to Plymouth, and Essex himself escaped by sea to London. For the 
moment the parliamentary cause in the west seemed to be rained, but 
Plymouth and Taunton, the latter under Robert Blake, still held out, 
and, so long as they did so, there was still work to detain the western 
royalists in their own counties. 

The king's great success in the south was, however, balanced by a 
still greater disaster in the north. After leaving Oxford, Charles gave 
definite orders to Rupert to relieve York, and also sent him a letter 



1644 



Charles I, 



567 



which, though ambiguously worded, was interpreted by Rupert as 
a positive order to fight the Scots. After throwing reinforcements into 
Newark, Eupert made his way into Lancashire, where he 
raised the siege of Lathom House, which the countess of marches 
Derby was holding for the king ; and then he crossed the ^*'''*^' 
hills into Yorkshire, passed the Aire at Skipton and the Wharfe about 
Otley, and reached Knaresborough on the Nidd on June 30. 

When news of Rupert's arrival reached the allies, they abandoned the 
siege of York and drew up to meet him on Marston Moor, opposite the 
place where the usual road from Knaresborough to York gjg ^ ^f 
crosses the Nidd at Skip Bridge. Rupert, however, eluded ^^^"^ raised, 
them by marching north, and crossing the Ure at Boroughbridge, and the 



Englisli Miles 
> 4 6 8 lo 12 




MARSTON MOOR, JULY 2, 1644. 

Swale at Thornton Bridge, some miles above the junction of the two rivers, 
came down the left bank of the Ouse, and so relieved York. Upon this 
the allies retreated south, in order to hold the line of the Wharfe against 
Rupert's return. Newcastle washed to avoid a battle until further re- 
inforcements had come up ; but Rupert, armed with Charles' letter, 
insisted on fighting, and, accordingly, Newcastle's men were marched out 
of York, and Rupert's soldiers, crossing the Ouse by a bridge of boats, 
joined them on Marston Moor. When this movement of the royalists 
was perceived, the allies retraced their steps, and drew up their forces 
between the villages of Longmarston and Tockwith, on some rising 
ground which bounds the moor on the south. Cromwell and Leslie, with 



568 



The Stuarts 



1644 



the Scottish and association horse, were on the left ; Leven, Manchester, 

and Lord Fairfax in the centre with the foot ; Sir Thomas Fairfax, with 

more cavalry, on the right. 

Meanwhile Eupert, hoping to charge the allies before they had formed 

their ranks, had drawn up his men close to a ditch which drained the 
moor, just where the rising ground began, and close to the 
allied position. The allies, however, were too quick for 
him ; and his, men were so long in coming up, that by the 

time they were marshalled, with Eupert on the right, Newcastle in the 



Battle of 
Marston 
Moor. 



«_* 



<i-'i a."*-"- 



Wilstrdp- 






BATTLE 

OF 

MARSTON MOOR. 

July 2nd. 1644. 



.^ert 




.Royalists. 
.Parlia?7zc>itarians. 



KM. The Ditch probably ran along- the Soitth side 
of the present road from Tockivith to Marston. 



centre and Goring on the left, it was seven o'clock in the evening. The 
attack, therefore, was postponed till next day, and refreshments were 
served out. This gave the allies their chance, and, with all the advantage 
of the slope in their favour, the whole allied army moved down to the 
ditch and flung itself upon the inattentive cavaliers. On the allied left, 
after a stubborn contest, Cromwell and Leslie drove Eupert and his 
horsemen from the field. On the right. Sir Thomas Fairfax, hampered 
by difficult ground, was beaten by Goring. In the centre the royalist 



1644 Charles I. 559 

troops had the best of it, and some of the Scots were soon in flio-ht. 
However, Sir Thomas Fairfax had had the luck to make his way, un- 
attended, through his opponents, and finding Cromwell with his men 
well in hand, had brought him across the rear of the royalist position to 
attack Goring as he returned from the pursuit. Goring's overthrow 
followed ; and then the allied horse joined its infantry in a systematic 
attack on the royalist centre. Unsupported as they were, Newcastle's 
foot-soldiers fought like heroes, and some regiments perished almost to a 
man ; but no efforts could save the day, and, when darkness closed in, 
the allies were completely victorious. The fall of York at p , f 
once followed. Newcastle fled to the continent ; and *^^ battle. 
Rupert, with his cavalry, made his way back by a circuitous route to 
the Severn valley. Had Marston Moor gone the other way, as Rupert 
had a fair right to expect it would, the parliamentary forces both in the 
north and south would have received a shock so severe that it is hard to 
see how they could have recovered. As it turned out, the king's power in 
the north received a fatal blow, and the royalist districts were practically 
reduced to the counties of the south-west, the Severn valley, Wales, and 
the Midland counties west of Oxford. 

After their decisive victory, Manchester and Cromwell, leaving Fairfax 
and the Scots to besiege Pontefract and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, marched 
south ; and, Essex being ill, Manchester, Waller, and Crom- 

... Second 

well were associated together in an attempt to cut off the Battle of 
king's return from Cornwall. The two armies met at New- ^^ ^^^' 
bury, on the north side of the Kennet. The whole affair was grossly 
mismanaged, partly owing to there being too many generals, partly to the 
inertness of Manchester, which prevented him from supporting Waller 
and Cromwell by the delivery of an effective charge. The manoeuvres 
of the royalists, on the other hand, were well carried out, and Charles, 
with an inferior force, was able to secure his retreat to Oxford. 

This failure brought to a head the discontent of the more energetic 
members of the parliamentary party, whose leader was Oliver Cromwell. 
This great man had been rapidly coining to the front. He Oliver 
had been the first to see that the feelings of loyalty and Cromwell, 
honour, which inspired the cavaliers, could only be met by religious 
enthusiasm. At that date the cavalry were relatively the most im- 
portant part of the army ; and though the parliamentarians had been 
able to put into the field infantry at least as good as that of their 
opponents, their cavalry was far inferior to that of the royalists. This 
defect Cromwell had set himself to remedy ; and he found among the 
farmers and yeomen of the eastern counties as good riders as the gentry. 



570 The Stuarts ' 1644 

and men inspired with the utmost zeal for the cause of their religion. 
From them he organised the association horse, and drilled them into one 
of the finest bodies of cavalry the world had then seen. Cromwell him- 
self was an excellent cavalry officer, and his prowess at Marston extorted 
from Prince Rupert the complimentary nickname of Ironside, which was 
afterwards applied to his men. Cromwell's troopers had scattered the 
royalist cavalry wherever they had met them, and they believed that, 
with Cromwell to lead them, they could soon bring the war to a victorious 
conclusion. Good, however, as the foot-soldiers had shown themselves, 
acute observers had long perceived that the king could never be really 
beaten till parliament had at its disposal a regular force of soldiers 
engaged for general service, neither averse to serving out of their own 
counties nor yearning to get back to their shops after a single battle. 
Waller had been the first to point this out ; and Cromwell, who was eager 
to make private ends and local aims subordinate to the common good, 
was heartily in agreement with this view. 

On the other hand, Essex, though he was clear for carrying on the war 
with vigour, had not the genius to make it a success ; while Manchester, 
Essex and constitutionally inert and easy-going, appears not only to 
Manchester, h^ve been desirous of negotiating with Charles, but also 
was irritated by the way in which the war was bringing men of moderate 
birth to the front, to the exclusion of the ancient nobility. Manchester 
was closely allied to Holies and the peace party, whose consent to a con- 
tinuance of the war could only be secured by a demonstration of the 
futility of negotiation. Accordingly, after the battle of Newbury, two 
undertakings were set on foot — one for remodelling the army, the other 
for negotiating with the king. 

The motive power for the remodelling of the army was supplied by the 

fact that Vane and Oliver Cromwell were convinced that, unless the war 

were quickly successful, parliament would be compelled by 

denying popular pressure to conclude a dishonourable peace. They 
were also aware that there was a widespread belief that the 
parliamentary generals -and officers were prolonging the war to retain 
their own posts ; and Cromwell, to whom such an idea was abhorrent, 
spoke plainly of ' denying themselves for the public good.' In this sense 
a ' self-denying ordinance was brought in,' forbidding members of either 
House to hold any office, ' civil or military,' during the war. This roused 
the jealousy of the Lords, and was thrown out ; but eventually the 
Houses agreed to a second ordinance, by which, though all members were 
to resign their military or naval commands within forty days, there was no 
bar to their reappointment. Accordingly Manchester, Warwick, Essex, 



1645 Charles I. 57 1 

and Waller resigned at once, and were thanked for their services. Mean- 
while, by another ordinance, parliament engaged the services of 14,000 
foot, 6000 horse, and 1000 dragoons or mounted infantry, ^he ' New 
Of these, 12,500 were chosen from the armies of Essex, Man- Model.' 
Chester, and Waller, and the remainder were pressed for service. At 
first, therefore, there was some unsteadiness in the ranks ; but before 
long, the efficiency of the old soldiers spread to their comrades, and the 
New Model army, as the force was commonly styled, became an admir- 
able force, both as to conduct and efficiency. Sir Thomas Fairfax, who 
had shown himself as alert and enterprising in attack as he was patient 
and persevering in defence, was made commander-in-chief, and Skippon 
became major-general. The post of lieutenant-general, which carried 
with it the command of the cavalry, was kept vacant. When his forty 
d.ays were up, Cromwell retired to the Isle of Ely, the defence of which 
he was asked to organise. At the same time the command of the navy 
was given to Batten, who had been vice-admiral under the earl of 
Warwick since 1642. From a religious point of view the New Model 
included men of all views, and no signature of the Covenant was de- 
manded from the rank and file. The officers were, for the most part, 
advanced and tolerant Puritans, for the stress of actual war had taught 
them to rate military efficiency at a higher value than either orthodox 
views or social rank. As Cromwell said : ' I had rather have a plain 
russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he 
knows, than that which you call a gentleman, and is nothing else. I 
honour a gentleman that is so indeed.' 

By the time the New Model was ready, it had been amply demonstrated 
that nothing was to be done by negotiation. Indeed, it is probable that 
Vane and Cromwell had only agreed to negotiate in order to ^ ., 

•^ o o _ Failure of 

make this clear to the Scots. The commissioners of the the Negotia- 
king and the parliament met at Uxbridge on January 30, 
and the chief part was taken by the Scottish representatives, Henderson 
and Lauderdale. Three weeks were given to the discussion of the three 
chief points— Religion, the Militia, and Ireland. Hyde took charge of 
the king's case ; but as he was clear for Episcopacy, and the Scots for 
Presbyterianism, agreement was, from the first, hopeless. The strongest 
point of the king's case was the ofi'er of a scheme of toleration for other 
bodies, along with the establishment of Episcopacy. As this did not 
meet the views of the Presbyterians, and as grave doubts were enter- 
tained of the sincerity of the king, it made no impression at the time ; 
but as the first authoritative proposal for toleration, it marks an epoch in 
the history of religion in England. 



572 The Stuarts 1645 

When the three weeks' negotiations were over, parliament directed 

Fairfax to divide his forces. Part was to besiege Oxford, part was to 

po to the west to relieve Taunton. To meet this, Charles 
The War. 

sent Goring to the west, and leaving Oxford, marched north, 

with some idea of attacking the Scots ; but changing his mind, he moved 
across England with a view to an attack upon the eastern counties, and 
stormed Leicester. Fairfax was then ordered to march north and bring 
on a battle. When fighting was imminent, officers and men alike felt 
that it was madness not to have Cromwell to lead the cavalry, and a 
petition for his appointment was sent by the officers to parliament. The 
House of Commons consented ; and without waiting for the Lords, Crom- 
well at once hurried to headquarters, and joined Fairfax near Daven- 
try. Subsequently his commission was confirmed from time to time, 
and other officers were either elected members of parliament, or being 
members, received commands, so that the connection between the army 
and the Houses was never wholly broken. 

Cromwell joined Fairfax on June 13, and on the next day the decisive 
battle was fought at Naseby, in Northamptonshire. Fairfax's forces num- 
The Battle bered 14,000 men ; Charles and Eupert had only 7500 ; but 
of Naseby. unequal as the armies were, it was Rupert who made the 
attack. He himself was successful in beating the parliament's left wing 
under Ireton ; but on the right Cromwell carried all before him against 
Sir Marmaduke Langdale, and he and Fairfax had then little difficulty in 
dealing with Charles' outnumbered infantry in the centre. Even worse 
than the military disaster was the blow struck at the king's moral 
reputation by the capture of a cabinet containing drafts and copies of 
letters addressed by him to the queen. From these it was clearly 
demonstrated that Charles had no real intention of making peace, except 
on his own terms ; and that, while pretending to negotiate, he had been 
casting about for help from abroad, or from the Irish Catholics. Indeed, 
it was apparent that he was ready to use against his English subjects 
any aid, however unpopular ; and all this received additional con- 
firmation when, a few months later, Digby's correspondence was 
captured, and a copy of Charles' treaty with the Irish confederates 
also fell into the hands of parliament. So serious was the double 
blow thus struck, that quarters in which the king had hitherto been 
all-powerful, such as South Wales, became lukewarm or hostile, and even 
such stout soldiers as Rupert were convinced that peace was absolutely 
necessary. 

After Naseby, the defeat of the scattered royalist forces and the 
reduction of the royal fortresses was merely a question of time ; but in 



1645 Charles I. 573 

Scotland it seemed as if a general had arisen who might restore the 
king's ascendancy in the north. This was the marquess of Montrose, 
who, after many entreaties, had received from Charles the 
title of lieutenant-general of Scotland, with a free hand to 
do his best against the Covenanters, and compel the return of Leven 
and his troops. Montrose, whose disinterested loyalty marks him as 
one of the noblest characters of his time, was then thirty-two years 
of age, full of energy, and devoted heart and soul to the cause he 
had taken up. In politics he was a visionary ; but in military matters 
he was clear-sighted enough, and possessed in a high degree the genius 
for varying his methods with his means that marks a real soldier. His 
hopes lay in the hostility which existed between the Gordons of the 
district round Aberdeen and the Covenanters of the towns ; and between 
the Campbells and the rest of the Highland clans, particularly 
the Macdonalds. Montrose set out from York two days Montrose's 
after Marston Moor, and, disguised as a groom, made his Battles, 
way across the lowlands. At Blair- Athole he put himself at the head of 
a body of Irish Macdonalds, who had come over under Alister Mac- 
donald to help their clansmen, and were eager to fight the Campbells. 
Three armies sprang up against him under Elcho, Argyll, and Balfour of 
Burley ; but Montrose's quick marches outwitted his slower oppon- 
ents, and his brilliant tactics in battle gave them little chance in 
the field. On September 1 he crushed Elcho at TijDper- xippermuir. 
muir, and on the 13th he overthrew Balfour at Aberdeen. Aberdeen, 
This cleared the eastern lowlands and secured the aid of the Gordon 
clan ; and with a larger force he marched in the early days of February 
against Argyll, and utterly routed the Campbells at Inver- 
lochy, while Argyll, whose personal courage was more than 
doubtful, watched the slaughter of his clansmen from the security of a 
boat. The overthrow of Argyll compelled the Scots to detach Baillie 
and Hurry, two of their best officers, from their army in England ; 
but after a long series of manoeuvres Montrose routed ^ ., 

*= , , Auldearn. 

Hurry at Auldearn (Aldern) on May 9, and Baillie at 
Alford on July 4 ; and on August 15 he completed the destruction of 
Baillie's regular forces in the disastrous battle of Kilsyth, j^-jg ^^ 
These victories opened the way into the lowlands, where 
Montrose earnestly desired that Charles should join him ; but as was 
usual in Highland warfare, his followers insisted on returning home with 
their spoils, and in September Montrose, victorious as he was, found his 
forces reduced to a mere handful of men. In this condition he was 
attacked on the 13th at Philiphaugh by David Leslie, who had hurried 



574 



The Stuarts 



1645 



from England with an overwhelming force, and the rout of Philiphaugh, 
Defeat at ^^^^ Selkirk, brought to an end the power of the most 
Phihphaugh. pomantic of the cavaliers. Some months later Montrose 
escaj^ed in disguise to the continent. 




SCOTLAND. 

After 1603. 



Equally unlucky had been Charles' attempts to get assistance from 
other quarters. After the rout of Ormond's detachments at Nantwich and 
Cheriton, Charles still continued to negotiate with the ' Confederates, 



1645 Charles I. 575 

— sometimes through Ormond, the accredited lord-lieutenant, some- 
times through a Eoman Catholic, Edward Somerset, earl of Glamorgan, 

afterwards marquess of Worcester. Glamorgan received in- 

. . Charles' 

structions from Charles to negotiate with the ' Confederates ' Irish Nego- 

without Ormond's knowledge, and to take command of *^^^*°"^- 

the 10,000 Irish Celts who were expected to arrive in England. The 

negotiations, however, were slow. Ormond was inert, and too prejudiced 

in favour of Protestantism and the English connection to throw himself 

heartily into a plan which would have established Catholicism in Ireland, 

and practically made it an independent country. Glamorgan was rash 

as well as enthusiastic, but his wreck on the Lancashire coast had 

put a stop for a time to his share in the scheme. Charles was equally 

unsuccessful on the continent, where Henrietta Maria was scheming to 

hire the services of the duke of Lorraine with 10,000 men, trained in all 

the barbarity of German warfare. Lorraine heartily agreed to a project 

which opened up hopes of unlimited plunder ; but, fortunately for 

England, to transport him and his troops across the sea was no easy 

matter. Henrietta hoped that the Prince of Orange would provide ships 

as the price of the betrothal of the Prince of Wales to his daughter, 

and, failing this, that Mazarin would allow them to sail from Dieppe. 

The Dutch, however, refused the use of their ships, and Mazarin had no 

wish to offend the English parliament, so the whole plan came to nothing. 

Disappointed, therefore, in his hopes of aid from Scotland, Ireland, 

and the continent, Charles had nothing for it but to continue the 

struggle as best he might with the aid of the English Close of the 

&& fc> , i. First Civil 

royalists. It did not last long. Within a month ot war. 
Naseby, Goring, with the army of the west, was utterly routed by 
Fairfax at Langport. On September 10 Bristol was stormed ; battle of 
and on September 24, Charles, from the walls of Chester, Langport. 
watched the operations which led to the discomfiture of his remaining 
army on Kowton Heath. In the spring the work was ^^^^^^ ^^ 
completed by the defeat of Hopton at Torrington and the Ronton 
surrender of Astley at Stow-on-the-Wold. Oxford capitu- 
lated on June 24. A few fortresses and castles still held out ; but they 
were gradually captured, and Harlech Castle alone prolonged its resis- 
tance until March 1647. 

Utterly beaten in the field, Charles, though he still hoped for aid from 
. France and Ireland, turned his attention to fomenting the p^riiamen- 
dissensions which had arisen among his opponents, whom he gr^^^^j^^^^^ 
now hoped to play off one against another. His chances 
of doing so lay in the circumstance that while his opponents were at one 



576 The Stuarts 1645 

in their desire to abolish Episcopacy, they disagreed as to what to put in 
its place. The Scots wished to see established in England a Presbyterian 
system of the Scottish type, in which the chief power lay in the hands of 
the clergy. The English Presbyterians wished to make Presbyterianism 
the established religion, as they were pledged to do l)y the Solemn 
League and Covenant, but to so far modify it as to keep the chief power 
in the hands of the laity. The Independents desired to have no national 
form of church government, but to allow each congregation to manage 
its own affairs. All were agreed that there was to be no toleration for 
the Roman Catholics and Episcopalians either in England or Ireland, 
and both sections of the Presbyterians wished to persecute the Inde- 
pendents ; while the Independents, believing, as Milton put it, that 
' New presbyter was but old priest writ large,' were inclining to the 
view that if they could not get their own way, life would be more toler- 
able for them under a modified form of Episcopacy than under any form 
of Presbyterianism. 

On one point alone both parties were wholly at one, and that was the 
need of breaking once and for all from the system of Laud ; and it was 
Laud probably due more to this feeling than to any real fear of 

beheaded. ^^^ danger from his life that, in the winter of 1645, incited 
by Prynne, and with the consent of both religious parties, parliament 
voted the attainder of Archbishop Laud. No legal charge of treason 
could be made against him, and to put him to death was neither more 
nor less than a judicial murder. Nevertheless, the aged prelate was 
beheaded in January 1645. His death was designed to be taken as 
a visible proof that with Episcopacy, as Charles understood it, no terms 
were admissible. Ever since July 1643, the new constitution of the 
church replacing it had been under discussion by an assembly, which 
had been summoned at Westminster for the settlement of the national 
religion. This body consisted of one hundred and twenty clerics and of 
thirty members of parliament, and was so distinctly Presbyterian in tone 

^, „, that for a long; time the Independent view was advocated 

The West- ^ ^ 

minster by five members only, of whom Philip Nye and John 

ssem y. q.qq^j^jj^ were chief. These men, who were known as the 

' dissenting brethren,' put forward a plan for completely getting rid of 

the Laudian tradition by appointing a new bench of bishops, and then 

granting toleration to conscientious Protestant dissenters. Their plan, 

however, carried no weight. Presbyterianism of the English type was 

adopted in principle, and partially carried into practice, while the use 

of the Book of Common Prayer was forbidden in favour of the Directory, 

which was in efl'ect the book of directions for church worship compiled 



1646 Charles I. 



577 



in Elizabeth's reign by Cartwright and Travers. These changes were 
confirmed by parliament, where, in religious matters, the Presbyterians 
had a steady majority. Outside parliament, however, there was much 
grumbling, and in the ranks of the New Model army, where toleration 
had always been the rule, there was bitter and deep-seated discontent. 

Of these differences Charles designed to take full advantage, hopino- 
that the dissentient parties would bid against each other for the aid of 
him and the royalists ; and with this view he entered into 
sejDarate and secret negotiations with the Presbyterians, the joins tihe 
Independents, the army leaders, and the Scots. It was so ^'^°^^- 
clear, however, that unless the king agreed to the most precise conditions 
there would be no security that he would not repudiate his engagements ; 
and Charles was so determined that, come what might, he would never 
abandon the hope of restoring Episcopacy, that all his negotiations came 
to nothing. Eventually believing that his best chance lay in workino- 
on the national jealousy of the English and Scots, he betook himself, in 
May 1646, to the Scottish army, in the full hope that before long he 
would find himself the leader of a combined Scottish and royalist army, 
fighting against the English parliament. 

Charles, however, soon found that, unless he would definitely agree to 
establish Presbyterianism in England, he would get no help from the 
Scots, and that he was to all practical purposes a prisoner, 
and not, as he had anticipated, a guest. The Scots, how- tions at 
ever, were willing to give Charles one more chance of 
coming to terms with his parliament before they handed him over to 
the English ; and accordingly they took him with them to Newcastle, 
where negotiations were again opened with some parliamentary com- 
missioners. The chief points asked of Charles were (1) the abolition of 
Episcopacy and the reformation of the church in a Presbyterian sense ; 
(2) the enforcement of fresh penal laws against the Roman Catholics ; (3) 
the control of parliament over the militia and fleet for the next twenty 
years. On the other hand, the Scots declared that they would fight for 
his restoration on condition that he would promise them to accept the 
terms offered at Uxbridge. In spite of the advice of his queen and of 
all his friends, Charles would neither come to terms with the parliament 
nor give up some of his convictions to purchase the assistance of the Scots ; 
for he regarded it as a point of honour to hand down the prerogatives 
of monarchy unimpaired to his successors, and as a point of religion to 
preserve Episcopacy. But, though clear himself, he certainly gave the 
impression to others that he was a mere shuffler ; and the Scots, irritated 
by liis apparent perversity, decided to have no more to do with the 

2o 



578 The Stuarts 1646 

matter, and to hand him over to the English commissioners and go 
home at once. To this proposal parliament gladly agreed. It did all it 
Charles could to make the retreat of the Scots easy, and readily 

surrendered ^^^^^ £200,000 as the first instalment of the £400,000 at 

to the 

Parliament, which the expenses of the Scots were computed. By his 
new custodians Charles was treated with all respect, and parliament 
ordered him to be lodged for the present at Holmby House, in Nor- 
thamptonshire. 

The departure of the Scots naturally raised the question of the future 
of the army. The parliament wished to disband it, partly because the 
Presbyterians disliked its Independent sentiments, partly 
because the taxes needed to pay it were so unpopular as 
even to dispose many districts to royalism. The soldiers, on the other 
hand, were afraid that, if the army were broken up, the Presbyterian 
majority in parliament would have its own way, and would settle the 
religious question in such a manner that there should be no toleration for 
the Sectaries and Independents, to which classes most of the soldiers be- 
longed. So long as the conduct of the war had occupied the attention of 
parliament, the Independents, as the forward party, had been sure of a 
majority ; but as soon as the fighting was over, the Presbyterians 
regained their power, and proceeded to take into consideration the 
disbanding of the army. The plan proposed was to retain for service in 
England 6600 cavalry, but no permanent infantry ; and to employ in 
Ireland 4200 horse and 8400 foot. All Fairfax's soldiers who cared to 
serve, and for whom places could be found, were to be employed either 
in England or Ireland ; so that there would remain for disbandment 
only about 6000 foot. Besides the question of disbandment there was 
also the question of pay. That of the foot was eight weeks in arrears, 
that of the cavalry forty-three ; and as the total amounted to some 
£300,000, the difficulty of raising it would be great. Unfortunately 
for themselves, the Presbyterian majority in parliament was so unwise 
as to irritate the soldiers by proposing |that they should be paid only 
one-sixth of what was lawfully due to them. This foolish action had 
the effect of uniting as one man those who cared about the religious 
settlement and those who cared only about their pay. Consequently 
the soldiers determined to stick together, and elected representatives 
from each regiment, called adjutators, agitators, or agents, who were to 
act with a council of officers for the interests of the army — the chief 
of these being the payment of arrears, and the passing of an ordinance 
of indemnity for illegal actions committed as acts of war. Fairfax and 
Cromwell were heartily in sympathy with the legitimate demands of 



1647 Charles I. 579 

their men ; but Cromwell realised so keenly the evil that would ensue 
if the army once got the upper hand of parliament, that he did all in 
his power, both as an officer and a member, to bring about an accommo- 
dation between them. His efforts, however, failed, and he threw him- 
self vigorously on the side of the men. At such a crisis the soldiers 
were naturally afraid that Charles might either be placed at the head 
of a new Presbyterian army, or that he might be allowed to escape ; and 
Cromwell ordered Cornet Joyce to proceed to Holmby and secure 
Charles' person. This Joyce did ; and, fearing a rescue, removed the 
king to Newmarket, near which the army was encamped. 

Having secured the king, the army held a rendezvous on Triploe Heath 
and proceeded to formulate its demands in a Declaration, in which in 
addition to the old demands for pay and indemnity, they The 
requested that the present parliament should be purged of declaration, 
obnoxious members, and that, for the future, parliamentary elections 
should be held every two years. To enforce their request, the whole army 
then moved forward by slow stages towards London, taking the king with 
it, and eventually placed him at Hampton Court. Intimidated by such a 
display of force, and unable to raise an army of its own, parliament gave 
way, and eleven Presbyterian members, of whom the most notable were 
Holies and Sir William Waller, withdrew to the continent. From this 
moment, the real control of affairs passed into the hands of the army. 

Meanwhile the army, which claimed to be in reality a better repre- 
sentative of the wishes of the country than the existing parliament, 
negotiated with the king. Its proposals were more liberal ^^ , 

=• & f r .... The Army 

than those of parliament ; for Cromwell and his son-m-law and the 
Ireton, who, more than Fairf^ix, represented the political ^* 
ideas of the soldiers, were willing to permit the restoration of Episcopacy 
provided that there was full toleration for other sects ; and, as an 
earnest of their sincerity, Charles was allowed to hear the Church of 
England service read by his chaplains, an indulgence which had never 
been granted to him either by the Scots or by the parliament. The 
demands of the army were drawn up by Ireton ; and the political 
reforms demanded were biennial parliaments, parliamentary reform, and 
the creation of a council of state able to declare war and make peace, 
and to superintend the militia. They demanded also that five leading 
royalists should be punished. The whole scheme of the Heads of the 
army, therefore, as set forth in Ireton's Heads of the Pro- P^°P°s^ls. 
:posals, anticipated the religious settlement of 1689, and also much of the 
modern method of parliamentary government. To secure Charles' con- 
sent, however, was impossible, for he was now convinced that war 



580 Tlie Stuarts 1647 

between the Presbyterians and the Independents was inevitable, and 
that one side or the other would have to purchase assistance from the 
royalists. He, therefore, determined to escape to the Isle of Wight, 
whence, if necessary, he could remove to the continent. Unluckily for 
Charles, Hammond, the parliamentary governor of the island, was true 
to his employers, and though he agreed to receive Charles, he took care 
that his royal guest or prisoner should be carefully guarded in Caris- 
brooke Castle. From Carisbrooke Charles continued his intrigues with 
all parties. To him the failure of the negotiations with the army 
leaders was matter for congratulation : in reality, it had created an 
opinion in the army that negotiation with him was useless, and that he 
was a man whom it was impossible ever to trust as a king. 

As Charles expected, civil war broke out again in 1648. For a long 
time discontent had been increasing in the south-eastern counties and 
The Second i^. London, due partly to the burden of paying the soldiers' 
Civil War, wages, partly to the annoyance of the Presbyterians at 
the importance of the Sectaries, and this naturally developed into a 
royalist reaction. Charles hoped to combine a royalist insurrection 
in the south with an invasion carried out by the marquess of Hamilton. 
In Scotland, Hamilton had for the moment overborne the influence of 
The 'En- -^-rgyU, and had joined Lauderdale in making with Charles 
gagement.' ^^ Engageme7it, by which he agreed to establish Presby- 
terianism for three years, and to suppress absolutely Anabaptists, 
Separatists, Independents, and heretics of all kinds. On their part, 
the Scots were to invade England with an army, with a view to co- 
operate in putting an end to the existing parliament, and to settling 
a lasting peace with the aid of a ' full and free parliament.' Some 
time, however, was required by Hamilton and his friends to carry out 
their plans, and, meanwhile, the English royalists rose in Kent and 
South Wales. In face of a royalist rising, the parliament and the army 
waived their differences ; and while parliament did all it could to con- 
ciliate the discontented Londoners, Fairfax and Cromwell dealt with 
the royalists in the field. 

Cleverly putting himself between the Kentish royalists and their 
friends in the capital, Fairfax routed the main body of the insurgents in 
Battle of a battle at Maidstone, on June 14, and forced the survivors 
Maidstone. ^^ cross the Thames. They then threw themselves into 
Colchester and stood a siege, in hopes of being rescued either by the 
Scots or by a continental force. Fairfax, however, pushed forward his 
operations with the utmost vigour. In vain Lord Holland attempted 
another rising, assisted by the young duke of Buckingham. Their men 



1648 Charles I. 581 

were dispersed, Holland was captured; and,^ before the end of 
August, Colchester, after an heroic defence, was forced to capitulate. 
By a harsh use of the laws of war, two of the royalist leaders, Sir 
Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, were condemned by a council of 
war, and shot ; two others. Lord Capel and the earl of Norwich, father 
of Goring, the royalist officer, were reserved for future judgment. 

Meanwhile, the Welshmen had been routed by Horton at St. Pagan's, 
and Cromwell had taken Pembroke and Tenby Castles, and by the 
middle of July was free to act against the Scots. He was r^,^„=.,-o-„ 
barely in time, for Hamilton and his army of moderate °^ Preston. 
Presbyterians had already crossed the border, and Lambert, who was in 
command in the north, was too weak to impede his movements. 
Hamilton marched south by way of Kendal and Hornby to Preston. 
His army consisted of some 3600 English royalists under Sir Marma- 
duke Langdale, and of at least 2000 Scots ; but the latter were poorly 
drilled and equipped, and Hamilton himself, though personally brave, 
had no military skill. Cromwell's plans seems to have been formed on 
the supposition that Hamilton would make for Pontefract, which had 
lately fallen into royalist hands. With 8500 troops he marched down the 
Ribble valley determined to fight, and on August 17 he Avas fortunate 
enough to come on the invaders at Preston. Just then the Scottish 
army, horse and foot, had crossed the river, and Langdale, alone with 
his Englishmen, was on the northern bank. Langdale and his men 
fought like heroes, but were ultimately overpowered. Then Cromwell 
turned on the Scots, and before night he had stormed the bridges over 
the Kibble and the Darwen, and so cut off all hopes of retreat. The 
next day he pursued his advantage. The weather was wretched, and 
the Scots, short of ammunition and inefficiently led, became completely 
disorganised, and were utterly routed at Wigan and Winwick. Baillie 
alone showed any skill and tenacity ; but nothing could be done against 
the discipline and valour of the New Model soldiers. The foot surrendered 
at Warrington, the cavalry at Uttoxeter. As soon as success was 
assured, Cromwell left Lambert to deal with Hamilton, and himself 
marched off to Scotland, where he remained till October. Even- 
tually Hamilton and Langdale were both captured, and Lambert re- 
joined Cromwell in Scotland. This crisis, which was terminated by 
the successes at Preston and Colchester, was probably more serious 
for the parliament than any since Charles had retreated seriousness 
from Turnham Green; for it cannot be doubted that, of t^e Crisis. 
had Fairfax failed at Maidstone or Cromwell been beaten at Preston, 
a royalist reaction would have immediately followed. Even more 



582 The Stuarts 1648 

serious than the risings in Kent and Essex was the disaffection of part 
of the fleet, which had hitherto done admirable service to the parlia- 
ment by holding the sea against foreign aid of any kind. Now, 
however, no less than nine ships sailed to Holland, and placed themselves 
under the command of the Prince of Wales, and on August 30 nothing 
but a change of wind prevented a battle off Chatham between them 
and the parliamentarian vessels ; the crews of which, being more 
Presbyterian than the soldiers, could hardly be trusted to do their best. 
Eventually the prince's vessels retired to Holland, and were placed 
under the command of Prince Kupert. It was the severity of this crisis, 
brought about, as the army believed, solely by the obstinacy of Charles, 
that had caused the soldiers before they started for the campaign to 
declare that ' it was their duty, if ever the Lord brought them back 
again in peace, to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account 
for the blood he had shed, and the mischief he had done to his utmost 
against the Lord's cause and people in these poor nations.' The same 
spirit hardened Fairfax to carry out the executions at Colchester. 

While the soldiers had been fighting, the Presbyterians had had their 
own way in the House. This they had used to pass an ordinance 

denouncino; death against all who denied certain Christian 
Parhamen- , '^ , . . . ^, . 

tary pro- doctrines, such as the divinity of Christ, or the resurrec- 

ings. ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ body ; and imprisonment against all who, among 
other things, denied that infant baptism was lawful, asserted the exist- 
ence of purgatory, or questioned the obligation of the Puritanical 
observation of Sunday. Such an ordinance was utterly distasteful to 
large bodies of the soldiers, and hardly less so were the negotiations 
which parliament had opened with the king. A negotiation, or ' treaty ' 
as it was then called, was carried on at Newport between the king 
Treaty of ill person and a number of commissioners, of whom Saye, 
Newport, jjolles, and Vane were the chief. Charles, however, was not 
in earnest. His hopes were still high of aid either from the continent, 
where the Thirty Years' War was just being concluded, or from Ireland, 
where Orniond was again trying to form a royalist party, or, at the worst, 
of making good his own escape. He was, therefore, prepared for the 
moment to yield almost anything, but held out for some form of Episco- 
pacy, and to this the Commons would not consent. Accordingly the 
aifair came to nothing. 

Meanwhile, the chief power in Scotland had passed into the hands of 
Argyll, supported by the stout Presbyterians of the western lowlands, 
known as the Whiggamores, and by the Campbells ; and though Crom- 
well, by order of the parliament, visited Edinburgh, he had little 



1648 Charles I. 583 

more to do than to consult with Argyll, and to leave Lambert and a 
few soldiers to secure the new government against the 'Engagers.' 
On his return to England he spent some time in superin- cromweii's 
tending the siege of Scarborough and Pontefract, and did Movements, 
not return to London till December 6. 

In Cromwell's absence the most influential among his officers was his 
son-in-law, Henry Ireton, who had become Cromwell's 'other self ; for 
Fairfax, though he always took the chair at the meetings 
of the council of officers, had no initiative in political monstrance 
matters. The feeling of the soldiers was expressed by ° ^ ^^^' 
Ireton in a document called the Remonstrance of tJi e Army. This paper 
denounced Charles as responsible for the renewal of the war ; deprecated 
further association with him on the ground that he would not consider 
his promises binding ; and asked that he should be brought to trial. 
However, Fairfax and others were not prepared to go as far as this 
without another attempt at accommodation ; and the king was asked in 
the name of the council of officers whether he would agree (1) to an early 
dissolution of parliament and biennial elections afterwards ; (2) to hand 
over the management of the militia to a council of state which was to be 
appointed for the first ten years directly by parliament, and afterwards 
indirectly ; (3) to allow the great officers of state to be similarly nominated. 
The real meaning of this demand was, that for the future Charles would 
take his policy from parliament, practically as the sovereign does to-day, 
and give up the old idea to which he held so closely, that the last word 
should always be with the king. This proposal was made to Charles on 
November 17, and was of course rejected. Next day the officers unani- 
mously adopted the Remonstrance ; and on the 20th it was presented 
to the House of Commons. Disliking the interference of the army, par- 
liament postponed its consideration for a week, and meanwhile continued 
its own negotiations with the king. Irritated at this, the council of 
officers at once took steps to secure the king's person, and proceeded 
further to consider whether it would be better to dissolve parliament by 
force or simply to ' purge ' out those members who did not agree with it. 
Accordingly, on December 1, by order of Fairfax, Charles was removed 
to Hurst Castle, a gloomy and easily-guarded fortress on the Hampshire 
coast. On the 2nd the army entered London, and on the 6th Ireton and 
other officers, finding that parliament still persisted in negotiations, and 
having the approval of Vane, Marten, and Lord Grey of Groby, directed 
Colonel Pride, who commanded a guard which had been Pride's 
placed in Westminster Hall, to exclude the chief Presby- ^"'■^^• 
terian members. One hundred and forty-three members were thus 



584 The Stuarts 1648 

excluded, including Holies and Fiennes. After Pride's Purge, the 
remnant of members, or as they were contemptuously called, the ' Eump,' 
had no pretence to represent the country, and became the mere creatures 
of the army in whose hands all real authority lay. The same evening 
Oliver Cromwell rode into London. 

Even at this date it is probable that Cromwell had not given up all 
hope of coming to terms with the king, thinking possibly that Charles 
Cromwell's would be made more amenable by the knowledge that he 
Views. would soon be brought to trial. In this, however, he was 

entirely mistaken, for Charles was quite willing to lay down his life for 
a cause which he regarded as being that not only of good government 
against anarchy, but also that of God's true religion. Accordingly, 
Charles would not even hear of a proposal that he should give up 
the prerogative of refusing his consent to acts of parliament, and after 
this last failure Cromwell made up his mind that nothing more was to be 
done ; and, as his manner was, threw himself heart and soul into the 
ranks of those who demanded not only that Charles should be deposed, 
but that he should be put to death. 

Reinforced by Cromwell's influence, the Independent members of par- 
liament pushed boldly forward. On January 4, 1649, in spite of the 
The King's opposition of the Lords, a high court of justice, consisting of 
^^^ ■ one hundred and thirty-five commissioners, was created by 

a vote of the House of Commons only. The most notable members of the 
new court were Fairfax, Cromwell, Henry Marten, Ireton, Harrison, Lord 
Grey of Groby, and Colonel Hutchinson. John Bradshaw, a lawyer, was 
elected president. Its meetings began on January 8, but they were poorly 
attended. Fairfax was only present at the first; Vane had retired into the 
country. On the 20th the king was brought into Westminster Hall, and 
the trial began before sixty-eight commissioners. Being asked to plead, 
Charles retorted by asking ' by Mdiat authority' he had been brought to 
the bar.' ' By the authority of the people of England,' Bradshaw replied. 
Charles, however, stuck to his point ; and, though produced over and over 
again before the court, refused to say more, conceiving that in refusing to 
acknowledge the authority of an unconstitutional tribunal he was simply 
doing his duty. ' It is not,' he said, ' my case alone ; it is the freedom 
and liberty of the people of England ... for if power without law 
may make laws, may alter the fundamental laws of the kingdom, I do 
not know what subject he is in England that can be sure of his own life, 
or anything he calls his own.' The utmost concession Charles would 
make was an offer to state his case before the Lords and Commons in the 
Painted Chamber. Some members of the court would have at once 



1649 Charles I. 585 

condemned Charles as contumacious ; but it was eventually decided to 
hear evidence, and when it had been shown that Charles had raised 
troops against the parliament, and personally taken part in the civil 
war, the court found Charles guilty of being ' a tyrant, traitor, murderer, 
and public enemy to the good people of this nation,' ordered him to be 
put to death by the severing of his head from his body. The death 
warrant was signed by fifty-nine commissioners. The signatories, there- 
fore, represented a minority of the court, the court a minority of the 
parliament, and throughout the trial the strongest evidence was shown 
that the proceedings were not approved by the general mass even of 
Londoners, to say nothing of the rest of the country. It is, however, 
ill arguing with the master of many legions. The army was strong, 
compact, disciplined ; the royalists were weak, scattered, unorganised. 
More than all, they wanted leaders, for Fairfax and Vane, though they 
disapproved of the king's execution, showed no signs of putting them- 
selves forward in opposition to the army. 

The sentence was passed on Saturday, January 27 ; and on Tuesday, 
the 30th, Charles was beheaded on a scaffold erected in the open street 
before Whitehall. He met his death with quiet dignity and religious 
resignation ; and his appearance and demeanour, both in Westminster 
Hall and on the scaffold, went far to remove the unfavourable impression 
which had been created by his former intrigues. The reaction was 
aided by the appearance, within a few days, of a book called Eikon 
Basilike, or the Eoyal Likeness ; professedly written by Charles himself, 
which gave a most favourable impression of Charles' views and of his 
piety and resignation in prison. So important was it that Milton was 
specially engaged by the Independents to write the rejoinder. This he 
called Eikonohlastes, or the Image-breaker ; but though he showed all 
his usual skiU and eloquence, and spared no pains to vilify the dead 
monarch, it is doubtful whether his efi'orts did much to destroy the 
favourable impression caused by the original publication. 

Three peers, Hamilton, Holland, and Capel, as responsible for the 
second civil war, followed their master to the scaffold. 

CHIEF DA TES. 







A.D. 


Execution of Strafford, 


. 


1641 


Attempt to seize the Five 


Members, 


1642 


First Civil War, . 


. 


1642-1646 


Second Civil War, 


• 


1648 


Pride's Purge, 


. 


1648 


Charles beheaded, 


. 


. Jan. 30, 1649 



CHAPTEE IV 

THE COMMONWEALTH AND PKOTECTORATE 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 

France. Simin. 

Loi;is XIV., d. 1715. Philip iv., d. 1662. 

The Commonwealth — Wars in Scotland, Ireland, and with the Dutch — Expulsion 
of the 'Rump' — Barebone's Parliament — The Instrument of Government — 
The Petition and Advice — Death of Cromwell — Events which led to the 
Restoration. 

Whatever may be thought of the moral right of the 'high court of 
justice ' to condemn Charles and put him to death, there is little doubt 
pfP t f that in doing so the leaders of the Independent party made 
Charles' a great political mistake. Both as a sovereign and as a 
prisoner, Charles had completely discredited himself; but 
his violent death, and the almost universal sympathy caused by his 
bearing at his trial and execution, removed the chief obstacle to the 
rallying of all moderate men, whether churchmen or Presbyterians, round 
the principle of hereditary monarchy. Ever since the reign of Edward i., 
each hereditary king had dated his reign from the death of his pre- 
decessor, and as an act of parliament lately passed, which forbade the 
proclamation of a new king, had no constitutional claim to validity, the 
Prince of Wales at once stepped into the position of king de, jure. Since 
the expulsion of the Presbyterians in 1648 had thrown them also into 
opposition, the party in power had consisted only of Independents and 
Sectaries, and made no pretence of being a majority of the nation. So 
long, however, as the army remained united, no open opposition seemed 
possible. 

Immediately after the execution of the king, the Commons carried out 

the logical consequence of their claim that ' the people are under God, 

the original of all just power,' by voting that the House of 

House of _ I'll' 

Lords Lords 'is useless, dangerous, and ought to be abolished. 

Henry Marten moved to omit the word ' dangerous,' but it 

was thought that insult without satire would suffice, and the resolution 

686 



1649 The Commonwealth 587 

passed as it stood. They then resolved that government by a king 
or single person 'is unnecessary, burdensome, dangerous, and ought to 
be abolished'; and an act was passed declaring the people of England 
to be a commonwealth or free state. 

Having thus completed the work of destroying the old order of 
things, of which the House of Commons itself, remnant though it was, 
remained the only legal representative, parliament proceeded 
to arrange for the government of the country by creating Govern- 
a council of state, practically identical with a body known ^^^ ' 
as the Derby House committee, which, since the rupture with the Scots, 
had replaced the committee of the two kingdoms. It consisted of forty 
members, with Bradshaw as president, and included all the Independent 
peers, Fairfax, Cromwell, Vane, Whitelock, St. John, Marten, Hazelrig, 
Skippon and Scot, but not Ireton. Its ordinary secretary was Thurloe ; and 
for foreign tongues, John Milton. The great seal was entrusted to White- 
lock and two others ; Vane was chairman of the board of admiralty ; Blake, 
Deane, and Popham were made admirals of the fleet ; Fairfax was con- 
tinued lord-general, and Cromwell lieutenant-general, of the army. Of 
these, Whitelock, Vane, Blake, and Fairfax had all disapproved of the 
king's death, but were quite willing to take part in the new government 
which was to rejDlace monarchy. Six of the judges agreed to act under 
the new regime, and the other places were then filled up. Hardly were 
the new officials in their places when difficulties beset them on every side. 

A dangerous mutiny in the army claimed their first attention. This 
was the outcome of a movement of old date. Ever since the rendezvous 
on Triploe Heath, John Lilburne had been spreading opinions ^^^j^^ 
in the army which tended to the overthrow of all social and of the 

. 1 J. £ j.r, LeveUers. 

military order. He had written, for instance, that the 
officers were below the soldiers,' and his doctrines were eagerly adopted 
by hot-headed and enthusiastic men, who were called by their opponents 
Levellers, and were looking for an immediate realisation of the millennium 
and of the rule of the saints. The political views of the Levellers were 
embodied in a document styled The Agreement of the People, which 
was presented to the House of Commons in January, 1649. It demanded 
a redistribution of seats, followed immediately by a general election, and 
the creation of a government directly responsible to the new House of 
Commons. For some time Lilburne himself had been in the Tower ; but 
the dissatisfaction of some of the soldiers, who were ordered to Ireland, 
was seized on by his friends as offering a favourable opportunity for 
a general mutiny. Accordingly outbreaks occurred in London, at 
Banbury, and at Salisbury. The last was the most serious ; but Fairfax 



588 The Commonwealth 1649 

and Cromwell marched fifty miles one day to come up with the mutineers, 
surprised them at dead of night at Burford, in Oxfordshire, and com- 
pletely crushed them. Of the leaders, a cornet and two corporals were 
shot, the rest were pardoned and persuaded to return to their duty. 
Lilburne, however, still continued to agitate against the government, 
declaring that the Petition of Eight, Magna Carta, and other funda- 
mental laws were subverted, and 'the military power thrust into the 
very office and seat of civil authority.' In October he was prosecuted 
for stirring up treason in the army, but acquitted ; and there is no doubt 
that he represented a widespread feeling of discontent. 

Meanwhile, afiairs in Ireland were looking very serious. Ormond had 

secured the co-operation of Lord Inchiquin by promising the complete 

removal of the political and religious disabilities of the 

Irish Roman Catholics, security of tenure for the Connaught 

landholders, and the repeal of the law which forbade ' ploughing with 

horses by the tail.' The Presbyterians of Ulster had been alienated by 

the king's death. Numbers of English royalists, such as Sir Arthur 

Aston, had come over to lead Ormond's men. Prince Rupert, with the 

revolted fleet, was hovering ofi" the coast, and Prince Charles Avas on 

his way to the Channel Islands to put himself at the head of the allied 

forces. Dublin, under Michael Jones, and Dundalk, under George 

Monk, were almost alone in holding out ; and Dublin was besieged 

by Ormond with a force of 19,000 men. Accordingly Cromwell was 

Battle of asked to take the command, but before he reached Ireland 

Rathmines. )^q crisis was over. Though Dundalk had fallen, Dublin 

had been saved by the address of Jones, who, with but 5000 men, sallied 

forth on August 2, and utterly routed Ormond's forces in the battle of 

Rathmines. 

Defeated in the field, the allies decided to protract the war by 
compelling Cromwell to undertake a series of sieges. Against these 
tactics Cromwell took decisive measures. On September 10 he was at 
Sieee ot Drogheda, which was garrisoned by the flower of Ormond's 
Drogheda. English tr.oops, and some regiments of Irish Roman 
Catholics under the brave Sir Arthur Aston. On the next morning a 
practicable breach had been made. The first assaults were repulsed; 
but Cromwell, placing himself at the head of another storming party, 
carried the breach. Then, 'being in the heat of action,' and 
according to the harsh laws of war then in use, he commanded all 
armed men to be put to the sword. Hardly a man escaped ; and, 
besides the garrison, all the ' friars were knocked on the head pro- 
miscuously but two.' Cromwell himself seems to have felt compunction 



1650 



The Commonwealth 



589 



for his hasty act, and, writing to the parliament, expresses a hope that at 
any rate ' it may tend to prevent the effusion of blood in the future.' 
Probably it did ; for when a breach had been made, if not before. 




other garrisons surrendered; and only at Wexford, Kilkenny, and 
Clonmel was there any more serious fighting. Unhappily at Wexford 
the resistance of some soldiers in the market-place, after the breach had 
been carried, led to another massacre. The work of dealing with so 



590 The Commonwealth 1650 

many towns was, however, protracted, and it was not till March, 1650, 
that Cromwell, who had been hastily summoned home by the parliament, 
was able to hand over the completion of the work to Ireton. In the 
towns which surrendered at discretion, quarter was given to the privates ; 
but English officers who had ever before fought for the parliament were 
hanged or shot. The Irish ofl&cers were allowed to go free. Most of 
them took service abroad, and carried off with them 45,000 Irish soldiers. 
Most of the English soldiers took service under the parliament. At sea, 

Rupert's Blake ably seconded Cromwell's efforts ; and Prince Rupert, 

Fleet. finding Ormond's cause ruined, fled to Portugal, closely pur- 

sued by Blake. Ormond and Inchiqain escaped to the continent ; Owen 
Roe O'Neil died. The English forces suffered severely from exposure and 
from a fever, of which died Jones, the victor of Rathmines, and Horton, 
the victor of St. Fagans. Ireton held ofiice till 1651, when the fever 
claimed him as its victim. The command was temporarily taken by 
Ludlow, author of the Memoirs, who had succeeded Jones as lieutenant- 
general. He held this office till Fleetwood, who married Ireton's widow, 
came over as deputy. 

The cause of Cromwell's hasty recall was the threatening attitude of 
Scotland. Since the overthrow of the Engagers, Argyll's party had 
been in the ascendant ; but the execution of the king had 
met with no approval in Scotland, and the government 
had taken the decided step of offering the crown to the Prince of Wales 
as Charles ii. That prince, however, was by no means sure that his best 
course was to close with the offer, coupled as it was with the condition 
of taking the Covenant, so he granted a commission to Montrose to see 
what could be done towards reviving the old royalist party in the High- 

Montrose's lands. If Montrose failed, he could then fall back on Argyll. 

Death. Montrose's expedition ended in complete disaster. Landing 
in Caithness, he was set on by a force of Covenanters before he had time 
to gather supporters round him, and was utterly routed at Carbisdale, 
on the borders of Ross and Sutherland, and only escaped from the field 
to be captured in peasant disguise. Thus clad, he was taken to Edin- 
burgh, and hanged in the Grassmarket with every circumstance of 
disgrace. At the last, his noble and fearless bearing extorted the 
admiration even of his foes ; but the atrocities of his Irish and Highland 
followers were too fresh in the memory of Lowlanders for mercy to be 
found for their leader. 

Charles, therefore, fell back on his negotiations with the government, 
falsely denied that he had given Montrose a commission, signified his 
willingness to accept Argyll's conditions, and himself took ship for 



1650 The Commonwealth 591 

Scotland. In these circumstances the English council of state felt 
that war would inevitably follow, as it was not likely that Charles 
would rest satisfied as king of Scotland alone, and therefore 
they sent for Cromwell, meaning that Fairfax and he should and the 
carry the war into the enemy's country by an immediate ^°'^^"^"*- 
invasion of Scotland. Fairfax, however, did not agree with this policy, 
and asserted that 'human probabilities were not sufficient grounds to 
make war upon a neighbour nation, especially their brethren in Scotland, 
to whom they were engaged in a Solemn League and 
Covenant.' To this opinion he adhered, in spite of all that tion of 
Whitelock, Harrison, and Lambert could say to the con- ^*'''^^- 
trary ; so his resignation was accepted, and the post of lord-general was 
conferred on Cromwell, with Fleetwood, Lambert, and Monk as his 
principal officers. In July the English crossed the border, supported by 
a fleet on which it relied for provisions, as the Scots had cleared the 
Lowlands much as Wellington cleared Portugal in 1810. ^he Scottish 
Cromwell found the Scots drawn up behind a line of earth- Campaign. 
works stretching south from Leith, and resting on the extremity of the city 
near Holyrood House. There they lay under the command of David 
Leslie, with Leven acting as a volunteer ; and during the whole month 
of August Cromwell tried in vain to bring them to action, not neglecting, 
meanwhile, to endeavour by argument to prove the righteousness of his 
cause. Leslie, however, got the better of Cromwell in all the manoeuvres, 
and at length, baffled by Leslie's skill, and with an army worn out by 
constant exposure to the weather, Cromwell fell back on Dunbar. 
Thither he was followed by Leslie, who himself occupied the Hill of 
Doon, an outlying piece of the Lammermuir range which overlooked 
the town, and also sent a detachment to seize the pass of Cockburnspath, 
where the Lammermuirs themselves touch the coast, and where the 
Berwick road was so narrow that it could be held by a handful against 
a host. In these circumstances it seemed that Cromwell's only choice 
lay between surrender, the re-embarkation of his troops, and a hazardous 
attempt to storm the Scottish position, when the rashness of the Scots 
relieved him from his dilemma. 

The Hill of Doon, where the Scots lay, was divided from the plain on 
which Cromwell's men were drawn up by the channel of the Broxburn, 
a little stream which had worn out its channel to the depth Battle of 
of some forty feet below the level of the plain, and could ^""i'^''- 
only be crossed easily at a point between the hill and the sea near 
Broxmouth House, where the Dunbar and Berwick road crossed by a 
ford. Fearing that the English would escape, and probably urged on 



592 



The CommomveaUh 



1650 



by the committee of estates, Leslie foolishly moved a large part of his 
army down the hill in the direction of the sea. This movement was 
made on the afternoon of September 2, with a view to an attack on 
the English the next day. Cromwell, however, saw his advantage, and 
before daybreak half the English army, under Lambert and Monk, was 
hurrying across the burn near Broxburn House ; while a picked force of 
horse and foot crossed the burn nearer the sea, and, urged on by 
Cromwell himself, worked its way to the rear of the Scots, and cut off 




Crovnvcll's Attack at 6 a.m. 



Battle of DUNBAR. scon.^.. 
September 3rd. 1650. F,i<riisJi. 



I 1 



their retreat to Berwick. After a stubborn fight, the right wing of 
Leslie's army was routed, jammed up between the channel of the burn 
and the steep ascent of Doon Hill, forced back in confusion on the 
main body, and their disaster was completed by a general attack on the 
front. At nightfall on the 2nd, Leslie had regarded Cromwell as all 
but a prisoner ; by daybreak he himself was in full flight for Edinburgh, 
and his troops were scattered in all directions. From Dunbar, Cromwell 
returned to the city of Edinburgh, which opened its gates, though the 
castle held out till December, while the Scots retreated to a strong 



1651 The Commonwealth 593 

position near Stirling. After the rout of the strong Presbyterians at 
Dunbar, Charles gave his confidence to the remnant of the ' Engagers,' 
and to the royalists, and recruited his army from their ranks. On 
January 1 he was crowned at Scone, and as his position was unassail- 
able in front, and as he drew his supplies from the unplundered districts 
of the north, he seemed to be very strong. Cromwell, therefore, deter- 
mined to cut him off from his base of operations at Perth, and moved 
his troops across the Forth for that purpose, though he was well aware 
that by doing so he would leave the road to England undefended. 

Of this movement Charles took advantage, and in August 1651 he 
broke up his camp and set off by forced marches for England. His 
movement in no way disconcerted Cromwell, who at once 

li 3. rl G s ' 

despatched Lambert to hamper Charles' march, and himself march to 
followed with the main body, leaving Monk in command in "^ ^" " 
Scotland. Lambert did his work well, and by the time Charles reached 
Cheshire he was well in front of the royalist army. Finding his direct 
road to London barred by Lambert, and learning that so far from there 
being a rising in his favour the county militias were mustering, under 
Fleetwood and Fairfax, for the defence of the republic, Charles turned 
aside into the valley of the Severn, and took up his quarters at 
Worcester, where he was in a ftivourable position for gathering recruits, 
had they been forthcoming, from the old royalist districts. Meanwhile, 
under the direction of Fleetwood, the whole country was arming to 
overwhelm him. Fairfax, relieved from all scruples by a Scottish in- 
vasion, was hard at work in Yorkshire ; a rising of the earl of Derby 
was crushed in Lancashire, and within a month of his entering England, 
Cromwell was close to Worcester with an army of 30,000 men, for the 
most part militia, while Charles' forces all told did not number more 
than 11,000. 

The royalists, however, held no despicable position. Their main force 
was placed in the angle between the Severn and the Teme, holding the 
bridges over the two rivers, with outposts across them at Battle of 
Worcester and Powick, and they had destroyed the bridge Worcester, 
at Upton, some miles below the junction. Cromwell's operations had, 
therefore, to be conducted on an elaborate scale. Lambert's men re- 
paired Upton bridge, and Fleetwood and he crossed the Severn to 
attack Powick. Cromwell, with the main body, prepared to co-operate 
with them by means of a bridge of boats across the Severn and an attack 
on the fortifications of Worcester itself. On September 3, after four 
days of preparation, during which there was incessant skirmishing on 
both sides of the river, Cromwell was ready, and he and Fleetwood made 

2p 



694 



The Commonwealth 



1651 



a simultaneous attack on the main body of the Scots. It was com- 
pletely successful ; but for a moment a vigorous sally from Worcester, 
led by Charles in person, imperilled the safety of the troops on the 
eastern bank. Cromwell, however, galloped his men across the Severn 
bridge, and, leading them to the charge, beat back the royalists from 



BATTLE 




Fleetwood and Lambert fnarchiti^ on Poiuick Ci-onnccll 
moving- to cross the bridge 0/ boats over the Severn. 



' hedge to hedge until they beat them into Worcester.' This exploit 
decided the day. The Scots threw down their arms, and the English 
royalists fled for their lives. Hamilton (brother of the late duke), 
Lauderdale, Derby, and Leslie were captured, but Charles himself con- 
trived to escape. Though few royalists ventured to appear for him in 



1652 The Commonivealth 595 

arms, they were willing to run great risks to save him from the scafifold ; 
and, after six weeks spent in hairbreadth escapes, he took ship from 
Brighton and landed at Fecamp on October 17. The march on 
Worcester was much more serious in appearance than in reality. The 
reluctance of the royalist gentry to face the soldiers ruined his cause, 
just as a hundred years later the same feeling dashed the hopes of the 
Young Pretender ; while the indignation of Independents of all sections, 
approving or disapproving of the late king's death, at the invasion of 
the country by the Scots, enabled Cromwell to strike with full force. 
Of the English prisoners, Hamilton died of his wounds, and the earl of 
Derby was beheaded, Lauderdale and Leslie were imprisoned till the 
Kestoration ; but otherwise parliament showed itself merciful. As soon 
as the campaign was over Cromwell returned to London, and quietly 
resumed his duty of attending the various committees of state to which 
he belonged, bent on showing himself the efficient servant of the state 
either in war or in peace. 

While Cromwell had been fighting the royalists on land, a vigorous 
naval war had been prosecuted between the fleet of the Commonwealth 
and the royalist ships which had been to Ireland under the 
command of Prince Eupert. The hero of this war was ^^^ War. 
Kobert Blake, a Bridgewater man, born in 1599. He had Blake 
spent ten years at Oxford University, and had then pro- 
bably had some seafaring experience as a merchant. In the civil war he 
had fought as a foot-soldier in the sieges of Bristol, Lyme, and Taunton ; 
and after the retirement of Batten had been placed in virtual command 
of the fleet. He was remarkable for devotion to duty and for a steady 
determination to defend his country, whatever he might think of the 
details of state affairs. ' The business of a sailor,' he said, on one occa- 
sion, ' is not to meddle with matters of state, but to hinder foreigners 
from fooling us.' Blake pursued Eupert to the mouth of the Tagus, 
which for a time he blockaded, and then to the West Indies, and finally 
reduced him to such straits that Eupert gave up the game and sold his 
ships to the French government. Jersey and Guernsey were also reduced, 
and the American colonies, on receiving a visit from Ascue's men-of-war, 
also signified their acceptance of the new government ; so that by the 
close of 1652 parliament was fully recognised as the supreme authority 
wherever the British flag flew. 

Meanwhile, England had drifted into a war which taxed to the 
uttermost the resources of the republic. In the first burst of republican 
enthusiasm parliament had made an absurd proposal for a virtual amal- 
gamation of the English and Dutch republics,but nothing had come of 



596 The Commonwealth 1652 

it, and gradually the two nations drifted into war. The causes of their 
quarrel were of old standing, and based on commercial rivalry. In the 

War with East Indies there was bitter hostility between the Dutch 

the Dutch, ^j^^ ^j^g English factories. The Dutch regarded the English 
as intruders ; and in 1623 a number of English traders and seamen had 
been massacred at Amboyna. For years there had been a dispute 
whether Dutch vessels, meeting English ships in the Channel, ought 
to lower their flags in salute, as acknowledging the supremacy of Eng- 
land in the narrow seas. The Hague had been a refuge for exiled 
royalists, and Dr. Dorislaus, the English envoy, had been murdered 
there by some of Montrose's followers. Above all, the Dutch were 
bitterly off'ended by the passing of the Navigation Act, which, with 
some exceptions, forbade the importation of goods into England except 
in English ships, or in the ships of the country producing them. This Act 
was the work of Vane and Marten, and was designed partly to strengthen 
the English navy, which they wisely saw was of paramount importance 
for an island state, partly to take away from the Dutch the valuable 
carrying trade on which much of their prosperity depended. This law 
was naturally resented by the Dutch, and the ill-will between the sailors 
led to severe fighting, even before war was formally declared. 

Accordingly on May 19, 1652, off Dover, a stubborn fight was 
fought between Blake, with twenty sail, and the Dutch admiral. Van 

The Fight- Tromp, with forty, in which the Dutch lost two ships. In 
r ing at Sea. July parliament declared war, and Blake soon filled the 
harbours of the Channel with prizes taken from the Dutch, In Sep- 
tember an indecisive battle was fought between Blake and the Dutch 
admirals, De Kuyter and De Witt. In November, Blake, with forty- 
two ships, again encountered Van Tromp, with ninety, off" Dungeness, 
but, after fighting eight hours, was glad to escape under cover of the 
night with the loss of five ships. So serious was the blow, that the 
Dutch talked of blockading the Thames ; and Tromp was reported to be 
carrying a broom at his masthead — a sign of his intention to sweep the 
English fleet from the sea ; but the courage of the council of state rose 
superior to disaster, and a new fleet was fitted out and sent to sea 
under Blake, Dean, and Monk, who had returned from Scotland on sick 
leave. For three days — 18th, 19th, and 20th of February — the English 
men-of-war battled with Tromp in a running fight from Portland Bill to 
Calais sands, took eleven ships of war and thirty merchantmen, and 
completely restored to Britain the lordship of the seas. It was now the 
turn of the Dutch to be discouraged ; but in May Tromp was again at 
sea with 108 sail, and on June 2 Monk and Dean attacked him. Dean 



1653 The CommomveaUh 597 

was slain by a cannon ball, but Monk, covering the body with his 
cloak to conceal the disaster, continued the action, and Blake, coming 
up next day, secured a complete victory, with the capture of seventeen 
ships. On July 31 a final encounter took place, when, Blake being 
ill on shore, Monk engaged the Dutch fleet off Lowestoft. Tromp was 
killed, and the Hollanders were completely routed, with the loss of no 
less than thirty ships. Thereupon the Dutch gave up the contest and 
sued for peace, which was concluded in terms most advantageous to 
England in April 1654. 

A year before this, however, the Long Parliament had ceased to sit. 
No sooner had the subjugation of the royalists been completed than 
there followed a recurrence of the disputes between the 

, . Unpopu- 

parliament and the army which had appeared at the close larity of 
of the first civil war. The chief causes of difi'erence were ^^ lament, 
the slow progress made in social and religious reforms, and the dilatori- 
ness of the members in fixing a date for their dissolution. On the one 
hand, the existing parliament was not likely to carry out either rapid 
or far-reaching reforms ; on the other, the army had had no experience 
of the difficulties of civil government. Moreover, it was not to be ex- 
pected that the members would be eager to resign their seats, and the 
most statesmanlike of them doubtless wished to secure that they should 
be succeeded by men who would carry out the general policy of their 
predecessors. Parliament, however, was by no means oblivious of the 
desires of the army. In November 1651 it fixed November 3, 1654 as 
the date of dissolution, and set apart one day a week for considering the 
best method of electing a new parliament ; and in February 1652 both 
the old royalists and the soldiers were secured from prosecutions by an 
act of oblivion for all ofi'ences committed before the battle of Worcester. 
Full provision was also made for the payment of the army. At the 
same time, the soldiers were alarmed by the evident desire of the House 
to decrease the army. Some of them, such as Major-General Har- 
rison, were opposed to any government which they regarded as a 
hindrance to the establishment of the rule of Christ and his saints, 
which they spoke of as the Fifth Monarchy. In these circumstances the 
proceedings of parliament were jealously watched by the officers. 

At length, in August 1652, a bill was brought into the House for 
making the new House of Commons consist of four hundred members. 
All the existing members were to keep their seats as of ^^^ p^^_ 
right, and were to have a veto in the election of new mem- petuation 
bers. These provisions excited the greatest irritation in the 
army, and the measure was denounced as a ' Perpetuation Bill' How- 



598 The Commonwealth 1653 

ever, with a view to a compromise, meetings were held at the Speaker's 
house between the leading officers and Vane, Whitelock, and other mem- 
bers of parliament ; and at one held on April 19, 1653, a sort of under- 
standing was arrived at that the bill should not be proceeded with until 
a further conference had been held. However, next morning the 
House was proceeding to pass the bill. Word of this was brought to 
Cromwell. Dressed in civilian costume, he went down to the House and 
took with him a company of soldiers, whom he left in the lobby while he 
himself, as a member, entered the House. For some time he listened to 
the debate ; but then calling Harrison, who was also a member, to him, 
he told him that 'he must do it,' and after a few moments more he 
stood up and addressed the House on the motion for the third reading of 
the bill. For a time he spoke quietly ; but then launched out into 
violent abuse, first of the House, and then of individuals,— especially 
singling out Marten, Whitelock, and Vane. Sir Peter Wentworth 
complained that his language was unparliamentary, when Cromwell 
shouted, ' Come, come, sir ; I will put an end to your prating ' : stamped 

^ , . a signal to the soldiers to come in, turned the members out, 
Expulsion ^ _ ' ' 

of the ordered a soldier ' to remove that bauble,' as he styled the 

mace, and when the House was cleared, locked the door and 
put the key in his pocket. Next morning some royalist wag affixed a 
notice, ' This house is to let now unfurnished.' Whether Cromwell's 
act was premeditated, or an impulse of the moment, it is impossible to 
say ; but it had hardly been done before the difficulties of the new situation 
became obvious. Not that the House was in itself popular. It was 
probably disliked by the mass of the army : it certainly was not loved by 
the royalists, whether Cavaliers or Presbyterians ; but at any rate it had a 
legal origin, and was the only bulwark against martial law. Its expulsion, 
therefore, was regarded by most lawyers with great apprehension. That 
very afternoon Bradshaw told Cromwell that no power but parliament 
itself could vote its dissolution. Statesmen such as Vane, Hazelrig, and 
Marten were deeply offended. Even the army was by no means united. 
Monk acquiesced, but did not approve. Ludlow, in Ireland, expressed 
strong disapprobation. Many were of opinion that Cromwell's action 
was only a step in the direction of creating a government ' with some- 
what monarchical in it,' a preference for which he had already hinted. 

For the moment, therefore, Cromwell had to rely on his personal 
friends in the army — such as Desborough, his brother-in-law, and Fleet- 
Barebone's wood, his son-in-law, who had married Ireton's widow, and 
Parliament. ^^^^^ Harrison and other Fifth Monarchy men ; and by 
their advice letters were sent by the council of officers to the Independent 



1653 The CommonioeaUli 



599 



ministers throughout the three kingdoms, ordering them to consult with 
their congregations, and to send up the names of such persons, ' faithful 
fearing God and hating covetousness,' whom they considered to be fitted 
to sit in parliament, and of these one hundred and thirty-nine were 
invited by Cromwell to attend him at Whitehall. 

On July 4 the Little Parliament, often known as Barebone's Parlia- 
ment—from Praise-God Barbon, one of the members for London— met. It 
cannot be denied that the new assembly contained many members of 
great ability, and that the mass of the members were thoroughly desirous 
of doing their duty. Among others were Fleetwood, Monk, Edward 
Montague (afterwards earl of Sandwich), Blake, and Sir Antony Ashley 
Cooper ; Cromwell, Lambert, Harrison, and Desborough were requested 
by the members to join their deliberations. Honest, however, as the 
members were, they had little idea of practical politics, its Pro. 
The reform of the law had long been an object of interest posals. 
to the soldiers, and the Long Parliament had appointed a committee of 
lawyers to consider the matter, but its members had been so wedded to 
legal formalities that they had deliberated for three months without being 
able to define the word ' incumbrance.' The new parliament rushed to 
the other extreme. They appointed a committee to reform the law which 
did not contain a single lawyer. In regard to the reform of judicial 
proceedings, they were equally precipitate ; for, finding that the Court of 
Chancery was hopelessly in arrear, they abolished it altogether. The 
incidence of tithes being often oppressive, they too were abolished ; and 
some patrons of livings being found to present unsuitable persons, the 
right of private patronage was also done away with. Such folly excited 
the fear of some and the ridicule of others ; but it must not be forgotten 
that in many respects the parliament of saints showed itself far more in 
accord with modern ideas than its successors for nearly two centuries. 
It wished to establish county courts for the recovery of small sums ; to 
do away with imprisonment for debt ; decided to pay the judges by 
salaries instead of fees ; to register births, deaths, and marriages ; to 
register titles to landed property ; and to carry out a number of reforms 
which, at the present day, have either been formally adopted, or, at any 
rate, recognised as desirable. 

These reforms were the work of the Anabaptist party in the House, 
who, led by Harrison, outvoted the more sober members of the Inde- 
pendent party, and had the effect of alarming the lawyers. Dissolution 
the clergy, and the country gentry, who clearly saw that no bone's 
species of vested interest would be secure from the attacks Parliament, 
of such ardent reformers, and who, therefore, united to overwhelm all 



600 Tlie Commonwealth 1653 

the acts of the ' Little Parliament ' in a torrent of ridicule and ahuse. 
The opposition members, therefore, combined to put a stop to the pro- 
ceedings, and, filling the House at an unusually early hour, decided to 
resign their powers into Cromwell's hands. This was done ; and the rest of 
the House having acquiesced, the sitting came to an end on December 13. 
The event was celebrated by the lawyers of the Inns of Court with 
exuberant rejoicings. 

Three days later, a new constitution, devised by Lambert and em- 
bodied in the Instrument of Government, was accepted by the council 
of officers. In it the executive and legislative powers were 
ment of " distributed between a Protector, a council of state, and a 
^"nt'^" parliament. Cromwell was named Protector, and was to be 

general by sea and land. He was, however, to decide 
questions of war and peace by the advice of the council of state, and in 
case of war, parliament was to be immediately summoned. The 
members of the council of state were also named in the instrument : and 
the chief were Lambert, Desborough, Montague, Skippon, Antony 
Ashley Cooper, and six others. On the death of any of these, the 
vacancy was to be filled up by the Protector from a list of six names 
chosen by parliament. All legislative power was reserved to parliament, 
but the Protector might suspend the coming into operation of any act 
for twenty days. Parliaments were to be elected by the new con- 
stituencies proposed by the Long Parliament, in accord with the Agree- 
ment of the People. They were to be held every third year ; but no 
parliament was to be dissolved till it had sat five months. By these 
arrangements it was hoped to combine the freedom of republican institu- 
tions with the practical efficiency of a single sovereign acting through a 
cabinet. In reality, except when parliament was sitting, it gave almost 
unlimited power to the Protector. Cromwell at once accepted the post 
of Protector, and was solemnly inaugurated in Westminster Hall, Lam- 
bert taking the leading share in the ceremony. 

This change, which obviously brought Cromwell a step nearer to the 
restoration of monarchy, was bitterly resented, not only by those states- 
Public lonen who had disapproved of the dissolution of the Long 
Opinion, Parliament, but also by such men as Harrison, who be- 
lieved themselves to have been gulled by Cromwell, The statesmen 
Cromwell treated as comparatively harmless ; but Harrison and other 
army men were deprived of their commands and placed in confinement. 
It was, however, approved by lawyers such as Whitelock, who had 
trembled before the reformers of the ' Little Parliament,' and by clergy 
anxious for their tithes ; while the mass of the country, if they could 



1653 The Protectorate GOl 

not restore the Stuarts, were thankful for any government which held 
out hopes of peace and security. From this date, however, Cromwell 
was never free from plots against his life. The first was organised by 
Vowell and Gerard in 1654 ; and from that nothing but the vigilance of 
his spies, and his own precautions against attack, secured him from assas- 
sination. It had been arranged that the first Protectorate parliament 
should meet on September 8, 1654, and, during the eight months which 
had still to pass, Cromwell and his council of state ruled supreme. 

The interval was employed to recommend the new government to the 
country by a series of measures, which were designed to crom u 
contrast with those of the Long Parliament by their rapidity >" power, 
and efficiency, and with those of the Little Parliament by their moderation. 

Foremost among the questions which called for the attention of Crom- 
well was the state of the church. There anarchy reigned supreme. In 

1645 the Presbyterian majority in parliament, actintr under 

,^ n 11 1 -r. 1 • • Religion, 

pressure irom the bcots, had accepted Presbyteriamsm as 

the national form of church government, and had replaced the Book 
of Common Prayer by the Directory, an authoritative book of directions 
for the conduct of public worship and preaching, but containing no set 
form of prayers. The new rules, however, met with slight acceptance. 
Only in London, Hull, Coventry, and some of the larger towns, and 
in Lancashire and the eastern counties, were the parishes organised 
on the Presbyterian model; and the compulsory subscription of the 
Solemn League and Covenant by the clergy was used in practice merely as 
a convenient way of getting rid of the king's supporters. After the fall of 
the Presbyterians in 1648, no attempt was made to enforce their system, 
to which the Independents were bitterly opposed ; and under their rule 
each congregation did, in practice, what it liked, and numbers of the 
Church of England clergy retained their livings and used part, at any 
rate, of the Book of Common Prayer. Other livings were held by Pres- 
byterians, others by Independents proper, and some by ministers of other 
varieties of Protestant views. Parliament had abolished the obligation 
of subscribing the Covenant, and replaced it by The En- . The En- 
gagement, which merely bound men to ' be true and faithful gagement. 
to the government established without king and house of lords.' 
Many clergymen were willing to take this, and others who were not 
willing were left undisturbed by the goodwill of their parishioners. By 
one clause in the Instrument of Government it was provided 'that such as 
profess faith in God by Jesus Christ (though diff'ering in judgment from the 
doctrine, worship, or discipline publicly held forth) shall not be restrained 
from, but shall be protected in, the profession of the faith and exercise of 



602 The Protectorate 1653 

their religion, so as they abuse not this liberty to the civil injury of others, 
and to the actual disturbance of the public peace on their parts ; pro- 
vided this liberty be not extended to popery or prelacy, nor to such as, 
under the profession of Christ, hold forth and practise licentiousness.' 
By another, the revenues of the clergy were secured to them until other 
arrangements were made. Liberty of thought, and, to some extent, 
freedom of action, were thus secured ; but it was no part of Cromwell's 
policy to permit unworthy men to occupy the parish pulpits, and to 
guard against this evil he adopted a twofold machinery. By an 
ordinance, issued on March 20, 1654, he created a body of 

The Triers 

thirty-five Triers, whose business was to inquire into the 
personal character and sufficiency of all such persons as were named by 
patrons to hold vacant livings. The Triers included Presbyterians, 
Independents, and Anabaptists, and, as was natural enough. Episco- 
palians who weye nominated met with harsh treatment at their hands. 
Still, in the main, they seem to have performed their difficult and 
delicate duties with success ; and Baxter, who was no flatterer, records, 
' that many thousands of souls blessed God for the faithful ministers 
they let in.' By a second ordinance, issued on August 30, 1654, commis- 
sioners were appointed in each county for ejecting scandalous ministers. 
These commissioners were chosen from those of the local gentry who 
supported the parliament, and, though no sufficiently clear distinction 
was drawn between addiction to frivolous amusements and immoral- 
ity, devotion to the Prayer-book and to the cause of the Stuarts, they 
seem to have performed their delicate and difficult duties with fair success. 
The state of the law-courts next engaged Cromwell's atten- 
^^' tion. Colonel Pride had ' wished to see the lawyers' gowns 
hanging up in Westminster Hall by the side of the trophies and colours 
taken at Dunbar,' and others had talked of the volume of the law being 
reduced to such a bulk that it might be contained in a pocket-book ; 
while the disgraceful state of chancery business was a matter of general 
complaint. Cromwell, therefore, appointed a mixed committee to take 
the matter in hand ; and, to relieve the Court of Chancery, ordered that 
equity suits should be tried in other law-courts until the whole of 
the arrears had been wiped off. 

In Ireland Cromwell's general policy was to uphold the English con- 
nection at all hazards, and to compel the native Irish to conform to 
English ideas. He appointed first his son-in-law, Fleet- 
wood, and then his own son, Henry Cromwell, to act as 
deputy. They ruled with a stern hand. In accordance with the 
scheme of the Long Parliament all who had been engaged in the 



1654 The Protectorate 603 

massacres of 1641 were hanged or banished, and their property confis- 
cated ; unfriendly Catholics lost two-thirds of their estates ; open 
fighters against the parliament were to lose the whole, but to receive 
compensation in Connaught to one-third of their value. These measures 
afi'ected only the landowning gentry, for ' all husbandmen, ploughmen, 
labourers, artificers, and others of tlie meaner sort were left undisturbed 
and exempted from either question or punishment.' The forfeited lands 
were divided among the Adventurers who had lent money T^g Adven- 
for the war and the Cromwellian soldiery. The new turers. 
settlers, like the Ulstermen, were, for the most part, vigorous improvers 
of the country, but the confiscation of much of the land was as unjust 
as it had been in 1608. Cromwell was as determined as Chichester or 
Strafford to enforce the impartial administration of the law, and to main- 
tain security for life and property. In this he succeeded, but the 
animosity of all English parties to the Eoman Catholics resulted in the 
proscription of the Catholic religion and the persecution of the priests. 
As he wrote to the governor of New Ross in 1649 : ' I meddle not with 
any man's conscience, but if by liberty of conscience you mean liberty 
to exercise the mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing and to let you 
know where the parliament of England have power that will not be 
allowed.' In the existence of a separate Irish parliament Cromwell 
recognised a constant danger to unity. The separate Irish parliament 
was abolished, and it was arranged that Ireland should send thirty 
members to the united parliament of the three kingdoms. 

After the Dutch war was over, George Monk returned to the com- 
mand of the army of Scotland, and carried out the union of England and 
Scotland which had been designed by the Long Parliament. ^ ^, , 

1 TT- 1 1 1 Scotland. 

His chief military difficulty lay in subduing the Highlands, 
where General Middleton was still fighting for the king. However, with 
the aid of Colonel Morgan, he carried out a brilliant piece of mountain 
warfiire and completely reduced the clansmen to subjection. Presby- 
terianism ceased to be the established religion, and there was complete 
freedom of toleration for all Protestant faiths. The union with England 
was most advantageous to Scottish trade, which shared thereby the 
l)enefit of the Navigation Acts, and especially of free trade with the 
English colonies ; and Cromwell's rule was long looked back on as a 
period of great peace and prosperity for that country. Nevertheless the 
union was bitterly hated in Scotland, and toleration was regarded as a 
wicked paltering with error and sin. 

In foreign aftairs Cromwell showed his moderation by making peace 
with the Dutch, in spite of those who wished to make a complete 



604 The Protedm^ate 1654 

conquest of that country, and his firmness by insisting on the terms 
offered to the Portuguese, who had incurred his displeasure by aiding 
Foreign Prince Eupert. These were finally signed on the very day 
Affairs. when Dom Pantaleone Sa, the ambassador's brother, was 
beheaded in London for the murder of an Englishman. Thus, both at 
home and abroad, Cromwell proved himself to be a vigorous and 
successful administrator. 

On September 3, 1654, the first Protectorate parliament met. Ac- 
cording to the plan devised by the Long Parliament, and embodied in 
the Instrument of Government a comi)lete redistribution of 

First 

Protectorate seats had been carried out ; and the four hundred members 
for England had been allotted according to population : 
Yorkshire and Essex returning respectively fourteen and thirteen 
members, as against their former two, and other counties and boroughs 
in proportion ; while the thirty members for Scotland and thirty for 
Ireland represented the unity of the three kingdoms. The elder 
republicans, however, such as Sir Harry Vane and Henry Marten, 
refused to take part in it ; Lord Grey of Groby, Ludlow, and Wildman 
the Leveller, were debarred from election ; but Sir Arthur HazeMg, 
Bradshaw, and Scot were members, and insisted on debating the 
advisability of ' government by a single person,' taking as their principle 
that the powers of the Protector ought to emanate from parliament. 
This was to strike at the very root of the settlement embodied in the 
Instrument of Govermnent, which made the powers of the parliament 
and the Protector co-ordinate ; and Cromwell found it necessary, after 
addressing the members in the Painted Chamber, to exact a pledge from 
each of them that he would not attempt to alter the existing form of 
government. About two hundred and thirty members accepted the 
pledge, but even they continued to debate the Instrument clause by 
clause, to the exclusion of other business, even that of voting supplies 
for the army and navy. Indeed, the only other business for which they 
found leisure was that of persecuting two unfortunate men — Biddle, a 
Unitarian, and Naylor a Quaker, whose views gave umbrage to the mem- 
bers. So unsatisfactory was their attitude that, on the very day they had 
sat five lunar months, Cromwell dismissed them — on January 22, 1655. 

The evidence which the sittings of the first Protectorate parliament 

had given of the want of agreement between the republicans and the 

Royalist Crouiwellians encouraged the royalists and the levellers, 

^^°*^" and a series of plots followed. In March, at Salisbury, 

Penruddock and Wagstaffe attempted to seize the judges on circuit ; 

Sir Henry Slingsby, a Yorkshire knight, was involved in another plot ; 



1655 The Protectorate 605 

and Wildman was arrested in the act of dictating an address desio-ned 
for an army of insurgent levellers. Difficulties also were raised by 
lawyers, such as Whitelock, nervously apprehensive of an unconstitu- 
tional position ; while practical men, like Cony and Sir Peter Went- 
worth, refused to pay taxes which had not received parliamentary 
sanction. In these circumstances, Cromwell practically assumed the 
powers of a dictator. He crushed the rising by force ; Penruddock, 
Wagstafte, and Slingsby were executed for treason ; the objections of 
Cony and Wentworth were overridden by courts of law selected by the 
Protector, To provide against future disorder, England was divided into 
eleven military districts, over each of which a friend of his own was 
placed with the title of major-general ; and, in defiance of the Act of 
Indemnity, a ten per cent, tax for the maintenance of them and their 
soldiers was exacted from the royalist gentry. By these measures peace 
at home was again secured. But Cromwell's arbitrary acts were con- 
demned as well by the royalists as by the parliamentary republicans; 
and it was made clearer than ever that the real basis of his power was 
the devotion and efficiency of the army, and that his rule was nothing 
more or less than military despotism. Besides these severe measures 
against the royalists, Cromwell also increased the stringency of the 
regulations affecting the dispossessed Episcopalian clergy, whom he 
naturally suspected of organising opposition to his rule. It was now 
made penal for any dispossessed minister to hold the office of private 
chaplain, to preach, to administer the sacraments, to use the Prayer- 
book, or to teach in a public or private school. 

Meanwhile, war had begun with Spain. Actuated partly by religious 
bigotry, partly by the desire of expanding English trade, Cromwell had 
demanded of the king of Spain the right of free trade with war with 
the West Indies, and exemption of Englishmen from the Spam, 
laws of the Inquisition — a demand which elicited from the Spanish 
ambassador the reply : ' That his master had but two eyes, and that 
Cromwell had asked him to put out both at once.' Though war 
was not formally declared against England by Spain till February 1656, 
hostilities began at once ; and in the autumn of 1654 two expeditions 
were sent out— one, under Penn and Venables, for the West Indies, and a 
second, under Blake, for the Mediterranean Sea. San Domingo, against 
which Penn and Venables sailed, beat off the English ; but the rich 
sugar island of Jamaica was captured, and has remained in our hands 
ever since. Blake first gave his attention to the Barbary Blake at 

_ Tunis 

pirates of Algiers and Tunis. After bringing the Dey of 

Algiers to terms, he sailed into Tunis harbour, dismantled the forts, and 



606 The Protectorate 1655 

burnt every one of the Dey's nine cruisers, thus showing the whole 
world what an efficient thing naval artillery was in enforcing attention 
to the commands of a maritime power. 

No sooner was war formally declared, than Blake made it his business 
to intercept the Plate fleet, which annually sailed across the Atlantic 
The Plate with the spoils of the Spanish mines, and formed as 
Fleet. important an event in Spanish commerce as the safe arrival 

of the spice fleet was for that of the Dutch. The fleet sailed from 
Panama to Teneriff'e, and there waited in the harbour of Santa Cruz till 
word was brought that the road was clear to Cadiz. In 1628 Peter 
Hein, the Dutchman, had been lucky enough to capture this treasure 
fleet, and to repeat his exploit was the dream of successive generations 
of Dutch and English sailors. After a long and fruitless wait, how- 
ever, Blake returned to England ; but in March 1656 he was again 
at sea, having as his colleague Edward Montague, afterwards earl of 
Sandwich. After insisting on the king of Portugal's paying the 
indemnity due for his aid to Eupert, they took up their station off 
Cadiz, and waited events. At last, in September, nine galleons 
appeared, and were furiously attacked by Captain Stayner's ship and 
two frigates, who sunk or burnt or took at least six of them, with no 
less than £600,000 worth of gold and silver. After this Montague 
returned home ; but Blake remained, and, in April 1657, he heard that 
sixteen Spanish galleons were anchored in the harbour of Santa Cruz, 
Blake at under the Peak of Teneriffe. Thither he sailed, and on 

Santa Cruz, ^p^.^ 20, in defiance of the forts which commanded its 
entrance, he took his ships into the harbour, and in a few hours captured 
the galleons. As it was impossible to take them out for want of men, he 
burnt the whole of them, and sailed out of the harbour without the loss 
of a single ship. Such a splendid exploit roused the enthusiasm of 
Englishmen of all parties. Clarendon, the royalist historian, described 
it as miraculous, and quoted it as an example of what could be done by 
the 'strong resolution of bold and courageous men.' It was Blake's 
crowning victory, and on his way home he died, leaving behind him 
a noble reputation for bravery, ability, and devotion to his country, 
unsullied by any taint. 

In 1656 Cromwell again called a parliament, as he did not wish to be 
thought an arbitrary ruler, and was desirous of securing for the Protectorate 

something of a parliamentary sanction. He also required 
Protectorate money for the Spanish war. To avoid the difficulties 

of the last parliament, Vane, Bradshaw, and Ludlow 
were cautioned not to interfere, and after the elections Sir Arthur 



1658 The Protectorate 607 

Hazelrig and Scot, with about ninety other elected members, were 
debarred from taking their seats. On the other hand, to conciliate 
public opinion, the military districts were abolished. Parliament met 
in September 1656. For some months business proceeded quietly, 
and in January Cromwell's supporters brought forward the idea of 
making him king. The suggestion was adopted by the House, as it 
would have the advantage of restoring the old framework of govern- 
ment and law, of which a king was assumed to be the head, and also 
because it would have secured Cromwell's officials from prosecution for 
high treason in event of a restoration, since they would have been pro- 
tected by the de facto statute of Henry vii. (see page 384), according to 
which no one could be prosecuted for treason for holding office under a 
king who was actually reigning. The resolution for kingsJiip was carried 

by 123 to 62, and the new constitution was embodied in a _ 

. . . . The 

document called the Humble Petition and Advice. By it Petition and 

the old political constitution of England, with the changes 

introduced by the Long Parliament before the war, was practically 

restored. In addition to the House of Commons, Cromwell was also 

authorised to create a second chamber. 

From the first, however, it is probable that Cromwell was aware that it 
would never do for him to accept the petition as it stood. The idea of 
reviving monarchy pleased the lawyers and the civilians, but it was most 
offensive to the soldiers, who felt that they would indeed have shed their 
blood in vain to pull down King Charles to set up ' King Noll ' ; and 
without the support of the army, he well knew that he could not reign a 
day. Accordingly, while he accepted the proposed constitution, he 
declined the title of king ; and the new form of government was 
solemnly inaugurated on June 26. According to the Petition and 
Advice, Cromwell was allowed to name his successor. This annoyed 
Lambert, the chief author of the Instrument of Government, and as 
he refused to take the oath of allegiance to Cromwell, he was de- 
prived of his command. Vane, on the other hand, was released from 
custody. 

In January 1658 parliament, which had been adjourned, reassembled 
in a reorganised form, including not only those members who had been pre- 
vented from taking their seats in 1656, but also a new House ^^^y^^^^^^ 
of Lords, nominated by the protector. The new Lords had 
among them the earl of Manchester, Viscount Lisle, Whitelock, Nathanit'l 
Fiennes, Fleetwood, Desborough, Pride, Skippon, Monk, and Oliver St. 
John ; but it never secured recognition from the other House ; and 
Hazelrig, who had himself declined to sit in it, led an attack on its position. 



608 The Protectorate 1658 

Finding, therefore, that there was no prospect of a peaceful session, 
Cromwell dissolved the house on February 4. 

He was now at liberty to return to foreign affairs. Under the mistaken 

idea that Spain was the power whose predominance was to be feared, 

Cromwell joined France in its struggle against Spain. So 

with desirous however were Louis xiv. and Mazarin to secure 

his aid, that every honour was shown to Lockhart, the 
English ambassador ; and when Cromwell declared that he would have 
no dealings with the duke of Savoy until he desisted from the persecution 
of his Protestant subjects, whose cause had been pleaded by Milton in a 
stirring sonnet, Mazarin took care that Cromwell's demands received com- 
plete satisfaction. Accordingly in March 1657 an offensive and defensive 
alliance was made with France. The object of the alliance was to capture 
from the Spaniards the frontier towns of Mardyke and Dunkirk ; and to 
aid in the attack, 6000 English soldiers, ' in new red coats,' commanded by 
Morgan, Monk's right-hand man in the Highland wars, and directed by 
Lockhart, were sent over to join the French. The New Model soldiers 

Battle of ^^^^ ^ proof of their capacity at the storming of Mardyke ; 

the Dunes, r^^^^ jj^ ^\^q "battle of the Dunes, fought near Dunkirk in 
June 1658, the chief share both of fighting and glory fell to their share. 
As a fruit of this victory, Dunkirk was taken and placed in the hands of 
the English, giving England thereby not only a foothold on the con- 
tinent, but an excellent place from which to strike a blow at the flank 
of any French force which designed to march through the Netherlands 
against Holland. 

This achievement was the last in Cromwell's career. Ever since he 
had suffered from ague, in the Scottish campaign, his health had been 

Cromwell's OH the decline ; and, though only between fifty and sixty, 

Death. j^^ j^^^ ^^^ some years looked an old man. In the summer 

of 1658 his favourite daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, died. His unre- 
mitting attention to her during her illness still further undermined 
his strength, so that when his ague returned in September he was 
unable to rally, and, on September 3, the anniversary of his victories of 
Dunbar and Worcester, and in the midst of a fearful tempest of rain and 
wind, the great Protector passed away. Oliver Cromwell, though not 
gifted with one of those rare intellects which grasp the whole signifi- 
cance of political events, showed himself pre-eminently capable of 
grasping the situation at any given moment, and seeing what, under the 
circumstances, ought to and could be done. His military genius was 
shown rather in his organisation of a fighting force, and in a pre-eminent 
ability for tactics, than in far-sighted strategy. He never saw far ahead 



1659 The Protectorate 



609 



either in politics or war, but belonged to the class of statesmen to whom 
the word ' opportunist ' is most properly applied. When he had become 
the leader of the country he showed his sagacity and practical 
wisdom by the moderation of his acts ; but he failed to make his rule 
permanent, because an attempt to govern the majority of a nation by 
a minority, supported by an armed force, can, in the nature of things, 
only be transitory ; and there is little doubt that a freely elected 
parliament, any time after the beginning of the war, would have given 
a majority— possibly to the royalists— certainly to the royalists and 
Presbyterians combined. 

It is not certain whether Cromwell omitted to nominate a successor, 
or whether during a ' drowsy fit ' he named his eldest son Richard ; but 
the council acted on the supposition that Eichard had Richard 
been legally nominated, and, accordingly, he was in- Cromwell, 
augurated Protector, It was unfortunate for the Cromwell family that 
the second son Henry, who was a capable soldier and an experienced 
statesman, could not have succeeded ; for Richard, though he was a 
kindly and agreeable man, was neither a soldier, a statesman, nor 
a zealot, and so failed to win the support of any of the classes to whom 
his father's character had appealed. He was not, however, without 
friends. Whitelock thought his accession favourable to constitutional 
government ; the Presbyterian Baxter considered it a point in his favour 
that he had no share in the civil war ; and had he been a stronger man the 
chances were not altogether unfavourable to his success. 

His accession, therefore, passed off without disturbance ; but when his 

first parliament met, in January 1659, his difficulties began. With a 

view to securing the utmost show of legality, the English _,.,_, 

o o -" _ o Third Pro- 

members were elected, not by the newly organised con- tectorate 

stituencies, but by the old ones ; the Irish and Scottish 
members, however, were chosen by the new. No one was excluded, so 
Vane, Hazelrig, Bradshaw, Scot, and Ludlow were all in it, and pro- 
ceeded at once to attack the new House of Lords, and to criticise the 
prerogatives of the Protector. The army itself was divided ; Fleetwood 
and Desborough, often spoken of, from Fleetwood's house, as the Walling- 
ford House party, wished to divide the civil and military powers of the 
Protector, and to make Fleetwood commander-in-chief. Lambert, who, 
to please the army, had been restored to his post, would have liked to 
be Protector himself. Vane acted with the Wallingford House party. 
Between these contending parties Richard's position was no sinecure, 
and when Fleetwood and Desborough came to him and gave him his 
choice whether he would trust the army or the parliament, and said that 

2 Q 



610 The Protectorate 1659 

if he did the former they would take care that he was provided for, 
he decided to trust to them, and dissolved parliament on April 22 before 
it had even voted supplies. 

The dissolution of parliament resulted in want of money to pay the 
soldiers ; and as Kichard was not strong enough to levy taxes as Oliver 
had done, a parliament of some kind was necessary. Accord- 
restores the ingly in May, the army, acting on Lambert's advice, 
restored the members of the Long Parliament who had been 
dismissed by Cromwell in 1653, an arrangement in which Richard 
Cromwell acquisced. In the restored Rump the old Commonwealth 
men — Vane, Bradshaw, Scot, and Hazelrig — were supreme. They were 
bent on restoring a republic, and, after making provision for the pay- 
ment of Richard Cromwell's debts, they insisted on his leaving Whitehall. 
He retired into private life ' not a sixpence the better or richer for being 
the son of his father.' 

These dissensions encouraged the royalists and Presbyterians, and a 
general rising was planned for August, in which it was hoped that 

Booth's a rising in England would be supported by Montague with 

Rising. |.j^g ^eet, and Monk with the army of Scotland. How- 
ever, it was only serious in Cheshire, where Sir George Booth, a great 
Cheshire squire and a Presbyterian, took the field with a considerable 
force ; but at Winnington Bridge he was utterly routed by Lambert, 
and neither Montague nor Monk declared for the cause. On his 
return to London, Fleetwood moved in the House to make Lambert 
major-general. The House refused, and when the army demanded that 
Fleetwood should be general, Desborough lieutenant-general, and Monk 
and Lambert major-generals, parliament dismissed Lambert and Des- 
borough from their posts, and made Fleetwood a merely nominal chief 
associated with a committee of six members of parliament. Next day 
Lambert marched down to Westminster, expelled the Rump, and created 
a committee of safety to manage the affairs of the kingdom till a com- 
mittee, of which Vane was the chief, should have devised a new 
constitution. 

All this time the proceedings of the army had been disapproved, both 
by Ludlow, whom the Rump had made commander in Ireland in place 

Monk ^^ Henry Cromwell, and by Monk, whom it had continued 

enters in command in Scotland. LudloAV came over to remonstrate, 

but without his troops. Monk, on the other hand, after 

declaring for the parliament, organised his army for an invasion of 

England and marched to the border. To meet him Lambert was 

despatched to Newcastle, but he weakly allowed Monk to gain time 



1660 The Commomvealth 611 

by negotiation; while Fairfax, who detested the rule of the army, 
raised the Yorkshire militia in his rear, and persuaded his soldiers to 
desert. Accordingly Lambert, finding his position hopeless, fell back, 
and Monk marched on towards London. On his way he saw plenty of 
evidence that the country was tired of the dissentions of the Rump and 
the army, and wished for a free parliament. However, he kept his own 
counsel, declaring that ' if his shirt knew what was in his head, he would 
burn his shirt ' ; and quietly took up his quarters in London, whence the 
old regiments had been removed by order of the parliament. 

Meanwhile, by request of Fleetwood, the Rump had resumed its 
sittings, and Monk, declaring himself the humble servant of the members 
announced his readiness to do their bidding. Encouraged by his attitude 
Hazelrig and the other Commonwealth men endeavoured to embroil him 
with the city, where the chief strength of the Presbyterians lay, by 
ordering him to pull down the gates of London in punishment for a 
declaration of the common council that as London had no representatives in 
the Rump, no more taxes should be paid till the vacancies had been filled 
up. Monk obeyed ; but the folly of the action convinced him that the 
cause of the Rump was hopeless, and immediately afterwards he joined the 
citizens in a demand for a free parliament. Monk's declara- The Long 
tion for a free parliament was decisive. What had long Parliament. 
been denied to mere popular clamour could not be refused to a man with 
an army at his back. The survivors of the members expelled by 
Pride in 1648 were restored, and they immediately voted a dissolution. 
Monk was made captain-general, Montague admiral of the fleet, Lam- 
bert was imprisoned in the Tower, and Vane in Carisbrook Castle. 
Thus ended the Long Parliament, which had existed since 1640 ; and 
for the first time for close on twenty years the voters had an opportunity 
of expressing their views at a free general election. As the writs ordering 
the elections were not issued by a king the assembly was called a Con- 
vention. The members were chosen by the old parliamentary consti- 
tuencies, and not by those arranged by Cromwell. 

On April 25 the Convention met. Its leading members were either 
Presbyterians or the sons of old cavaliers, while the Independent members 
were hardly proportionate to their numbers in the country. The Con- 
Against such an overwhelming majority Ludlow and mention. 
Hazelrig could do nothing. Bradshaw was dead ; an insurrection, led 
by Lambert, who escaped from the Tower, came absolutely to nothing ; 
and without the least hesitation, without even waiting, as Fairfax 
and Manchester would have preferred, to make terms, Charles was 
requested by the Convention to return. For a short time Monk had 



612 



The Commonwealth 



1660 



been in correspondence with him ; but it will always be a problem how 
long Monk had regarded a restoration as inevitable. As a soldier, his 
principle was that of Blake, to fight without question for his legitimate 
employers ; but the inefficiency first of Richard, then of the Long Parlia- 
ment, had convinced him that nothing was to be hoped from the continu- 
ance either of a Commonwealth or a Protectorate, and, his own feelings 
being monarchical, he had readily lent himself to forward a restoration. 
More important, perhaps, than all the political causes of the fall of the 
Commonwealth was the attempt of the puritanical party to compel men 
of all other opinions to conform to their standard of life and morality. 
The abolition of stage-plays in the towns, the removal of the Maypoles 
from the village-greens, the stern enforcement of a puritanical strictness 
in the observance of Sunday, made thousands wishful for a restoration 
who cared little about forms of government, and were no more admirers 
of Charles and Laud than was Oliver Cromwell himself. Practical men 
of all parties saw that the one hope of settled and orderly government 
lay in a restoration of the Stuarts, and the cries of a dreamer like Milton, 
who poured forth tract after tract urging the theoretical advantages of 
republicanism, were utterly disregarded. 



CHIEF DA TES. 



Storming of Drogheda, 






A.D. 

1649 


Battle of Dunbar, 






1650 


Battle of Worcester, . 






1651 


Dutch War, .... 






1652-1654 


Expulsion of tlie Rump, 






1653 


Barebone's Parliament, 






1653 


Instrument of Government, 






1653 


Blake at Santa Cruz, . 






1657 


Humble Petition and Advice, 






1657 


Battle of the Dunes, . 






1658 


Death of Cromwell, 






1658 



GHAPTEK V 

CHARLES II. : 1660-1685 

Born 1630; married, 1662, Katharine of Braganza; died 1685. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 

France. Holland. Sjmin. 

Louis XIV., d. 1715. William of Orange, 1671. Charles ii., 1662-1700. 

The Acts of the Convention Parliaments — Clarendon's Ministry— The First Dutch 
War — Fall of Clarendon — The Cabal — The Treaties of Dover — Second Dutch 
War — Fall of the Cabal— Danby's_Ministry — Rise of the ' Country' Party— 
The Exclusion Bill— Fall of the Whigs. 

Charles ii. landed at Dover on May 25, and entered London on 
May 29, his thirtieth birthday. Since his escape from Worcester in 
1651 he had lived abroad — sometimes in France, sometimes character 
in Germany — dependent for his subsistence on the charity of °^^^^ Kmg. 
his French or Dutch kinsfolk, and on the scanty contributions of the 
English royalists. Charles was a man of great natural sagacity, and his 
checkered career had given him considerable experience of men and things. 
More able than his father, he had more knowledge of the world than 
his grandfather, and he brought back with him a fixed determination 
' never to set out on his travels again.' At the same time, though he 
would never ' stake either his head or his crown,' he was determined to 
secure as much power as circumstances would permit. Charles, however, 
was well aware how much his father had lost by allowing himself to be 
not only the dii-ector of aftairs, but also the most obvious agent in 
carrying out his own policy. He determined, therefore, while keeping 
the reins in his own hands, to hold himself in the background, and 
to throw responsibility upon his ministers ; and his easy-going manner, 
which blinded observers to his real character, enabled him to gain a very 
large measure of success. 

613 



614 The Stuarts 1660 

At his accession Charles gave his chief confidence to Clarendon, 
the Edward Hyde of the Long Parliament, now aged fifty-one, who, 
The after a steady adherence to the royal family in its mis- 

Ministers. fortunes, now returned as lord-chancellor. Hyde's chief 
characteristics were a servile adherence to old forms, and a want of 
capacity to understand the new order of things in which he found 
himself. His domestic policy was mainly directed towards re-establishing 
the church, his foreign to securing the friendship of France and 
Portugal. Monk was made duke of Albemarle, and captain-general 
of the army. Charles' brother, James duke of York, afterwards James ir., 
became lord high admiral, being assisted by Montague, who for his 
services was made earl of Sandwich. Prince Eupert also returned, 
prepared to serve by land or sea as occasion required. Of the old 
Commonwealth men, besides Monk and Montague, the chief to find 
employment was Antony Ashley Cooper, who became chancellor of the 
exchequer, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Ashley. The old 
Presbyterians, Manchester and Holies, received fair words but little 
power ; Fairfax remained in the background ; but Booth was ennobled 
as Lord Delamere. 

Before leaving Breda Charles had given a general promise on the 
following points : (1) -An Act of Amnesty for life, liberty and property 

for all those not excepted by parliament ; (2) liberty of 
tion of conscience for all those whose views did not disturb the 

peace of the realm ; (3) the settlement in parliament of all 
claims to landed property ; (4) the payment of all arrears to Monk's 
army. Besides these, a proclamation had been issued conmianding 
the late king's judges to surrender within fourteen days, on pain of 
certain exclusion from the Act of Amnesty. 

Accordingly the Convention, which sat on without re-election as a 
parliament, gave immediate attention to these points. Its first step 
was to pass an Act of Indemnity and Oblivion for all offences 
committed during the civil war and the Commonwealth. From its 

provisions, however, the regicides and a few others were 
demnity and excepted ; of the leading regicides, Cromwell, Ireton, Brad- 

shaw, and Pride were dead ; Ludlow had escaped, and 
Henry Marten had surrendered under the recent proclamation. On the 
dead, royalist vengeance could find no means of wreaking itself except 
by dragging their corpses from the tomb and hanging them on the gibbet 
at Tyburn ; Marten escaped with his life under the proclamation, 
remarking that ' it was the first he had ever obeyed, and he hoped he 
would not be punished for that,' and died a prisoner in Chepstow Castle 



1660 Charles 11. 615 

in 1681 ; but a commission, composed of royalists and of the Presby- 
terians Manchester and Holies, with Monk, Montague, and Ashley, was 
created to try the others. Harrison and nine others, including Cook, 
solicitor to the court, Axtel and Hacker, who commanded the guards, 
and Hugh Peters, Cromwell's chaplain were found guilty, and put to 
death with every circumstance of barbarity. Hazelrig and Lenthal were 
made incapable of office for life ; Milton escaped a prosecution with diffi- 
culty, and Whitelock, the time-serving lawyer of the Commonwealth, was 
quietly relegated to obscurity. A year later, Lambert and Vane were 
tried for treason. Neither of them was a regicide, and they pleaded that 
what they had done was protected by the de facto statute of Henry vii., 
which, under the actual title of king, might be held to include a settled 
government. The judges, however, decided against them ; one of them 
remarking, ' though we do not know what to say to Vane, we know what 
to do with him.' Lambert was imprisoned for life, and Vane executed. 
Lambert, though an able man, and the author of the epigram, ' the best 
of men are but men at their best ,' was a somewhat shallow and self- 
asserting character. Vane, though a somewhat impracticable politician, 
was in personal character one of the noblest Englishmen of his day, 
true both in life and death to the highest principles of toleration in 
religion and republican virtue in the state, and it was well said when 
he died that 'the king lost more by that man's death than he would 
get again for a good w^hile.' Compared, however, with similar events, 
the English Restoration, thanks mainly to Charles, was remarkably free 
from bloodshed. 

The question of the forfeited lands was a very difficult one. Some 
royalist lands had been sold ; other royalists had been forced to sell 
their estates for fear of losing them ; but the usual fate of ^^^ 
the royalist gentry was to have retained their lands subject ^°^f^'^'^^^ 
to the heavy burden of special demands made on them as 
' malignants.' No rule applicable to all cases could be discovered, and 
eventually the claimants were left to do the best they could for them- 
selves in the courts of law, which frequently was not very much. 
Indeed, so little reward for their services was reaped by the cavaliers 
that it was jocularly said that parliament had passed an Act of Indemnity 
for the king's enemies, and of Oblivion for his friends. 

The Long Parliament had abolished feudal tenure by an ordinance. 

This was now confirmed by the Convention. At that date ^^^^^^ 

land was held under at least five tenures— feudal tenure. Dues 

rru ^ f commuted, 
free socage, common, copyhold, and mortmam. ine nrst 

involved the payment of feudal dues and the rights of wardship and 



616 The Stuarts I66O 

marriage, and in 1610 it had been proposed to commute these for a tax 
on the same lands of the value of ,£200,000 a year. This had been in 
principle fair enough. Now the Convention Parliament passed an Act 
by which such lands were for the future to be held in free socage, but 
the provision of an equivalent for the dues was not to fall only on the 
holders of such lands, but on the general body of the nation, who were 
saddled with an excise on liquors, then estimated at £300,000 a year. 
At the same time the right of purveyance was abandoned ; but the 
abolition of this merely local and casual liability was a poor compensation 
for the perpetual burden of the excise. While lifting the burden from 
their own shoulders, the feudal owners were careful to maintain in full 
the duties and payments of the copyhold tenants who stood to the lords 
of the manors much as the feudal tenants stood to the king. 

The question of defence was next considered by parliament. As a 

precaution against rebellion, the dismantling of walls and fortresses,. 

which had been begun by the Long; Parliament, was carried 

The Army. g J ^ ' 

further, and of the inland towns only the loyal cities of 
Oxford, York, and Chester were permitted to retain their walls. The 
command of the militia and of the fortresses, about which the civil war 
had originally broken out, was, without question, vested in the king. It 
was also determined to keep up a force of two regiments, Avith certain 
garrisons, amounting in all to five thousand men. The regiments retained 
were the liing^s horse-guards, created at the Eestoration, and Monk's 
regiment of Coldstream Guards. These, with the royal artillery, formed 
the nucleus of the British regular army. The officers received their 
commissions direct from the king ; the privates were enrolled by volun- 
tary enlistment ; and the uniform of the force, following the pattern of 
the victors at Mardyke and the Dunes, was scarlet. To Monk was 
entrusted the duties of disbanding the old Cromwellian army, and 
organising 'the new force. He performed it with great tact ; provided for 
the material well-being of the disbanded soldiers as the best provision 
against discontent, and infused into the regiments retained his own 
aversion to military interference in jDolitical affairs. 

There is a certain point in the development of a country where 
a standing army of professional soldiers becomes necessary, because on 

_, , the one hand a highly civilised nation will not endure to be 
The danger *= "^ • • r. 

of a stand- called upon to leave its business and take service m the 

g army. ^^^^ _ ^_^^ ^^ ^^^ Other, the progress in the art of war 

makes it needful for the soldier to have a more regular training than he 
can acquire at a time when he is following any other pursuit. If this 
point is reached before the constitutional liberties of a country are 



1661 Charles 11. 617 

secured, the placing of a standing army in the hands of the sovereign is 

ahnost certain to be for a long time fatal to liberty. It was so in France ; 

it was so under the Commonwealth ; it was so in Spain. England's 

insular position, however, enabled her to do without a standing army for 

almost tAvo centuries after they had been usual on the continent. Hence 

our liberties were secure when the change was made ; but the history of 

the standing army under Charles ii. and James ii. shows how great the 

risk was even then. Against a professional navy there was 

. The Fleet, 

no such objection, while the recent victories of Blake had 

made it a matter of pride to Englishmen of every party. Its management 

was placed in the hands of the duke of York and the earl of Sandwich, 

who had as their assistants Pett, the great shipwright, and Samuel Pepys, 

better known for his humorous diary than for his laborious exertions at 

the accounts of the admiralty office. Here there was no necessity for 

disbandment, and the sailors of the Commonwealth became the royal 

navy of the Kestoration as easily as the gallant Nasehy changed her name 

to the Royal Charles. 

With regard to the church, the Convention Parliament settled nothing, 
probably because the Presbyterians were so joowerful in it that a more 
favourable opportunity was waited for by the strong church- The new 
men. In December 1660 the Convention Parliament was P^rHament. 
dissolved. The new parliament met in 1661 ; and so violent had been 
the royalist reaction that very few Presbyterians kept their seats — so few, 
indeed, that the parliament was generally known as the Cavalier Parlia- 
ment. So eager were the members for revenge that the government 
had great difficulty in inducing them to confirm those Acts of the Con- 
vention which secured the indemnity of the parliamentarian party. 

All the acts of the Long Parliament which had not been passed by 
King, Lords and Commons were ignored, so that the Church of England 
stepped back into the position she occupied in 1642. The The Church 
bishops, to whose exclusion from the House of Lords Charles 
had given his consent, were restored to their seats in that House by act 
of parliament. The church was also replaced in possession of all her 
property, including the lands of the Dean and Chapter of Durham 
with which Cromwell had endowed a new university for the north. 
It remained, however, to be settled whether more Protestants than 
formerly should be admitted within her ranks, and what should be 
the position of those Catholics and Protestants who refused to conform 
to her rules. It might have been expected that Charles would have done 
something to improve the position of the Presbyterians, to whose 
alliance with the royalists he owed so much. Charles, however, who was 



618 The Stuarts ' leei 

at heart a Roman Catholic, and had been heard to say that ' Presby- 
terianism was no religion for a gentleman,' was indiJfferent ; the Episco- 
palians were hostile ; and the Protestant Nonconformists themselves 
had no wish to see a comprehension scheme carried that, by taking away 
many of their members, would weaken the position of the rest. A con- 
ference, indeed, was held at the Savoy Palace between twelve bishops 
and twelve Presbyterian ministers, the most conspicuous of whom were 
Calaniy and Baxter, but neither party being anxious for union the 
meeting came to nothing. 

The next question was. Which of the clergy who now held church 
livings were to be allowed to retain them ? The occupants of livings fell 
The Bene- Under several heads : (1) Those appointed before 1642 ; 
ficed Clergy. ^2) those named in the place of Episcopalian clergy still 
living who had been ejected by the parliamentarian party ; (3) Presby- 
terians appointed to vacancies during the Presbyterian ascendancy ; (4) 
Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and others who had been appointed 
under the ascendency of the Indepenednts. Many of these men, though 
of excellent character, had neither been ordained by bishops nor were 
willing to use the prayer-l)ook, and it could not be expected that the 
church should allow them to hold its livings on these terms. Accord- 
ingly, an Act of Uniformity was passed which enacted that the occupant 
of a benefice must have been ordained by a bishop ; must use only the 
Book of Common Prayer, a revised version of which was published the 
same year ; and must take the oath of canonical obedience, which bound 
the taker to obey the canons or ecclesiastical law. He was als orequired 
to renounce the Solemn League and Covenant, and to make a declaration 
that it was unlawful to bear arms against the sovereign on any pretence 
whatever. Those who refused to conform were forced to vacate their 
livings on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662, a date calculated with a refine- 
ment of ingenuity to prevent them from collecting their annual tithes, 
which became due shortly afterwards. As to the number and qual- 
fications of the expelled clergy, churchmen and Nonconformists are 
hopelessly at variance ; but it is probable that the number did not 
fall much short of two thousand ; and it is certain that it included 
many men of piety and learning. Though the church seemed to have 
been victorious, the system restored was not altogether the system of 
Laud. After the Restoration the church courts, on which he had laid 
so nmcli stress, remained in abeyance, and, with hardly an exception, 
from that date bishops ceased to interfere in matters of state ; while as 
parliament gradually acquired control over the ministers of the king, the 
bishops themselves came to be appointed by men who represenred 



1661 Charles It. 619 

the feelings of the majority of the country ; while the almost universal 
practice of lay patronage has kept the beneficed clergy more or less 
in touch with their lay brethren ; only in outward devotion and orderli- 
ness of religious ceremonial did the church of the Restoration recall the 
ideas of that earnest but ill-advised archbishop. The date 1662 is 
generally taken as marking the final division between the Church and 
Dissent. 

The restoration of the church livings to members of the church was 
defensible ; but the only defence for the next action of the parlia- 
ment is that it was produced by fear. From the point of The Cor- 
view of the royalists, the great fact of the time was that potations. 
Oliver's old soldiers were Nonconformists to a man, and that, so long 
as their efficiency and vigour remained, every congregation of Noncon- 
formists was a possible nucleus for an armed revolt, and every corporation 
in which Nonconformists were predominant a possible centre for local 
resistance, to say nothing of the fact that Nonconformist corporations 
sent Nonconformist members to parliament. Many of the expelled 
ministers, just as the royalists had done under the Commonwealth, 
continued to call their followers together in some barn or large room ; 
so in 1664 parliament imitated the example of Cromwell by passing the 
Conventicle Act, which forbade all assemblies for worship other than 
those of the church; and in 1665 it revived another of Cromwell's 
intolerant Acts (see p. 605), by passing the Five Mile Act, which forbade 
expelled ministers, unless they had subscribed to the Act of Uniformity, 
and taken an oath that resistance to the king was unlawful, to settle 
within five miles of any corporate town, or to get their living by 
teaching in any public or private school. The political strength of the 
Nonconformists, of whom the chief bodies were the Presbyterians, the 
Independents, the Baptists, and the Quakers, lay in the corporations of 
small towns ; and to deprive them of this the Corporation Act was 
passed in 1661, which ordered all holders of municipal office to renounce 
the Covenant, and to take the sacrament according to the forms of 
the Church of England. The Uniformity, Conventicle, Five Mile, and 
Corporation Acts are sometimes spoken of as the Clarendon Code. The 
feelings w-hich actuatedt hem were precisely those* which had caused 
Cromwell's severity to the ejected royalists, and had excluded cavaliers 
from the voting list under the Commonwealth. A comparison, however, 
of the religious legislation of the parliamentarians and royalists shows 
that, though there was little to choose in the matter of religious intoler- 
ance between the Presbyterians of the Long Parliament and the supporters 
of Laud, persecution for religion's sake was gradually dying out, and that 



620 The Stuarts 1661 

political rather than religious considerations were at the bottom of 
the intolerance both of the Independents and of the restored Episco- 
palians. 

The Peace of the Pyrenees, concluded in 1659 between France and 
Spain, left Lonis xiv. by far the most powerful monarch in Europe, and 

Foreign his ambitious schemes of further aggrandisement constituted 

Affairs. ^ serious danger to the liberties of the smaller powers. 
Nevertheless, in foreign politics Clarendon continued Cromwell's short- 
sighted policy of hostility to Spain, and friendship to France. In 
accordance with it Charles, in 1662, married Katharine of Braganza, 
sister of the king of Portugal, which country had, in 1640, revolted from 
Spain, to which it had been united since 1580. With her Charles 
received £350,000 in money and merchandise, the island of Bombay, 
and Tangiers on the north-west coast of Africa. The value of Tangiers 
lay in providing a convenient base of operations for a fleet watching the 
entrance to the Mediterranean, or to the harbour of Cadiz. Bombay 
gave a settlement to the East India Company on the west coast of 
Hindostan, and formed the basis of a large extension of trade, which 
Charles, like all his family, had much at heart. At the close of 1662 
Clarendon sold Dunkirk to the French. This was contrary to the inten- 
tions of Cromwell, who had well known its value as a check upon French 
aggression, and if it were to be given up at all it would have been better 
policy to restore it to the Spaniards. The price paid for it by Louis xiv. 
was about £250,000, and so unpopular was the sale that a new residence 
which Clarendon was building was nicknamed Dunkirk House. 

Katharine of Braganza proved to be a pleasant and well-meaning 

woman, fitted to make Charles an excellent wife, had not his shameful 

_. „. , immorality made him dead to her merits. His chief 
The King's . "^ 

private mistress was Barbara Palmer, whom he afterwards created 

life. 

duchess of Cleveland, by whom he had a numerous family 
of sons and daughters. During his exile he had been under the spell 
of Lucy Walters, by whom he was said to have been the father of the 
duke of Monmouth ; and at a later date he was fascinated by Nell 
Gwynne and Louise de Keroualle. For these, his queen was neglected, 
and, as she had no children, and no interest in English affairs, she passed 
almost out of the recollection of the public. Her treatment was a 
gross scandal to all sober j)eople, who were horrified at seeing the king 
himself taking the lead in the race for pleasure and dissipation which 
followed as a natural reaction on the austerity of Cromwellian times. In 
1660 the duke of York married Anne Hyde, daughter of Clarendon, and 
by her had two daughters, Mary and Anne. Henry, duke of Gloucester, 



1665 Charles II. 621 

the other surviving son of Charles i., died unmarried soon after the 
Restoration. 

In 1664 war broke out with the Dutch. Its chief cause was the same 
commercial and colonial jealousy which had brought about the former 
war ; but to this was added the annoyance which was felt 
by Charles because the Dutch Burghers were keeping out with 
of power the House of Orange, the head of which, Prince ^^°^'^"'^- 
William, was Charles' nephew. The internal politics of Holland were 
at this date very important, for the friends of the House of Orange relied 
on England, while the Burgher party was friendly to France. So 
bitter was the hostility between them that Van Tromp had been seriously 
hampered by the fact that some of his captains would not give him a 
hearty support because he was a supporter of the House of Orange ; 
and, on the other hand, sailors who were friendly to Tromp looked coldly 
on De Witt and Ruyter, the admirals favoured by the Burgher party. 
The war was carried on both on the English coasts and in the colonies. 
At first the English were successful, and Sir Robert Holmes seized the 
Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, which divided Virginia from the New 
England States. It was now colonised by Englishmen, and its capital. 
New Amsterdam, received the name of New York, in honour of the 
king's brother, who was lord admiral of the fleet. 

In 1665 the duke of York, Prince Rupert, and the earl of Sandwich 
won a great victory over the Dutch off Lowestoft, on the Suffolk coast. 
The great object of the Dutch was to fight as near the The First 
English coasts as possible, so as to take advantage of the ^^^^ ^^' 
numerous sandbanks, where their vessels, being of lighter draught than 
the English, could be used to greater advantage. This advantage they 
gained, but the English seamen, by skilfully manceuvring, contrived to 
get the wind in their favour, and bearing down in line won a complete 
victory. Opdam, the Dutch commander, was blown up with all his crew 
but the English lost Lawson, one of their best sailors— a Yorkshireman, 
who had fought his way from the forecastle of a Hull collier to be 
an admiral of the fleet. Next year Sandwich followed up the success 
by seizing part of the Dutch spice fleet in the harbour of Bergen. The 
disaster of the Dutch was so complete that the French came to their 
assistance ; but though Louis was ])ound in honour to help his allies, he 
had no objection to seeing the two chief naval powers engaged in destroy- 
ing each other, and his fleet took little or no part in the figliting. i\fter 
the afi'air of Bergen, the command of the fleet was changed ; the duke of 
York was kept at home, on the pretence that his life was too valuable 
to be risked, and Sandwich, who had been accused of appropriating 



622 The Stuarts 1665 

money, was sent out as ambassador to Spain. Eupert and Monk took 

their places, and in June Monk, who ' hated a coward as ill as a toad,' 

was rash enough to attack the Dutch with a wholly inadequate force. 

In consequence he was severely handled, and only escaped a serious 

disaster by the opportune arrival of Eupert, However, in July, they 

were again at sea, and this time a complete victory rewarded their eflforts, 

and no less than one hundred and fifty merhcantmen were burnt on the 

Dutch coast. 

Louis now used his influence to persuade the Dutch to negotiate, and 

Charles, being at his wits' end for money, took advantage of the apparent 

^. ^ , cessation of hostilities to lay up his fleet at Chatham. For 
The Dutch . . -^ '■ 

in the its sccunty he ordered earthworks to be prepared, and the 

way. entrance of the Medway to be blocked by a boom. Hardly 
anything, however, had been done when De Euyter appeared in the 
Thames with a strong fleet, and in all haste Monk was sent down to 
defend Chatham. He found everything in confusion ; workmen unwilling 
to work for want of pay ; dock officials more intent on securing their 
private eff'ects than on saving the honour of England. In spite of all 
his eff'orts the boom was broken, and he had the mortification of seeing 
the Dutch fleet sail up the Medway, burn the ships at their stations, and 
carry off the Royal Charles as a prize. Fortunately the Dutch dropped 
back with the tide, and Monk was able to complete the batteries in time 
to prevent another ascent of the river. Great was the humiliation of the 
country, and in spite of the fact that an honourable peace was concluded, 
parliament turned fiercely on Clarendon as the most eligible object for 
attack. 

Besides the disgraceful affair at Chatham, Clarendon had been unlucky 
in other respects. In 1665 occurred the Great Plague, the last of those 
terrible pestilences which from time to time devastated the 
filthy alleys and narrow streets which formed the towns of 
mediaeval Europe. The outbreak began in the winter of 1664-5, reached 
its height in June 1665, and continued in full violence till October, when 
it gradually declined ; but the next year it continued its ravages in the 
country, and it was some time before it completely disappeared. During 
its continuance, the utmost confusion prevailed ; trade was at a standstill, 
and nothing but the firmness of Monk, who was placed in command of 
the city, and the charity of the lord mayor and richer citizens, prevented 
an outbreak of violence. In London alone no less than 120,000 persons 
perished. 

A year later, the greater part of the city of London was destroyed by the 
Great Fire, which broke out at two o'clock on the morning of September 2, 



1666 Charles II. 



623 



Fanned by a violent gale, the flames spread rapidly, and continued 
at their height for three days, dnring which time they consumed 13,200 
houses, 89 churches— including the noble Gothic building The Fire of 
of St. Paul's Cathedral — and rendered 200,000 persons ^o"don. 
homeless. The fire originated in a bakehouse, and was due to accident ; 
but so violent was the national prejudice against the Roman Catholics 
that it was falsely imputed to them, and the Monument erected in 
memory of the fire long bore an inscription charging it upon them. The 
conflagration cleared away the last relics of the plague ; but unfor- 
tunately, no adequate care was taken, in rebuilding the houses, to arranoe 
the streets on a better plan, and the new buildings followed the lines of 
the old. A great opportunity, however, was given to Sir Christopher 
Wren, the architect, and his designs for the new St. Paul's, and for the 
new city churches, are admirable examples of the kind of architecture 
then in fashion. 

Though Clarendon was not directly responsible for the disaster at 
Chatham, and had of course nothing whatever to do either with the 
plague or the fire, these events added to the unpopularity paU of 
of his administration. He was also disliked by the king, Clarendon, 
of whose dissipated life he disapproved ; and when an outcry was raised 
against him, he was dismissed from his post and impeached. Without 
awaiting his trial, he withdrew to the continent, where he spent the 
remainder of his life in completing a History of the Great Rebellion^ 
which he had begun during his former exile, and died in 1674. In 
1670 died Monk, duke of Albemarle. Since Charles' return, he had 
been his most able servant wherever tact, courage, and devotion to duty 
had been required, during both war and peace : and with the departure 
of these two faithful servants, a new generation of public men conies to 
the front. 

During Clarendon's ministry important events occurred in Scotland 
and Ireland. In Scotland Charles assumed the illegality of all that had 
been done since the battle of Worcester. The union „^^^. ^ , 

ocotland. 

between England and Scotland was held void, and Scotland 
was placed under the rule of the earl of Middleton, as commissioner for 
the king, and of the earl of Lauderdale, as secretary of state. Under 
their influence a parliament was elected that was royalist in the 
extreme. Charles was declared to be 'over all persons and over all 
cases supreme ' ; and by the Reccission Act all acts of parliament passed 
since 1632 were repealed, so that the ecclesiastical laws of James i. and 
the old feudal rights and privileges were restored. To appease the 
royalists, Argyll was tried and executed, nominally for treasons com- 



624 The Stuarts 1666 

mitted since 1651, in reality in revenge for the death of Montrose ; and 
to strike terror into the Presbyterian clergy, Guthrie, the most energetic 
and outspoken of them, suffered the same fate, from which Johnstone of 
Warriston, the deviser of the National Covenant, only saved himself by 
a timely flight. To the consternation of the Presbyterians, who had 
protested against the declaration of favour to tender consciences con- 
tained in the Declaration of Breda, Charles, whom parliament permitted 
to settle the church government ' as might be consistent with Scripture, 
monarchy, and peace,' declared for Episcopacy, ordered the Covenant to 
be burnt by the common hangman, and named Sharpe, a renegade Pres- 
byterian minister, to be archbishop of St. Andrews. The Presbyterian 
clergy, therefore, found themselves compelled to choose between accept- 
ing a form of church government which they abhorred, or abandoning 
their livelihood ; but rather than submit to the change, three or four 
hundred of them gave up their livings, and began the work of preaching 
to their congregations on the open hillsides, which kept alive the faith 
and devotion of the Covenanters during the persecution which followed, 
At the same time, however, that the Scots lost their favourite form of 
church government, they regained their independence, and saw with 
satisfaction the departure of the English garrisons, the restoration of 
their parliament, and the dismantling of Monk's fortifications. On the 
other hand, they lost the advantages conferred on them by the Naviga- 
tion Acts, and for trade purposes became again a foreign and alien 
country. 

In Ireland, as in Scotland, the union, as having no force in law^, was 
held void. The ancient Irish parliament was, as a matter of course, 

restored : and the Protestant Episcopal Church was re- 
Ireland. 

established as the state church. Orniond was sent over as 

lord-lieutenant, and undertook the settlement of the land question. 
Before 1641, about half the arable land of Ireland was in the hands of 
Protestants, and the rest in those of Koman Catholics and Irish. After 
the rebellion, this half had been divided among the Adventurers and the 
Cromwellian soldiery. Their claims, however, were disputed by the 
dispossessed Irish, and by royalists who had suffered for their devotion 
to royalty. It was, however, a serious matter to offend the soldiers, and 
the claims of the Adventurers had been guaranteed by Charles i. Con- 
sequently, after hearing all sides, Charles determined that the titles of 
the Adventurers should be confirmed, and that the claims of the loyal 
Roman Catholics and of Protestant royalists should be met out of those 
forfeited lands which had not as yet been appropriated. Eventually, 
however, it was found that so much of this amount had been promised to 



1670 . Charles 11. 625 

the duke of York, Monk, and others, that there was not sufficient remain- 
ing to satisfy even the claims of those royalists and Eoman Catholics 
whose innocence was unimpeachable. Accordingly, by the Act of Ex- 
planation, the Adventurers and Cromwellians were required The Act of 
to give up one-third of their lands as a compensation fund ; Settlement, 
and on this basis the land question seemed for a time to be settled. The 
dissolution of the union deprived Ireland of the benefits of the Naviga- 
tion Acts ; and, as if that were not enough, the English parliament began 
that deliberate policy of impoverishing Ireland, in order to protect the 
English farmers and manufacturers, that continued in force, with slio-ht 
modifications, down to the date of the legislative union of 1800. In 
1665 the Irish were forbidden to export to England either cattle, meat, 
or butter, so that a country which nature had designed for pasturage was 
perforce thrown back on the business of agriculture. 

After Clarendon's fall, the king gave his confidence to a group of five 
statesmen — Cliftbrd, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale, 
whose initials are erroneously thought to have originated the _. 

•^ . . . The Cabal. 

word Cabal, a much older word of Hebrew origin, equiva- 
lent to the modern terms Junto, or Cabinet. The Cabal is interesting in 
the history of our constitution because it forms a link between the 
condition which obtained under Elizabeth and Charles i., when each 
minister was responsible to the king and to him only, and the modern 
practice which grew up under William in., when the members of the 
cabinet are responsible, 'jointly and severally,' for the policy of the 
government as a whole. From a religious point of view, it represented 
a combination of most of the views not comprehended in the English 
Church. Sir- Thomas Clifford, afterwards Baron Clifi'ord of Chudleigh, 
was an avowed Roman Catholic, and Henry Bennet, afterwards earl of 
Arlington, a Roman Catholic at heart ; Shaftesbury had cheerfully con- 
formed to the Church systems of the Long Parliament and Cromwell ; 
Buckingham, so far as he was anything, was a churchman ; and Lauder- 
dale had taken a leading part in negotiating the Solemn League and 
Covenant, and had been one of the Engagers in 1648. Of them all, 
Buckingham was the most versatile, Ashley the most able, Lauderdale 
the most pliant, Clifford and Arlington the most bigoted. As in consti- 
tutional history, the Cabal was the germ of the modern cabinet, so in 
religion it marks a step in the direction of toleration. 

The first result of the fall of Clarendon was the reversal of his foreign 

policy by the negotiation of the triple alliance between Holland, The Triple 
^ , t If d' "iir-iT^,., Alliance. 

Sweden, and England. This was the work of Sir William 

Temple, the English ambassador at the Hague, who was not only one of 

2 R 



626 The Stuarts 1670 

the most cultivated, but also one of the most far-sighted men of his time. 
He early realised the dangerous tendencies of the power of Louis xiv., 
and was the life-long friend and confidential adviser of William of 
Orange. In 1670 William was a lad of seventeen. As yet he had no 
constitutional position in Holland, but he had inherited in its full 
measure the ability of his family. For the Triple Alliance, little credit 
attaches to the Cabal ; and the first real result of the change of govern- 
ment was a Comprehension Bill, which was introduced into parliament 
for comprehending some of the Presbyterians in the church, and for 
tolerating to nonconformists. Ashley had steadily opposed both the Act 
of Uniformity and the Corporation Act ; but in the existing temper of 
parliament, toleration — either of Protestant or Catholic nonconformists — 
was out of the question ; and, in 1670, the Conventicle Act of 1664 was 
renewed and made more stringent. 

Probably the real object of Charles in allowing this attempt to be 
made was to pave the way for the toleration of the Catholics. Before 
The Roman ' ^^^^ Restoration he had secretly become a member of that 
Catholics. church ; and, in 1662, he had sent Sir Richard BiUings as 
agent to the pope to treat about the restoration of the papal authority in 
England. In January 1669 the king, the duke of York, Lord Arundel of 
Wardour, Clifford, and Arlington, held a secret meeting to consider what 
could be done in the matter, and it was there decided to apply to 
The Treaties Louis XIV. for military aid. This was the origin of the 
of Dover. secret treaty of Dover, which was negotiated through 
Charles' sister Henrietta, duchess of Orleans, and was signed by 
Arlington, Arundel of Wardour, Cliflbrd, and Billings, for England, and 
by Colbert for France. Its chief provisions were (1) that Charles should 
declare himself a Catholic, and receive from Louis £80,000 in money 
and the aid of 6000 troops in the pay of France ; (2) that Charles and 
Louis should make a joint war on Holland, and that Charles should 
receive the islands of Walcheren and Cadsand and the port of L'Ecluse 
(Sluys), out of the spoils of that as yet unconquered country. To 
complete the ascendency of the French interest, it was arranged that 
a beautiful Breton lady, Louise de Keroualle, should meet Charles 
at Arlington's house. She soon acquired such an influence over him 
that she was created duchess of Portsmouth, and became the chief 
agent in his transactions with the French court. The first treaty of 
Dover was secret ; but Buckingham, who had thrown himself into the 
idea of an alliance against the Dutch, was permitted to negotiate a 
second and open treaty, in which only that part of the former which 
applied to the Dutch was allowed to appear ; and this was signed by 



1672 Charles II. (527 

Colbert and by Buckingham, Arlington, Lauderdale, Ashley, and 
Clifford. Of the former treaty, Buckingham, Asliley, and Lauderdale 
knew nothing, and most of their contemporaries were equally ignorant • 
but the desertion of the policy of the Triple Alliance was in irself bad 
enough, and gained for the treaty of Dover and the members of the Cabal 
the infamous reputation under which they have ever since laboured 
as the men who broke the triple league, and ' fitted England for a foreign 
yoke.' Charles was well aware that parliament would disapprove of his 
new policy, so as soon as he had induced it to make a liberal grant of 
,£800,000 for the navy, under the impression that war was to be declared 
against France, it was prorogued, and did not meet again for nearly two years. 

Meanwhile, to add to his resources, the kiog carried out the device 
known at the time as ' The Stop of the Exchequer.' At that date it was 
usual for the government to anticipate the revenue by bor- 
rowing money from the goldsmiths, who then acted as of the Ex- 
bankers and advanced the money entrusted to them by '^^^i"^^- 
their depositors. The rate of interest paid by the government was 
twelve per cent., of which the depositors received five per cent., 
and the goldsmiths retained seven per cent. The debt at that moment 
was ^1,300,000. On January 2, 1672, contrary to the advice of his 
chancellor of the exchequer, Ashley, who had recently been made 
earl of Shaftesbury, Charles issued a royal order forbidding the 
exchequer to pay any warrants, orders, and securities for twelve months. 
Panic followed, and so great was the outcry that four days later he 
modified the order to the extent of letting the goldsmiths have six per 
cent., of which all but one per cent, was due to their depositors. The 
consequence of this absurd action, for which Clifford and Lauderdale 
seem to have been chiefly responsible, was that so severe a blow was 
struck at the credit of the government, as completely to outbalance the 
paltry profit made by this disgraceful act of national bankruptcy. 

Charles' next step was to feel the way for his open declaration of 
Eoman Catholicism by the public reception of his brother James into the 
Roman Catholic Church. This was followed up in March ^^ ^ 

1 he De- 

by the issue of a Declaration of Indulgence, by which all the ciaration of 

^. .-..■..■... -, Indulgence. 

acts which imposed political or religious disabilities on the 
Catholic or Protestant Nonconformists were suspended. This illegal 
and unconstitutional action was most unpopular. So far as the Roman 
Catholics were concerned, it revived all the hatred and suspicion which 
had characterised the days of James i. ; wliile the Protestant Noncon- 
formists looked with suspicion on the use of the royal prerogative, the 
principle of which might be stretched to sanction the suspension, at the 



628 The Stuarts 1672 

will of the king, of any act of parliament whatsoever. Nevertheless, till 
parliament met, nothing could be done to give voice to the national 
displeasure. 

Within a few days of the issue of the Declaration of Indulgence, a 

favourable opportunity occurred for beginning the war against the Dutch. 

A fleet of Dutch merchantmen from the Levant were sailing; 

[Second ° 

Dutch up the Channel, convoyed by seven men-of-war, and cast 
anchor off the Isle of Wight. There, without any declara- 
tion of war, they were attacked by an English squadron under Sir 
Kobert Holmes. The Dutch, however, were not unprepared for an emer- 
gency, which their government had suspected ; and, fighting with great 
skill and determination, they succeeded in beating oflf their assailants 
with the loss of only one man-of-war and four merchantmen. A few days 
after this disgraceful affair, war against Holland was openly declared 
both by England and France. The first naval action was fought in 
Southwold Bay, where the duke of York, the earl of Sandwich, and the 
French admiral d'Estrees encountered the Dutch under De Ruyter. The 
])runt of the fighting was borne by the English contingent. So severe 
was the struggle that the duke was forced to abandon two ships in a 
sinking condition, and to transfer his flag to a third, while the gallant 
Sandwich, refusing to abandon the Royal James, was burnt with most of 
his crew. However, after the fight had lasted from early morning to 
seven at night, De Ruyter drew oft' his ships, leaving the scene of 
slaughter in the hands of the allies, and next day he sought refuge among 
the banks and shoals of the Dutch coast. On land, the French troops, 
under Louis in person, advised by Turenne and Conde, and aided by 
6000 English under the duke of Monmouth, among whom served John 
Churchill, carried all before them, occupied three out of the seven pro- 
vinces of Holland, and encamped almost within sight of Amsterdam. 
These disasters, however, only roused the courage of the Dutch. The 
French faction, under the brothers De Witt, was driven from power ; 
and shortly afterwards John de Witt was murdered by the mob. 
William iii., the young prince of Orange, Charles ii.'s nephew, now aged 
twenty-two, was requested to undertake the task of saving his country. 
This he willingly accepted. Under his guidance the Dutch opened their 
dykes and restored to the sea the lands occupied by their enemies. The 
French fled for their lives ; and with this auspicious beginning William 
entered upon a contest with Louis xiv. which was to end only with 
his life. 

In January 1673 parliament met. The members were in high dudgeon, 
and in the elections which had taken place to fill up vacancies the 



1673 Charles II, 629 

Presbyterian party had gained largely. By a vote of 168 to 116 it was 
resolved that ' penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical cannot be suspended 
but by act of parliament,' and a request for the withdrawal views of 
of the Declaration was made to the king. All the Parliament, 
ministers but Arlington advised him to stand his ground, but by the 
advice of Louis, who promised the aid of men and money 
as soon as the Dutch war was over, Charles yielded, cancelled ciaratio'n 
the Declaration, and declared that it should never be used ^^^^'^'"a^"- 
as a precedent. 

Then, thinking that the employment of Roman Catholics was the cause 
of all these unpopular measures, parliament passed the Test Act, by which 
it was ordered that no j^erson should hold office under the The Test 
crown unless he had taken the sacrament according to the ^^^' 
rites of the Church of England, and made a declaration against Transub- 
stantiation. This Act made it impossible for a Roman Catholic to hold 
office ; but Louis advised Charles to submit in order to carry on the war, 
and to this counsel Charles agreed. The passage of the Test Act broke ujj 
the ministry. Before the day for taking the sacrament arrived, Cliftbrd 
resigned his post of lord treasurer, and James that of high admiral, 
Clifford died in June 1673 ; Arlington took little more part in public 
affairs ; Shaftesbury was dismissed from the chancellorship in November, 
and immediately went into opposition ; and Buckingham, though for a 
time he clung to the court, followed his example in the next year. 
Lauderdale alone retained his influence, but he was almost exclusively 
busied with Scottish affairs. 

Clifford was succeeded at the Treasury by Sir Thomas Osborne, a 
Yorkshire gentleman, who subsequently held in turn the titles of Lord 
Latimer, earl of Danby, marquess of Carmarthen, and duke sir Thomas 
of Leeds. Osborne was a clever time-server, ready to do Osborne, 
almost anything to keep his place. His domestic policy consisted in 
conciliating the old cavaliers by supporting the Church of England and 
strengthening the royal prerogative. In foreign affairs he was at heart 
friendly to the Dutch and opposed to France ; but nevertheless his sub- 
sequent conduct showed that he was willing to retain office at the price 
of acting as Charles' agent in negotiating with Louis xiv. Unprincipled 
himself, he counted on finding others the same, and was said to set aside 
from the excise an annual sum of £20,000 for the purpose of bribing 
members of parliament. 

Since 1661 there had been no general election ; but the temper of the 
house had changed in response to the altered feeling of the country. No 
parliament of Englishmen, whether Cavalier or Roundhead, was likely to 



630 The Stuarts 1673 

apj)rove either of Charles' way of life, or of the actions of such ministers 
as Clifford and Arlington ; and it did not need Charles i.'s dictum that 
' parliaments, like cats, grow cursed with age ' to explain 
' Country the change of feeling. The fight over, the Declaration of In- 
^^*^' dulgence and the Test Act had resulted in the consolidation 

of something like a regular opposition. Its leaders in the Commons were 
William Eussell, second son of the earl of Bedford, and after the death of 
his elder brother in 1678, spoken of as Lord Kussell ; Lord Cavendish, 
the eldest son of the earl of Devonshire ; Colonel Birch, an old Common- 
wealth man, who had formerly been a carrier ; John Hampden, grand- 
son of the great John Hampden, and others. In the Lords, Shaftes- 
bury, and afterwards Buckingham, were the most prominent ; but they 
had the assistance of Lord Holies, formerly the Denzil Holies of the Long 
Parliament ; Philip, Lord Wharton, and the earl of Salisbury. The oppo- 
sition came to be known as the 'country party' to distinguish them 
from the courtiers. The policy of the 'country party,' was 
dictated by fear of Roman Catholicism, and consequently by 
distrust of France. The necessity of finding allies inclined them to 
favour the Protestant Nonconformists. They, therefore, desired peace 
with Holland, and, if possible, war with France ; but their desu-e for 
this Avas modified by their apprehensions that if Charles got a standing 
army it would be used against the liberties of England and the Protestant 
religion. Hence, it was almost impossible that their policy could be 
consistent. On the other hand, the existence of the ' country party ' kept 
Louis XIV. in continual fear, for he dreaded lest Charles should be forced 
to go to war with him ; and, therefore, played a double game. When he 
thought the opposition likely to get their way, he paid Charles to prorogue 
or dissolve parliament ; if he thought Charles was too independent, he 
would help the 'country party' to attack him. In consequence the 
action of Charles, Louis, and the opposition leaders is extremely difiicult 
to follow. 

The meeting of parliament in 1674, therefore, witnessed the ajDpearance 
of a regular opposition under Shaftesbury and Russell. The characters 
William of the two leaders were well fitted to supplement each other. 
Russell. j^,^^gsell was thirty-five years of age, and was married 
to Rachel Wriothesley, daughter of the marquess of AVinchester. 
Hitherto he had taken little part in parliamentary business, for he was 
slow of speech ; but he was a man of great honesty, of sound judgment, 
universally beloved and trusted, and his position as prospective head of 
the house of Bedford carried great weight in the country. The accession 
of Shaftesbury to the ' country party' was a matter of the first consequence. 



1675 Charles II. 631 

In character he was ahiiost an antithesis of Russell. Aged fifty-three 
he had taken an active part in politics since he had contrived to sit in 
the Short Parliament of 1640 as a young man of nineteen. 
During the civil war he had served first as a cavalier, and ^ ^^^ ^^^' 
then as a parliamentarian. He was a member both of the Rump and of 
Barebone's parliament, and had taken a leading part in the councils and 
parliaments of Cromwell. After Cromwell's death he had sided with 
parliament against the army, and had been active in forwarding the 
restoration of the king. Under Clarendon he had acted as chancellor of 
the exchequer ; in the Cabal he had risen to be lord chancellor. Through 
all his experiences, however, he had never been either a blind supporter 
of prerogative nor an ecclesiastical bigot. Under Clarendon he had 
opposed the Uniformity and Corporation Acts, in the Cabal he had 
favoured the Comprehension Bill and the Declaration of Indulgence. His 
voice had also opposed the 'stop of the exchequer,' and he brought 
with him into the councils of the ' country j)arty ' not only an unrivalled 
experience of business, but a ready tongue, a facile comprehension of the 
needs of the moment, undaunted courage, and a complete mastery of the 
art of political agitation. 

The first action of the new party was to attack Buckingham, Arling- 
ton, and Lauderdale ; and so strong did it appear that Buckingham, 
whose fickleness was proverbial, immediately joined its 
ranks, while the other two sought safety, one in retirement, of Non- 
the other in Scotland. Danby was thus left supreme, and 
in 1675 he attempted to secure the favour of the old cavaliers by intro- 
ducing a bill to compel every officer in church and state, and every 
member of either House of Parliament, to declare on oath that ' it was 
unlawful, on any pretence whatever, to take up arms against the king,' 
and that ' he would not endeavour at any time the alteration of the 
government in church and state.' Through the ingenuity, however, of 
Shaftesbury, the bill never got beyond the House of Lords ; and the 
opposition having, in their turn, brought forward a bill for giving better 
security against arbitrary imprisonment, which afterwards developed 
into the Habeas Corpus Act, the king had recourse to prorogation. 

This he was enabled to do by the aid of Louis xiv. To carry on the 
Dutch war in teeth of public opinion was impossible, and in 1674 terms 
were made at the price of the cession to England of the peace with 
island of St. Helena, a convenient place of call for ships ^^^ ^"*'=*^- 
sailing to and from the East Indies. Louis was afraid that the opposition 
would press Charles to join the Dutch in war against him. Such an 
event would obviously be fatal not only to Louis' plans of conquest, but 



632 The Stuarts 1675 

to Charles' Roman Catholic intrigues, so it was arranged between them 
that on the one hand Charles was to prorogue parliament, on the other 
Louis was to furnish Charles with an annual sum of ^120,000. 

Parliament was accordingly dismissed for fifteen months ; and to put a 
stop to political criticism, the coffee-houses, which were beginning to 
take the place of modern clubs, were peremptorily closed, 
rogation of During the recess the opposition was powerless ; but when 
ar lamen . pr^pi^r^j^j^gj^^ reassembled in 1677, an attempt was made to 
force on a general election by contending that parliament, having not 
sat for twelve months, was ipso facto dissolved. The plea, however, was 
not admitted. Shaftesbury, Buckingham, Salisbury, and Wharton were 
sent to the Tower by the Lords for insulting parliament by advanciug it ; 
and though the three others were soon released, Shaftesbury was kept in 
confinement for more than a year, when, on apologising for his conduct, 
he too was suffered to go free. 

Incited by Louis, the ' country party ' now demanded the dismissal of 
the army, which would have effectually jDrevented England from inter- 
., . , fering on the continent. Danby, on the other hand, revived 

Marriage of '^ "" . . 

William the policy of the Triple Alliance by arranging a marriage 

between Mary, eldest daughter of the duke of York, and 
heir to the crown after her father, and her cousin, William iii. of Orange, 
stadtholder of Holland. This marriage was thoroughly popular. William 
was now twenty-seven years of age ; he had early shown himself jjossessed 
of the highest order of talent, and had made himself a sort of ' Protestant 
hero ' by his magnificent defence of Holland against the apparently over- 
whelming strength of the Catholic Louis xiv. His possible accession to 
the English throne was regarded with hope by all who suspected the 
religious intrigues of Charles and James, or who feared the danger to 
liberty involved in the success of the French arms. Louis never forgave 
Danby for the match, and its importance was seen not only in fresh 
dealings with the opposition, but in the opening of negotiations with the 
Dutch. 

All England hoped for a French war, and ^300,000 was voted to 
strengthen the fleet ; but during the progress of the negotiations Charles 

made a secret treaty with France, by which he agreed, at 
Treaty with the price of .£300,000 a year for three years, to dissolve 

parliament, to disband the army, and not to assist the Dutch 
if they continued the war. 

In obedience to Charles' order, this arrangement was entered into by 
Danby, through Sir R. Montagu, the English ambassador at Paris. For 
his services Montagu expected to be made secretary of state, but being 



1678 Charles II. 633 

disappointed, he disclosed what he knew to the members of the opposition; 
and though Danby contrived to get an order of the council for seizing 
Montagu's papers, two letters in Danby's handwriting, and pall of 
endorsed by Charles himself, fell into the hands of Shaftes- ^anby. 
bury and Eussell. From these it appeared that the negotiation was to be 
kept as 'private as possible, for fear of giving offence at home,' and that 
the ^300,000 was designed to provide for Charles during the period of 
resentment which parliament was expected to feel when it learnt how it 
had been cozened. Upon this the Commons impeached Danby of high 
treason ; and to save him Charles at last dissolved parliament. This 
was exactly what the opposition wanted, as they beUeved themselves to 
have the country at their back ; and the ' country party ' was so much 
stronger in the new House, that before it met, James found it convenient 
to retire to Brussels. Danby's impeachment was at once renewed. His 
general defence was that he had acted by the direct orders of the king, 
and, in bar of further proceedings, he produced a pardon under the great 
seal. As such a defence was obviously fatal to the princij^le of ministerial 
responsibility, it was stoutly contested ; and, in defiance of it, Danby was 
committed to the Tower, where he remained till the close of the reign. 
His place at the Treasury was taken by Arthur Capel, earl of Essex, son of 
the Capel beheaded in 1649. He was an honest and economical adminis- 
trator, and had gained a high reputation as lord-lieutenant of Ireland, 
but had little political influence. 

Three administrations — those of Clarendon, the Cabal, and Danby — had 
now been overthrown by the votes of parliament. Such struggles were 
fatal to efficient administration ; but it was difficult to see _ 

' . . Constitu- 

how they were to be avoided unless Charles was willing tionaidead- 
to give up to parliament the real business of government, 
and that he was not prepared to do. Some thought that the solution 
of the difficulty was to be found in strengthening the Privy Council and 
making the members directly responsible for its decisions, so that on the 
one hand it might act as a buffer between the king and the Temple's 
parliament, and on the other check the growing practice of Scheme, 
putting the real conduct of affairs into the hands of a small cabal. In 
accordance with this idea. Sir William Temple brought forward a scheme 
for making the Privy Council consist of thirty members, fifteen of whom 
were to be royal officials, and fifteen nominated by the crown from the 
independent members of parliament. It was also arrauged that the 
members should be wealthy, so that the large stake they had in the 
country might give confidence in their caution, and the income of the 
first members was calculated at ^300,000 a year, as against an estimated 



634 The Stuarts 1678 

,£400,000 of the House of Commons. The new council, therefore, was 
a sort of microcosm of the ruling classes. It included such leading 
ministers as Kobert Sj)encer, earl of Sunderland, a man who had lately- 
acquired great influence ; Sir William Temple, the earl of Essex, George 
Savile, marquess of Halifax, and also Shaftesbury, who acted as president. 
Lord Eussell, Lord Cavendish, and other members of the opposition. The 
l^lan, however, did not work well. Power soon fell into the hands of 
Sunderland, Essex, Halifax, and Temple, who practically arranged the 
business of the whole council ; while Charles, when it suited him, set its 
decisions at defiance. 

Meanwhile, all England had been agitated by the story of a popish 
plot. Ever since the gunpowder conspiracy the country had been ready 
The Popish enough to believe any stories against the Koman Catholics. 
^^°*- Though the facts, which have since come to light, were then 

only a matter of inference, it was strongly suspected that both Charles and 
James were Eoman Catholics, and that they had a perfect understanding 
with Louis XIV. in view of a forcible restoration of Roman Catholicism. 
Indeed, by this date, the fear of civil war which, so long as Oliver 
Cromwell's soldiers were efficient, had manifested itself in Clarendon's 
endeavour to break up the nonconforming congregations, and to 
exclude Nonconformists from municipal office, had changed into an 
af)prehension of a French invasion in fjivour of the Roman Catholics. 

This state of affiiirs was admirably fitted to render easy a belief in a 

Roman Catholic plot ; and in September 1678, a month after parliament 

^. ^ met, a rank impostor, Titus Gates, who had at one time been 

Titus Oates. l^ 

a clergyman of the Church of England, and a chaplain in 

the navy, who afterwards became a sham convert to Roman Catholi- 
cism, and was expelled from every post he had held in either church 
for disgraceful conduct and character, came forward with an absurd 
story of a Jesuit plot to murder Charles and James, and to establish Roman 
Catholicism by force. The story was in itself ludicrous, for Charles and 
James were the best friends of the Roman Catholics, and their deaths 
would have raised to the throne the Protestant Mary and her husband 
William of Grange ; but the excitement of the time deprived men of their 
critical faculties, and his tale was widely believed, even by so reasonable 
a man as Lord RusseU. Gates' depositions were made before Sir Edmund 
Berry Godfrey, a London magistrate ; and a fortnight later the dead 
body of Godfrey, impaled on a short sword, was found in a dry ditch on 
Primrose Hill. Whether the case was one of murder or suicide, it was 
impossible to say. Those who believed Gates declared that he had been 
murdered by the Papists, those who disbelieved were for suicide, 



1679 Charles 11. 635 

while a few declared that Godfrey had been murdered by Gates' friends 
in order to throw the blame on the Jesuits. On the whole, however 
suicide is probably the right explanation ; and the fact that Godfrey's 
friend, Coleman, was one of Gates' first victims, lends colour to this. 
Coleman was a Koman Catholic convert, who acted as secretary to the 
duchess of York. He was a silly and extravagant fellow, and his corre- 
spondence showed that he had asked Pere Lachaise, the confessor of 
Louis XIV., to find him ^20,000 for certain purposes profitable to France 
and to Catholicism. This Gates declared to be the plot. Meanwhile 
Gates' fame had inspired an imitator in William Bedloe, a 
rascal who, while acting as a courier on the continent, had 
gathered some acquaintance with the habits of the Catholics. He came 
forward with a circumstantial account of the murder of Godfrey by the 
Papists. The evidence of these two scoundrels drove England mad with 
terror. Five Koman Catholic peers, and some two thousand clergy and 
connnoners were arrested, and small measure of justice or mercy was the 
lot of those who stood first for trial. No one knew better the falseness of 
the whole story than Charles ; but feeling his weakness as an unacknow- 
ledged Koman Catholic, he did not venture to interfere in their behalf, and 
before common sense resumed its sway, many innocent men perished on 
the scaff'old. Gf these, the first victims were Coleman, whose foolish cor- 
respondence had so unluckily played into Gates' hands, three Jesuits, 
Ireland, Grove, and Pickering, and three poor fellows who were convicted 
of murdering Godfrey. In 1679 five Jesuits were convicted and hanged, 
but another of the accused. Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, 
was acquitted. At this moment another impostor. Danger- 
field, came forward with the story that the Roman Catholics 
had suborned him to give information of a sham Presbyterian plot, and also 
to murder the earl of Shaftesbury. This story, known as the Mealtub 
Plot, revived popular apprehension. Fresh trials and executions followed ; 
and finally, two years after Gates' original disclosures, the aged and 
respected Viscount Stafi'ord was impeached before the Lords, convicted of 
compassing the king's death, and beheaded. Two things in particular 
were fatal to the accused— first, the incredulity with which the evidence 
of Koman Catholics was received in favour of their co-religionists ; and 
secondly, the political excitement of the time, which almost made hatred 
of the Koman Catholics an essential part of the creed of one political 
party. 

Immediately on the assembling of parliament, after Gates' depositions, 
the question had been raised whether the safety of the Protestant fiiith 
could be secured under a Roman Catholic sovereign ; and after several 



636 The Stuarts 1679 

offers of Charles to consent to any special limitations on the prerogative 
which parliament should think needful while a Eoman Catholic was on 
The Exciu- the throne, a bill was brought into the House of Commons in 
sion Bill. jyf.^y jgH.9 f^j, ^^le exclusion of the duke of York from the 
throne, and his banishment from the country for life. If James were 
excluded it was proposed to put the Protestant Mary and her husband 
William on the throne. This made the bill popular, and secured it the 
goodwill of William of Orange, who wished nothing more than to secure 
the co-operation of England and Holland in the work of resisting the 
ambition of Louis xiv. Charles, however, though willing to agree to a 

^. , regency, was not willing to sacrifice the interests of his 

Dissolu- 111 .., 

tion of brother, and, to gam tmie, he dissolved parliament. Before 

doing so, however, the royal consent was given to the 
Habeas Corpus Act, long honourably known as Shaftesbury's Act. 
The Habeas The object of this bill was to give additional fticility 
Corpus Act. £qj, securing to an Englishman the right of being punished or 
imprisoned only after a trial by his peers, which had formed the thirty- 
ninth clause of the Great Charter. Its chief provisions were two : first, 
any unconvicted prisoner, committed for any crime except treason or 
felony, may require a judge to issue a writ of Habeas Corpus, ordering 
the jailor to produce him in court in order that he may be released on 
bail ; second, a prisoner accused of treason or felony must be tried at the 
first assizes held after his committal, or released on bail, unless the 
witnesses are unavoidably detained ; in that case he is either to be tried 
at the second assizes or discharged. These enactments, says Hallam, 
' cut off the abuses by which the government's lust of power and the 
servile subtlety of crown lawyers had impaired so fundamental a privi- 
lege.' By a third clause no Englishman could be imprisoned in Scotland, 
Ireland, the Channel Islands, or any other of the foreign dominions of the 
king — a rule afterwards modified to admit of triansportation to a penal 
settlement. In its next session parliament struck a stout blow for the 
purification of justice by the impeachment of Chief- Justice Scroggs, an 
able man of bad character, who had rendered himself notorious by his 
subserviency to the Court, and the brutality of his conduct on the bench. 
He was accused of illegally dismissing the grand jurymen of Middlesex 
when they were on the point of presenting the duke of York as a 'popish 
recusant ' ; of illegally forbidding the sale of a pamphlet entitled The 
Weekly Packet of Advice from Rome, and for acting illegally in the 
imposition of fines, the refusing of bail, and the issuing of general 
warrants. A dissolution prevented the trial of Scroggs, but his conduct 
was so notorious, that even Charles felt it unwise to keep him on the 



1680 Charles II. 637 

bench, and he was soon afterwards removed. His place, however was 
taken by Saunders, who was little better than his predecessor. 

During the discussion of the Exclusion Bill James had withdrawn to 
Brussels. After the dissolution he returned, but was sent on to Scotland. 
That country had lately been the scene of a rebellion. When 
at the Restoration Charles, by the advice of Middleton and '^°* ^" * 
Clarendon, and against the astute council of Lauderdale, had restored the 
bishops, the natural consequence was a wholesale secession of Presby- 
terian ministers, and the pastors were followed by their congretJ'ations. 
In vain the clergy were forbidden to come within twenty miles of their 
former parishes ; in vain it was declared to be seditious to preach in the 
open air ; in vain the seceding laity were fined, imprisoned, and tortured ; 
all that was most earnest in the religious life of Scotland gathered on the 
hill-sides to listen to the words of their beloved ministers. A regular 
dragonnade followed, directed by the subservient Lauderdale and the 
renegade Archbishop Sharpe. Reprisals soon followed, but only served 
Charles as an excuse for raising the Scottish army to 20,000 

H, r,. 1 / ,r Archbishop 

men. However, in 1679, bharpe was murdered on Magus Sharpe 
Moor by a body of fanatics, and a regular insurrection broke 
out in the western lowlands. A small force under John Graham of 
Claverhouse, afterwards Viscount Dundee, was routed at Drumclog ; 
but the ill-armed, and ill-led rebels were utterly routed at Bothwell 
Brigg by a formidable force commanded by the duke of Monmouth, the 
reputed son of Charles 11. The result of this abortive rebellion was to 
strengthen Charles' hands by giving excuse for raising a formidable army, 
which was placed under Claverhouse ; and James, on his arrival, found 
himself able to coerce the Covenanters with impunity — a task into which 
he threw himself with cruel energy. 

The election for a new parliament had occurred in 1679, immediately 
after the dissolution, but Charles, knowing that the majority was hostile, 
and having money provided by Louis, put off its meeting again ^^^^j ^^^ ^f 
and again, and it did not assemble for business till October Parliament 

„,.-.., delayed. 

1680. This delay revived all the party feelmg of the 
previous reign. On the one side petitions were sent to the king, urging 
him to assemble parliament ; on the other, counter-petitions .petitioners' 
from those who ' al)horred the action of promoting peti- and 

. , , ' Abhorrers.' 

tions.' From these came the names of 'Petitioners and 
' Abhorrers,' which were afterwards replaced by those of ' Whigs ' and 
' Tories.' These names were given to the parties by their ^j^.^ 
opponents. Whig was supposed to denote the Nonconfor- 
mists of Scotland. There had been a ' Vfhiggamore raid' in 1650, and 



638 The Stuarts 1680 

the name ' Whig' was used by the royalists of the Scotch rebels in 1666. 
Its application to the country party was designed as a slur on their 

loyalty. Tory was, properly speaking, an Irish brigand ; 

the rebels of 1641 were spoken of by the English as ' cut- 
throat tories ' ; and the term might be supposed to suggest the Eoman 
Catholic tendencies of the court party. However, the convenience of 
having short and more or less meaningless terms to distinguish political 
parties rapidly brought them into favour, and before long they were 
adopted as honourable distinctions by the two parties. 

Both Whigs and Tories accepted government by king and parlia- 
ment as the settled constitution of the country ; but the Tories laid great 
Party stress ou the hereditary right of the king, and the duty of 

Principles, non-resistance, while the Whigs were inclined to look upon 
him as an official, amenable, like others, to the rules of law, and bound 
to act through ministers responsible to parliament. As, however, was 
the case in the civil war, religious opinion played a larger part in 
determining the attitude of individuals than theoretical differences on 
constitutional points. The Tories were stout supporters of the church, 
while the Whigs, even when churchmen themselves, leaned to alliance 
with the Protestant Nonconformists, and would gladly have seen them 
tolerated. With the Koman Catholics neither showed any sympathy ; 
because both honestly believed that they were engaged in a battle with 
popery, in which either 'they would destroy it or it would destroy 
them.' Members of both parties were to be found in all ranks of 
society — for in England Whig and Tory have never been class dis- 
tinctions ; but, as had been the case in the civil war with the cavaliers 
and roundheads, the Tories were strongest in the agricultural districts — 
particularly among the squires and country clergy — the Whigs in the 
towns. 

In 1680 the Whigs were in favour of the Exclusion Bill, while the 
Tories, on their theory of hereditary transmission and divine right, were 
The Exciu- opposed to altering the order of succession. However, in 
sion Bill. ^jjg Commons, the Whigs had an overwhelming majority, 
and passed the bill almost without opposition. In the Lords, however, 
in spite of all the efforts of Shaftesbury, it was vigorously opposed, 
particularly by George Savile, marquess of Halifax — a man who was by 
temperament a most ingenious critic of the policy of other men, and 
prided himself on being a 'Trimmer' — that is, one who held himself 
aloof from party. The Trimmer's elocjuence carried the day against the 
Whigs, and the bill was rejected by 63 votes to 30. The success of the 
Court in the Lords was largely due to a mistake of Shaftesbury, whicli 



1681 Charles II. 539 

had alienated the Prince of Orange. So long as Mary was to succeed 
Charles, the prince had been favourable to the bill, but some of the 
extreme Whigs v/ere now pressing the claims of the duke of Monmouth, 
who was a strong Protestant, and now greatly under Shaftesbury's 
influence, and this turned the prince against it. So violent was Shaftes- 
bury that, on the rejection of the Exclusion Bill, he pressed Charles 
to declare Monmouth legitimate, but to this Charles refused to ao-ree 
However, the fears excited by the Popish Plot showed no sio-n of 
abating. During the summer of 1680, Shaftesbury had presented 
James as a recusant; immediately after the rejection of the Exclusion 
Bill, the peers, by 55 to 31, found Stafibrd guilty of treason ; and so 
long as these actions represented the general feeling James' accession 
could only be regarded with apprehension. The only question was 
whether this apprehension was sufficiently strong to impel the mass of 
the nation to take the serious step of altering the line of succession 
in order to guard against an evil which, as yet, was entirely prospec- 
tive. At present, however, the Whig leaders did not despair. A 
message of Charles, in which he announced plainly his determination 
never to agree to the Exclusion Bill, was met by a resolution declaring 
' that till the Exclusion Bill was passed they could not grant the king 
any manner of supply ' ; and government having thus reached an absolute 
deadlock, Charles dissolved parliament, and again appealed to the 
country. 

The elections were conducted amidst greg-t excitement ; but for the 
most part the old members were returned, and it seemed certain that the 
renewal of the struggle must very soon lead to a crisis. In The Oxford 
these circumstances Charles acted with a skill and resolution Parliament. 
which completely took aback those who had formed their opinion of his 
character from a careless observation of his ordinary habits. Shaftesbury, 
Sunderland, Essex, and Temple were expelled from the council in order 
to secure unanimity at court. The meeting-place of parliament Avas 
changed from Westminster to Oxford, in order to separate the Whigs 
from the city of London, where their most thoroughgoing supporters 
were to be found ; and he placed his regular troops between Oxford and 
London, so as to completely isolate the Whig members. To Oxford the 
members came with troops of servants ; those of the London members 
wearing blue ribbons, with the motto, ' No popery ! No slavery ! ' Eight 
days before the assembly of parliament Charles himself went to Oxford, 
and on the day appointed all his preparations were complete. His first 
care was to make such a moderate offer that its rejection would place his 
opponents in the wrong. Accordingly, he proposed that in case of the 



640 The Stuarts lesa 

accession of a Roman Catholic king, ' the administration of the government 
should remain in Protestant hands ' ; which was understood to mean the 
regency of the Princess Mary. To this the Whigs refused to consent ; 
and then Charles, without giving the members a moment for reflection, 
made his way to the Schools {i.e. the University Buildings) where the 
parliament was sitting, and as soon as he had assumed the royal robes, 
called the members before him and dissolved the parliament. 

The discomfiture of the Whigs was complete. From Westminster the 
bolder spirits might have retired into the city and attempted to continue 
their sittings ; at Oxford they could only obey, and even 
ture of Shaftesbury felt that parliamentary opposition was hope- 

*^^' less. What had enabled Charles to gain his great victory 
was the intervention of Louis xiv., who had been so alarmed at the 
prospects of such a practical union of England and Holland, as would 
have been implied by the accession of Mary either as sovereign or 
regent, that he had agreed to give Charles ^£250,000, on condition that 
no parliament should be called for three years. At this price Charles had 
been willing, as before, to sell his independence. Hence the dissolution. 

The next step of the government was to follow up their success by 
prosecuting their opponents. Their first victim was a foolish talker of 
the name of Stephen College, who, as the ' Protestant 
of the joiner,' had been made much of by some of the Whigs. In 

'^^' London there would have been little chance of convicting 

him ; but, by a monstrous perversion of justice, he was tried in Oxford, 
and there, by a Tory j ury, he was convicted of treason and subsequently 
hanged. With Shaftesbury, however, it was not so easy to deal, as no 
London grand jury would find a true bill on which he might have been 
tried by his peers. An attempt, however, was made, and backed up by the 
publication on the day of the trial of Dryden's Absalom and A chitojyhel. It 
tailed, however ; and the government proceeded, by a flagrant violation 
of the rights of the citizens, to force on London two Tory sheriffs — North, 
a Turkey merchant, brother of Chief- Justice North and of Roger North, 
the well-known Tory diarist ; and Colonel Rich, a turncoat, who had 
formerly voted for the Exclusion Bill. With such sheriffs, Shaftesbury 
well knew that a packed jury was inevitable ; and, despairing of raising 
an insurrection, he slipped away to the continent in November 1682, and 
within two months died in Holland. 

Meanwhile, violent schemes had undoubtedly been discussed by the 
Whig leaders. Shaftesbury had talked of the ' brave boys ' he would 
bring from Wapping. Monmouth had, during 1682, been making a pro- 
gress through England, assuming royal state, pretending to., t^^ve t^e 



1683 Charles II. 



641 



power of touching effectively for ' the king's evil,' and doing all he could 
to make himself a party. Meetings had been held in London ; but it is 
certain that no organised plan had been formed, and, indeed, most of the 
real leaders were quite convinced of the futility of an armed rebellion. 
It appears, however, that some of the more violent men, among whom 
was Colonel Kumbold, an old Cromwellian, had at least talked over a 
a plan for arresting and possibly murdering Charles and ^he r e 
James as they passed by the Rye House, an isolated resi- House Plot, 
dence near Hoddesdon, on the road from Newmarket to London. The 
whole affair is wrapped in mystery ; but, acting on the information of 
informers, the chief of whom were Lord Howard and Colonel Rumsey, 
the government arrested not only Rumbold's friends, Walcot, Hone, 
and Rouse, but also the earl of Essex, Lord Russell, John Hampden, 
and Colonel Algernon Sidney. These, with the duke of Monmouth 
and Lord Howard, were accused of forming a council of six for the 
organising of an insurrection. Of the prisoners, Walcot, Hone, and 
Rouse were hanged. Lord Russell, who had certainly been present at 
a meeting of the malcontents, but denied having taken any share in a 
conspiracy, was convicted on the evidence of Howard and 
Rumsey, and beheaded ; and Algernon Sidney suffered the of RusseU 
same fate. Russell was a man of great prudence and cir- ^" ' "^^' 
cumspection, not at all likely to engage in such a rash undertaking as 
that for which he was condemned, and a man beloved and respected in 
every relation of life. Algernon Sidney was a rash republican, who had 
been an active member of the expelled parliament of 1653, and had spent 
much of his time abroad. He had done his best to get aid from both France 
and Holland towards raising a rebellion in 1665 and 1666, and was quite 
capable of further plotting. His trial, however, as conducted by the 
brutal Jeffreys, was a parody of justice. The evidence against him was 
scandalously insufficient, and the want of a second witness was supplied 
by an unpublished manuscript found in his desk, from which it was 
argued that, as he had approved of insurrections against Nero and 
Caligula, he therefore approved of an insurrection against Charles ii. 
He met his fate with firmness, and was regarded as the noblest victim 
of the despotism of Charles. Against Hampden even the evidence 
which had convicted the others was wanting, but he was sentenced to pay 
a ruinous fine of ^40,000 for a misdemeanour ; Essex committed suicide ; 
and Monmouth, having made a confession in general terms, was par- 
doned and permitted to retire to Holland. Rumbold also made his 
escape. In Scotland the earl of Argyll was arrested and condemned, 
but lie too contrived to make his way to Holland. 

2s 



642 The Stuarts 1683 

While thus attemptmg to strike terror into his opponents, Charles was 

taking advantage of the breathing-time secured him by Louis to make 

sure of a permanent majority in the House of Commons. 

ling of the The strength of the Whigs, as we have seen, lay in the 

Corpora- borouglis ; that of the Tories in the counties. The election 

tions. o ' 

of borough members was usually in the hands of the cor- 
poration, which was a close body, filling up its own vacancies as they 
occurred. It was suggested by Saunders — a judge who, with Scroggs 
and Jefi'reys, earned an infamous reputation at this period — that Charles 
might, by a writ of quo warranto, recall the charters of such corporations 
and restore them after nominating a new corporation of Tories to take the 
place of the old members. Accordingly this was done, not only in all 
towns which had sent Whigs to parliament, but even in places like Leeds 
which had no parliamentary reiDresentation. In restoring the charters, 
the king reserved to himself the right of confirming all elections to 
municipal offices, and, in case he were dissatisfied, of naming the officers 
himself. 

The remodelling of the corporations completed the series of measures 
by which Charles ii. attempted to annul the efifect of the resistance 
Charles' ^^ *^^ Long Parliament to Charles i. His eflForts had 
success. been attended with surprising success, and he was now 
little less than an absolute king. He possessed a small standing army, 
which gave Mm a security against the first violence of 2D02Dular insurrec- 
tion which the Tudors and Plantagenets had never possessed. He named 
the officers of the militia, and the governors of such fortresses as had not 
been dismantled. He dismissed the judges as he thought fit, and had 
shown that among the bar could be found men as ready to do his will as 
Scroggs, Saunders, and Jeffreys. Through the offices of the sheriffs, he 
could command the services of compliant jurymen. The aiDiDointment of 
magistrates was practically in his hands. Through the goodwill of Louis 
he was in possession of a permanent revenue so long as he did not call a 
parliament ; and if Louis failed him, the remodelling of the corporations 
had given him the means of seating his own creatures on the benches of 
the House of Commons. 

Such was the position of this clever but unprincipled sovereign when, 
on February 6, 1685, at the height of his power, and apparently in the 

Death of ^^^^ vigour of health, Charles died of apoplexy. He was a 

the King, j^y^;^^ ^f consummate ability, who concealed under the appear- 
ance of frivolity a talent for intrigue and a calculating hardness of heart 
which baffled the ablest statesmen of his day, and surj^rised even those 
who knew him best. On his deathbed he admitted that he was a 



1683 



Charles 11. 



643 



Koman Catholic, and received absolution from a Koman Catholic priest, 
Huddleston, who had formerly aided him in his escape from Worcester! 
By his wife, Katharine of Braganza, he had no family ; l)ut he left a 
large number of natural children by different mothers, most of whom 
were raised to the peerage. 



CHIEF DATES. 









A.D. 


The Corporation Act, 1661 


The Act of Uniformity, 






1662 


The Conventicle Act, 






1664 


The Five-Mile Act, . 






1665 


The Plague, 






1665 


The Fire of London, . 






1666 


The First Dutch War, 






1665-1667 


The Cabal, 






1667 


The Triple Alliance, 






1668 


The Treaties of Dover, 






1670 


The Declaration of Indulgence, 






1672 


The Second Dutch War, . 






1672-1674 


The Test Act, . 






1673 


The Popish Plot, 






1678 


The Exclusion Bill, 






1680 


The Oxford Parliament, 






1681 


The ' Quo Warranto ' Writs, 






1682 


Executions of Russell and Sidn 


ey, 




1683 



CHAPTEE VI 

JAMES II. : 1685-1689 



Born 1633 ; married | '^^^' ^^^^ Hyde (d. 1671). 
1 1673, Mary of Modena (d. ] 



1718). 



CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 



France. Spain. Holland. 

Louis XIV., d. 1715. Charles ii., d. 1700. William iii., d. 1702. 

Character of James — Monmouth's Keloelliou — The Disiiensing Power— Hales' 
Case — The Ecclesiastical Commission — Attacks upon the Universities— The 
Declaration of Indulgence— Adverse Feeling in the Country — Birth of James' 
Son— Trial of the Seven Bishops— Expedition of William of Orange— Flight 
of James — The Interregnum — The Declaration of Eight. 

When an event has been long anticipated with apprehension, it frequently 
happens that its actual accomplishment surprises by its apparent simpli- 
Quietness of ^^^7- So it was in the accession of James ii., which occurred 
the accession. ..q quietly and so much as a matter of course, that for a 
time it seemed that the apprehensions of the exclusionists had been com- 
pletely groundless. 

The new king had some excellent qualities, marred not only by con- 
stitutional defects, but by some curious inconsistencies. Sir John 
Character of Evelyn describes him as a man of ' infinite industry, 
James. sedulity, gravity, and great understanding, and of a most 

sincere and honest nature. He makes a conscience of what he promises, 
and i^erforms it.' The great Marshal Turenne had formed a high opinion 
of the talent for war which James had shown as a young man ; and he 
had seen much service with the fleet. At the Admiralty Office he had 
been most diligent, and Bishop Burnet seems to express the general 
opinion when he speaks of a future ' reign of action and business, not 
of sloth and luxury.' These qualities, however, had all been sho^vn in 
subordinate offices. As sovereign, James possessed in a full measure the 

644 



1685 James II. 645 

defects which had been so fatal to his fother. He was very narrow- 
minded, and incapable of seeing both sides of a question, or being affected 
by argument. From a similar cause, his imagination was deficient, so 
that he failed to sympathise with the views of others, and in his own 
opinions he was, like his fiither, extremely obstinate. Though more care- 
ful of the forms of his religion than the late king, he was little less 
immoral. These bad qualities marred all the rest, and, in less than four 
years, James had contrived to array against himself ' not only those 
classes who had fought against his father, but those who had fought for 
him.' Immediately after the death of Charles, the council assembled, 
and James, on taking his brother's place, declared that ' he would make 
it his endeavour to preserve this government, both in church and state, 
as it is now by law established,' and that ' as he would never depart 
from the just rights and prerogatives of the crown, so he would never 
invade any man's property.' The actual words of the spoken speech are 
not quite ascertained, but the published version of it gave great satisfec- 
tion ; and the cry went round, ' We have the word of a king, and a word 
never yet broken.' 

The new king gave his chief confidence to his brother-in-law, Lawrence 
Hyde, earl of Rochester, the second son of the great earl of Clarendon, 
who became lord-treasurer ; to Halifax, whose speech in 
the House of Lords had brought about the defeat of the 
Exclusion Bill; to Lord Godolphin and to Lord Sunderland. It soon 
appeared, however, that Halifax was to have little power. From being 
lord privy seal he was promoted to the more dignified but less important 
post of president of the council, a process described by himself as 
' being kicked upstairs.' The seal was then given to Rochester's brother, 
Clarendon. 

The brothers Hyde, though they had been stout partisans of James 
while duke of York, were chiefly distinguished by their devotion to the 
interests of the church, and their employment was a sort of ^ ,' . 

' ^ '' Godolphin. 

guarantee of its welfare. Lord Godolphm was an adnnr- 

able financier, and had so nmch reconuuended himself to Charles by liis 

tact and efficiency as to earn the compliment that ' Sidney Godolphin is 

never in the way and never out of it.' Sunderland, who ^ . , . 

J . Sunderland. 

was now secretary of state, had voted for the Exclusion Bill, 
' not by his own inclination for the preservation of the Protestant reli- 
gion, but by mistaking the ability of the party to carry it.' He was now 
prepared to wipe out the memory of his error by a thick- and-thm 
support of the new sovereign. He, Godolphin, and Lawrence Hyde 
were often spoken of jocularly as the ' Chits.' 



646 The Stuarts 1685 

James' first act was to order that the customs duties, which had been 

voted to Charles for life, should be collected as usual, though they could 

not be renewed till parliament met. There was much to 

The 

Customs be said for avoiding a break. An intermission in the 
Duties. collection would cause great confusion in trade ; and it was 
so obviously unfair that a merchant, whose goods had by mere accident 
entered port a day after the king's death, should be able to undersell 
another who had paid duty the day before ; to say nothing of the loss to 
the revenue through goods being largely imported during the cessation, 
that it has now been arranged that the taxes should be voted for a 
definite period without regard to the demise of the crown. At that time, 
however, the act was certainly unconstitutional ; but it seems, on the 
whole, to have been approved by the mercantile world, judging by the 
ready compliance expressed by the East India and other great trading 
companies. 

James had made great professions of patriotism, but he was not proof 

against an olfer of a sum of =£67,000 from Louis xiv., which Louis placed 

in the hands of Barillon, the French ambassador, remarking 

Louis XIV. , , ^ -,,11.,,. . . , . 

that, 'alter all the high things given out in his name, 
James is willing to take my money as his brother has done.' Some of 
this money, however, was arrears due to Charles ; and in reality the amount 
actually received by James during his whole reign was insignificant. 

At James' accession, the prison doors were opened to numerous political 
and religious prisoners. Danby and four Eoman Catholic lords were re- 
Release of leased from the Tower, and several thousand Eoman Catholics 
Prisoners. ^.^^^ twelve hundred Quakers were discharged from other 
prisons. Soon after the accession, also, a terrible retribution was meted 
Punishment o^^t to Oates and Dangerfield, the leading witnesses in the 
of Gates. Popish Plot, who were answerable for the lives of many 
innocent men. Before Charles' death, Gates had been indicted for 
perjury, and his trial came on shortly after the accession of James. 
Being convicted on two counts, he was sentenced to pay a fine of £666 
on each, to be twice publicly flogged — once from Aldgate to Newgate, 
and, two days later, from Newgate to Tyburn — to stand every year five 
times in the pillory, and to be imprisoned for life. The sentence was 
probably designed to be fatal ; but Gates, ' being an^ original in all 
things,' survived it, and lived to receive a pension from William in. A 
little later, Dangerfield, his fellow-perjurer, suffered a similar fate, but 
had the ill-luck to die, either tlirough the effects of the flogging, or of a 
wound from a cane thrust into his eye by a law-student named Francis, 
who was hanged for the offence. About the same time, a much worthier 



1685 James 11. 



647 



man, Eichard Baxter, also suffered from the ill-will of the court. He 
was prosecuted for libelling the church in a book called a Paraphrase of 
the New Testament, and tried before Jeffreys. On conviction, he was 
fined i'333, 6s. 8d., and ordered to be imprisoned till it was paid, which 
he was unable to do. 

In May, parliament met. Full use had been made of the king's new 
power in the boroughs. Particularly was this the case in the west, 
where the conduct of the elections had been handed over Meeting of ' 
to the 'prince elector,' Lord Bath, who had freely intro- Parliament, 
duced officers of the guards into the Cornish municipalities. The 
result, however, was so satisflictory to James, that he declared 'that 
there were not above forty members but such as he himself wished for.' 
In the House of Commons, however, Edward Seymour had the courage 
to make a vigorous protest against the new charters, but he received no 
serious support, and a liberal revenue was giiinted without difficulty. 
Of Charles' gross income of ^1,400,000, about £500,000 was permanent, 
and £900,000 parliamentary. This was entirely renewed, and besides, a 
new tax on sugar and tobacco, wines and vinegar, was voted to James 
for eight years, and on foreign linen for five. , 

Though James had been allowed to succeed so quietly, the Whig 
exiles had no intention of giving up their hojoes without a struggle. 
Immediately on the accession of James, the Prince of ArgyH's 
Orange had required Monmouth to leave Holland. He Rising- 
retired to Brussels, and there he, the earl of Argyll, Lord Grey, Fletcher 
of Salton, Ferguson and Kumbold, devised a scheme for a simultaneous 
rising in favour of Monmouth in England and Scotland. Monmouth had 
faint hopes of success, as he well knew the difficulty of leading untrained 
rebels against drilled troops ; but Argyll was eager ; and, against his 
better judgment, Monmouth yielded. Argyll sailed first, taking with him 
Rumbold, and made his way to his own country. The government, 
however, being warned of his approach, took the precaution of arresting 
all the leading Campbells, and of barring with troops the outlets from 
the Highlands. Argyll, therefore, found himself powerless in his own 
country, where his chief strength lay, and an abortive attempt to raise 
the western Covenanters only led to the capture of himself and Rumbold. 
Argyll, who had already been condenmed to death in the last reign, was 
executed on his old sentence ; Rumbold was tried and convicted, after 
boldly declaring that ' he did not believe that God had made the greater 
part of mankind with saddles on their backs and bridles in their mouths, 
and some few booted and spurred to ride the rest.' 

Six days after Argyll's capture, Monmouth, with Grey, Fletcher, and 



648 The Stuarts 1685 

Ferguson, landed at Lyme in Dorsetshire, and issued a cleverly worded 
manifesto, in which he demanded toleration for all Protestants, annual 
Monmouth's parliaments, upright judges, elected sheriffs to command 
Rising. ^Yie militia, the repeal of the Corporation Act, and the 

restoration of the forfeited charters. He was soon joined by some two 
thousand followers, and might have had more had his stock of weapons 
been larger. After wasting some time in drilling his men, Monmouth 
made his way to Taunton, the centre of the manufacturing district of 
Somersetshire, where he was popular with the clothiers and with the 
miners of the Mendip hills. By the lower and middle classes he was 
received with enthusiasm, but he obtained no support from the gentry 
or nobility. Unhappily for Monmouth, Fletcher cpiarrelled with and 
shot Dare of Taunton, one of his most influential supporters, and had 
to be sent away by sea, while Lord Grey, who commanded the cavalry, 
showed himself hopelessly incompetent. In spite, however, of these 
mishaps, Monmouth assumed the title of king, and pressed on towards 
Bristol in hopes of making his way to his Cheshire friends ; but, his 
troops being repulsed in a trifling skirmish at Philip's Norton, he 
retreated to Bridgewater. 

Thither he was pursued by the royalist troops, commanded by the 
earl of Feversham, a nephew of Turenne, and by John Churchill, 
Battle of afterwards duke of Marlborough. As a last resource, 
Sedgemoor. Monuiouth attempted a night attack on their camp, which 
had been pitched near the village of Weston Zoyland, among the half- 
reclaimed flats of Sedgemoor. Had the surprise been effectual, the dark- 
ness of the night would have neutralised the want of discipline in the 
rebel army ; but accident or ignorance led to the discovery of the attack- 
ing party while a broad ditch still separated it from the royalist camp. 
Though attacked instead of attacking, Monmouth's foot-soldiers fought 
well, but his cavalry under Grey disgraced themselves by flight ; and 
when daylight came, Monmouth recognising that all was lost fled 
from the field. Making for the coast, he contrived to reach the New 
Forest, but was there ignominiously captured in disguise, and with his 
fellow-rebel. Lord Grey, was taken to London. There he had been 
already attainted by parliament ; but he begged desperately for life, 
throwing the blame on the ' false and horrid ' companions by whom he 
had been led on, and eventually was put to death, after such an 
exhibition of pusillanimity as makes it difficult to believe his earlier 
reputation for courage and conduct. Grey completed his disgrace by 
turning king's evidence, and procuring the conviction of some of his 
former friends. 



1685 James IT. g49 

Meanwhile, the victors of Sedgemoor had been preparing a bloody 
revenge. Under the direction of Colonel Kirke, a man who had learned 
his brutality among the Moors of Tangiers, a considerable The Bloody 
number of the rebels were hanged without even the form ^^size, 
of trial, and the gaols were crowded with others and with their 
harbourers and friends. To try them, a commission of five judges, 
headed by Jeffreys, was sent to the west. At Winchester they stopped 
to try Alicia Lisle, an aged lady, widow of one of Cromwell's lords, 
who was accused of harbouring rebels. There was no evidence that she 
knew what her guests were, but Jeffreys forced a conviction, and she 
was beheaded, as much in posthumous punishment for the sins of her 
husband as for her own crime. Another poor woman named Gaunt, con- 
victed in London of a similar oftence, was burnt alive. From Winchester, 
Jeffreys and his colleagues passed on to Salisbury, Exeter, Wells, 
Bristol, and other western towns, and their eftbrts resulted in over three 
hundred persons being hanged, eight hundred transported to the West 
Indies, and an indefinite number flogged, fined, and imprisoned. An 
account of each day's proceedings was carefully drawn iip for the 
personal perusal of the king. Compared with the wholesale hangings 
of Henry viii. after the Pilgrimage of Grace, or of Elizabeth after the 
rebellion of 1569, the vengeance of Jeffreys and Kirke was not specially 
bloody ; but as it happened at a moment when the age was turning in 
the direction of a milder code of punishment, public opinion was 
utterly horrified, and the proceedings of Jeffreys will always be pilloried 
as ' The Bloody Assize.' As a reward for his exertions, Jefi'reys 
was made lord-chancellor. The fiiilure of Monmouth's rebellion showed 
clearly what a change had been made by the introduction of a standing 
army ; formerly insurgents could bring into the field as good troops 
as the king, and often better, but now no insurrection had any chance 
that was not backed by a trained force. 

As Machiavelli had pointed out, government is never so strong as 
after it has just put down a rebellion, and James was encouraged 
to develop his scheme of securing ascendency for the Emancipa- 
Roman Catholics. From the beginning of the reign, the Roman 
interests of the Roman Catholics had been specially in Catholics, 
charge of a group of four persons : Richard Talbot — known as 
'lying Dick Talbot '—Henry Jermyn, Edward Petre a Jesuit, and 
Sunderland ; and they asked James to take advantage of his present 
strength to carry out his policy. As its objects, James had in view 
(1) liberty of conscience, by which he understood the abolition of 
religious tests as a qualification for office ; (2) freedom of worship. 



650 The Stuarts 1685 

In desiring to secure these, James was actuated not by any love for 

toleration in the abstract, but by an instinct of self-preservation, which 

compelled him to l)elieve that so long as his special form of worship 

was proscribed by law, and his co-religionists were excluded from office, 

his own throne could never be safe. Were the tests removed, therefore, 

he designed to support his rule by surrounding himself with a ring of 

Roman Catholic officials. 

After an adjournment of some months, parliament re-assembled in 

November 1685. By this time James had quite decided not only 

on carrying the points above mentioned, but also on se- 
Parhament. . i ,. , . . , ' ^ . ^ 

curing from parliament the repeal of the Habeas Corpus 

Act, and a sanction for a considerable increase in the standing army. 
He was not, however, without warning of the reception his proposals 
would meet with. Halifax had opposed them in the council, and been 
dismissed in consequence ; the Protestant officials, headed by Rochester 
himself, had shown distinct scruples at doing anything which might 
give official sanction even to the king's public attendance at mass ; 
while, in the last session, the members of the House of Commons 
had declared that the established church was ' dearer to them than 
their lives.' Further evidence of the suspicion in which Roman 
Huguenot Catholicism was held was afforded by the reception given to 
Refugees. ^j^Qse French Huguenots who took refuge in England when 
Louis, during this very summer, annulled the Edict of Nantes by which 
Henry iv. had secured the position of the Protestants of France. This 
action of Louis was in itself a great mistake, as the Protestants, who for 
the most part belonged to the middle classes, were the most industrious 
part of the French nation. 'France,' Evelyn relates, 'was almost 
dispeopled ; the bankers so broken that the tyrant's revenue was 
exceedingly diminished ; manufactures ceased ; and everybody there, 
save the Jesuits, abhorred what was done, nor did the Papists them- 
selves approve it.' In England the refugees were received with 
enthusiasm ; subscriptions were raised to provide for the poorer of 
them ; while the Protestant feeling of the country, and the suspicion 
with which anything Roman Catholic was regarded, were largely 
increased. 

When parliament assembled, James' speech to the members drew, from 
the ill-conduct of the militia in Monmouth's rebellion, an argument for 
_. _ increasing the standins; army, and he mentioned favourably the 

The Roman ^ o J? J 

Catholic case of Roman Catholic officers to whom, in the emergency, 

commissions had been granted. Opposition immediately 

showed itself; led in the Commons by Seymour and old Sir John 



1685 James II. 



651 



Maynard (who had been a manager of the impeachment of Strafford), 
and in the Lords by Devonshire, Halifax, Nottingham, Mordannt (after- 
wards earl of Peterborough), and Compton, bishop of London ; and so 
firm was their attitude that James hurriedly prorogued parliament and 
fell back on another method of gaining his ends. 

James' new device was the free use of the Dispensing Power. Durincr 
the reigns of Charles and James much had been said of the suspending 
and dispensing power of the sovereign. From time imme- 
morial the crown had possessed the prerogative of pardon ; penshig" 
but these claims carried their right two steps further for ^°^^'"- 
while by the dispensing power it was claimed that the sovereign could in 
advance permit an individual to infringe the law, by the suspending power 
it was held that he could suspend the operation of any law he chose in the 
case of all and sundry. So long as all laws were either to restrain the 
sovereign power or to secure the punishment of criminals, such claims 
could hardly be put forward ; but so soon as a part of the nation imposed 
disabilities and restrictions on the rest based on religious differences, they 
became of the highest importance. James' first step was to take the 
opinion of the judges, and, some of these being doubtful, to weed the 
bench until a unanimous decision in his favour could be obtained ; his 
second, to arrange that an information for violating the Test Act should 
be brought against his master by a coachman of Sir Edward 

Hales' Case. 

Hales, a Koman Catholic to whom James had given a com- 
mission as colonel in the army. The case was tried before Chief-Justice 
Herbert, who indeed had suggested the method. He decided that ' it was 
part of the king's prerogative to dispense with penal laws in particular 
cases,' and accordingly the case was decided for the defendant. Fortified 
with this decision, James freely gave posts to Roman Catholics, and as 
he was as economical as Charles ii. had been extravagant, he was able to 
support even an army of 14,000 men without further resource to parlia- 
ment. In July 1686, Dr. Fell, dean of Christ Church and bishop of Oxford, 
died, and James divided his posts between Massey, a Koman Catholic 
fellow of Merton College, and Dr. Parker, who, though not a declared 
Roman Catholic, w^as a thoroughgoing courtier and chiefly distinguished 
for his wittiness in his cups. At the same time Obadiah Walker, a con- 
vert, was permitted by dispensation to retain his post of master of Uni- 
versity College. These appointments were obviously violations of James' 
promise to maintain the church as by law established ; but in thinking 
he could act so with impunity, he was merely taking the church and the 
universities at their word, for the sinfulness of rebellion had been for 
years a standing theme of pulpit eloquence, and on the very day of Lord 



652 The Stuarts 1686 

Eussell's execution the Convocation of Oxford had declared its behef 
that ' resistance to a king was, under any circumstances, unlawful.' He 
therefore believed that whether the church and the universities approved 
or not, he had nothing to fear from them. 

However, to secure his hold over the church, James set up a new 

court of ecclesiastical commission. It was designed to be, under another 

name, the old Court of High Commission, abolished in 1641 : 

Thp Ecclesi- o / 

astical Com- but advantage was taken of an Act passed in 1662, by which 
mission. ^j^^ power of exercising its supremacy was reserved to the 

crown. The members of the new court were all Protestants, and were 
the bishops of Chester, Durham, Kochester ; the earls of Rochester and 
Sunderland ; Chief- Justice Herbert, and, chief of all, Jeffreys, who was 
always to be present when business was done. 

To overawe London, James concentrated on Hounslow Heath an army 
of 13,000 men, and this done, he thought himself secure. He now 
The Camp at began to put Eomau Catholics into all the chief posts. His 
Hounslow. brother-in-law, Clarendon, was recalled from Ireland, and the 
office of the lord-lieutenant bestowed on Eichard Talbot, who was created 
earl of Tyrconnel. As a lad, Talbot had been present at the storming of 
Drogheda. His great aim was to secure the independence of Ireland, 
while James wished to repeat Strafford's policy of making Ireland a basis 
of operations against England. For the time, however, there was no 
divergence between their views, and Tyrconnel had full powers to 
remodel the Irish army and transfer the civil service to Eoman Catholics. 
At the same time advances were made to Eochester, with a view to 
making him a convert, and on his refusal he was deprived of his post of 
lord-treasurer. Sunderland, however, was more compliant, and, in 
hopes of succeeding Eochester, declared himself ready to accept the creed 
of his king ; and many others were ready to do the same. 

In 1686 the Ecclesiastical Commission suspended Compton, bishop of 

London — who had given offence by his opposition in the Lords — as a 

punishment for refusing to silence Dr. Sharpie, rector of St. 

Compton. 

Giles', Avho had reflected in the pulpit on the honesty of 

some new converts. James then attacked the universities of Oxford and 
The Uni- Cambridge. As the law stood, no Eoman Catholic could take 
versities. ^ degree at either of these universities, or hold office in any 
college. This law James determined to override by means of the dispens- 
ing power. Accordingly, a request was sent to the university of Cambridge 
to admit to the degree of Master of Arts Alban Francis, a Benedictine 
monk, who was working as a Eoman Catholic missionary in the neighbour- 
hood. Dr. Peachell, the vice-chancellor, and master of Magdalene 



1686 James II. 553 

College, acting with the informal concurrence of the Senate, declined to 
admit Francis until he had taken the usual oaths ; upon which he was 
deprived of the vice-chancellorship and suspended from his mastership. 
Victory, however, rested with the university, for though a new vice- 
chancellor was elected, Francis never received his degree. Oxford's turn 
came next. James was exceedingly desirous on many grounds of seeing 
Roman Catholics freely admitted to the universities, as they have been 
since 1870 ; but his method of proceeding was perhaps more reprehen- 
sible at Oxford than it had been at Cambridge. On the death of the 
president of Magdalen College, one of the richest foundations in the 
university, James sent a letter to the fellows ordering them to elect 
Antony Farmer, a Roman Catholic, distinguished neither for learning nor 
conduct, and, according to the statutes of the college, ineligible for the 
post. The fellows, therefore, proceeded to elect John Hough, one of 
their own number, in every way a suitable candidate, and ' a worthy, 
firm man, not apt to be threatened out of his rights.' The case was then 
referred to the Court of Ecclesiastical Commission, which advised James 
to drop Farmer, but declared Hough's election illegal. Accordingly 
James put forward Parker, bishop of Oxford, who was indeed caj)able of 
election had the post been vacant, though he was shrewdly suspected of 
being a Roman Catholic in disguise. The fellows, however, persisted that 
Hough's election was legal, and that no vacancy existed. Resistance 
appearing from such an unexpected quarter, increased, doubtless, by a 
suspicion that a mistake had been made, drove James to fury. In person 
he went down to Oxford and administered to the contumacious fellows 
a scolding which did nothing to raise the respect of the university for the 
dignity of his office. The election of Hough was then annulled by the 
Ecclesiastical Commission, and Parker's rej^resentative was installed in 
the president's lodgings. Hough himself, with twenty-five of the fellows 
and fourteen demies, was expelled from the college and declared 
incapable of holding ecclesiastical appointments. In the course of the 
troubles Parker died, and in his place James nominated a Roman Catholic 
bishop, Bonaventura Gifiard, and the places of the expelled fellows and 
demies were filled with Roman Catholics and courtiers. The result of 
his quarrel with Magdalen College was to array against James the whole 
force of university feeling, which existed not only in Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, but in every parsonage in the country, where the inmate, who 
cared little about the appointment of Roman Catholic guardsmen, was 
perfectly alive to the meaning of the least incident which affected an 
ancient and loyal college. 

For some time James, relying on the ' non-resistance ' professions of the 



654 The Stuarts 1687 

Church of England, had hoped to affect his ends by an alliance between 

the church and the Eoman Catholics. He was, however, convinced of 

the futility of this expectation, and fell back on the policy 

James and o^/-^^^•• 

the Non- of the Cabal ministry, who had hoped to secure tolera- 
' tion by an alliance between the Catholic and Protestant 
Nonconformists. Accordingly, he affected great kindness for the Non- 
conformists. He released Baxter and others who were suffering under 
The First the penal laws, and in April 1687 issued a Declaration of 
ofYndifiV°" Indulgence, ' suspending the execution of all penal laws for 
gence. religious offences, and forbidding the imposition of religious 

oaths or tests as qualifications for office,' The princij)les of toleration 
thus announced were excellent in themselves, and have gradually been 
adopted by the legislature ; but at this date they were subject to two 
serious objections — first, the form of the Declaration was such that if 
accepted as a precedent, no law could be regarded as safe from being 
at any moment suspended by the royal prerogative ; and secondly, 
toleration itself was not in accord with the then sentiments of the English 
people. These two facts were fatal to the success of James' measure. 
The Church of England looked on in amazement, while even among the 
Protestant Nonconformists who benefited by the Declaration, Baxter 
refused to render any acknowledgment, while others, in giving James 
thanks, laid stress on their hopes that the new policy would soon receive 
the consent of both Houses of parliament. A few received the grace 
with acclamation, and set about repairing their meeting-houses, to fit 
them for places of public worship. Among these is to be reckoned 
William Penn, the 'courtly Quaker,' son of Admiral Penn, who had 
allowed himself to be completely won over by James' professions of 
tolerance, and was now giving him a hearty support. 

The very lukewarm reception which the Declaration had met with 
might have warned James of the folly of the cau-se on Avhich he was bent ; 
Confidence hut he persisted in his belief that though the church might 
of James. grumble it would never resist, took Penn's voice as that of 
the whole Nonconformist community, and even rejected with scorn the 
remonstrances of the more moderate section of the English Roman 
Catholics, who were perfectly alive to the risks both to hiin and them- 
selves which were being run by their infatuated champion. So sure, 
indeed, did he feel of success that he introduced the Jesuit Petre and 
four Eoman Catholic peers into the privy council, made Lord Arundel of 
Wardour privy seal, gave seats on the treasury board to two other 
Roman Catholics, and made Sir Edward Hales constable of the Tower 
of London. These acts were taken by the nation to mean that when 



1687 James II. 555 

James talked of toleration he really implied Eoman Catholic ascend- 
ency, and that he meant to give to the Roman Catholics, who probably 
numbered one in thirty of the population, an altogether disiDroportionate 
share of political power. It was also believed that all James' acts were 
merely designed to pave the way for a reconciliation of England with 
Rome, and the re-establishment of Roman Catholicism as the state 
church, and this view received confirmation when James' Chapel in 
Whitehall was thrown open for the public celebration of Roman Catholic 
rites, when members of Roman Catholic orders appeared openly in 
uniform, and especially when, on July 3, 1687, a nuncio from the pope 
was ceremoniously received at court. 

Parliament had not sat for business since December 1685. On July 2, 
1687, it was dissolved ; and James then set himself to secure the election 
of a parliament which should give legal recognition to the 
Declaration of Indulgence. With this end he formed a board 
of ' regulators,' designed to carry out a further remodelling of the corpora- 
tions, and requested the lords-lieutenant to furnish him with a list of 
Roman Catholics and Nonconformists suitable to sit in parliament. He 
also directed the lords-lieutenant to call together the magistrates and 
principal freeholders of their resjjective counties, and to inquire from 
them (1) whether, if elected members of parliament, they would vote for 
a repeal of the tests ; (2) whether they would vote for candidates who 
would ; and (3) whether they would themselves live peaceably with men 
of all denominations. The lords-lieutenant were Tories to a man, and 
many of them were old cavaliers, with scars from Edgehill and Naseby, 
but the requests met with a general refusal. The earl of Northampton 
told the men of Warwickshire that it was his duty to put the questions, 
but that for himself he agreed with none of them ; and most of the 
answers followed a cleverly devised form of words believed to have been 
drawn up by Halifax, which committed to nothing. Even James was 
convinced that it was hopeless to get a parliament favourable to the 
Declaration, and he wreaked his vengeance on the recalcitrant nobles 
and gentlemen by depriving them of their posts. Among others, the 
duke of Somerset was dismissed from the post of first lord of the bed- 
chamber for refusing to present the papal nuncio ; the earl of Devonshire 
resigned to avoid expulsion, and the places of all were handed over either 
to courtiers or to Roman Catholics. Towns which seemed likely to be 
refractory had their corporations remodelled. 

James had now managed to ofi'end the old adherents of his father 
—the nobility, the country gentry, the universities and the church- 
but it was yet doubtful what line would ultimately be taken by the 



656 The Stuarts 1687 

Nonconformists. Their treatment by the church since the Restoration had 

been most exasperating, and it could hardly have been wondered at if at 

this crisis they had made common cause with the king. 

The attitude ^ i , n i i , -r,- i • . i ,. 

of the Non- Two causes held them back. Jbirst, having separated irom 
con ormists, ^|^^ church because its government and rites were held to 
be too nearly akin to those of Rome, they could hardly look with favour 
upon a policy which seemed likely, in the long run, to place the Roman 
Church in the position held by the Church of England, and of which 
the appointment of four Roman Catholic bishops for England appeared 
to be a foretaste. Second, they judged the temper of the nation much 
better than James was doing ; they saw that the mass of the nation was 
attached to the church, and that the king's jDolicy was certain to be 
reversed by a free parliament. They also believed that James' pro- 
ceedings, however favourable to themselves at the moment, were only part 
of a general plan to destroy the liberties of the country. The majority, 
therefore, determined to ally themselves with the church, and to trust to 
the gratitude of parliament for reward. Accordingly, James' attempt to 
win them over to his side was a failure. 

Hitherto the country had borne James' proceedings with tolerable 
patience, because it was expected that in the course of nature he would 
An Heir ^^^^ ^^ Succeeded by Mary and William ; and in 1687 
expected. William sent over Dyckveldt to England with orders to 
bring together the prince's friends, and induce them to act in concert 
and with the prince. Dyckveldt played his part with address and tact, 
and soon Halifax, Shrewsbury, Danby, Nottingham, Russell's old colleague, 
Cavendish, now earl of Devonshire, and the bishop of London, were in 
close alliance with the prince and princess. Now, however, an event 
happened which threatened to frustrate all their hopes. Hitherto Mary 
of Modena had never borne a living child, but in December 1687 it was 
formally announced that she was expecting to become a mother. If the 
child were a girl, no difference would be made ; but if it were a boy, 
and lived, James would be succeeded, not by the Protestant Mary, but 
by a Roman Catholic prince, and all hope of reversing his policy, except 
by a revolution, would be at an end. Naturally the Protestants were 
dismayed, while the Roman Catholics showed every symptom of hope, 
and rapturously anticipated the birth of a son and heir. 

It was in these circumstances that James was reckless enough to put 
Second the endurance of the church to further test. In April 1688 

ofTndul-*°" ^^® issued a second Declaration of Indulgence, and ordered it 
gence. to be read by the clergy at divine service on two succes- 

sive Sundays. It is true that similar royal notices had already been 



1688 James II. 557 

published by the clergy — for example, Charles' manifesto against the Whigs 

in 1681, and his declaration respecting the Rye House Plot in 1683, 

but the declaration was regarded by the clergy as being in itself illegal. 
Accordingly, a distinction was drawn between passive and active diso- 
bedience, and they, headed by Archbishop Bancroft and six bishops, drew 
up a respectful and temperate remonstrance, in which they plainly declared 
that ' this declaration was founded on such a dispensing power as hath 
been often declared illegal in parliament, and particularly in the years 
1662 and 1672, and in the beginning of your majesty's reign,' so that they 
could not in ' prudence, honour, or conscience, so far make themselves 
parties to it, as the distribution of it all over the nation, and the solemn 
publication of it once and again, even in God's house, must amount to 
in common and reasonable construction,' and therefore they requested to 
be excused. This petition was signed by Bancroft of Canterbury, Lloyd 
of St. Asaph, Turner of Ely, Lake of Chichester, Ken of Bath xhe Bishops' 
and Wells, White of Peterborough, and Trelawney of Bristol. Petition. 
The petition was conveyed to the j)alace by the six bishojDs, Bancroft 
staying behind, as he was not in favour at court, and, after being shown 
to but not read by Sunderland, was presented to James in person. He 
was very angry. ' Here are strange words,' said he. ' This is a standard 
of rebellion. This is a sounding of Sheba's trumpet, and all the seditious 
preaching of the Puritans in the year '40 were not of so ill consequence 
as this.' Within a few hours the petition had been printed. Six other 
bishops signified their approval, and James' rash words about ' a standard 
of rebellion,' brought about their own fulfilment. Next day the declara- 
tion should have been read in London, and a fortnight later in the 
provinces ; but few clergymen ventured to read it, and where they did, 
the congregations, as a rule, marched out of church. James became 
perfectly furious, and decided on prosecuting the bishops for the publica- 
tion of a seditious libel. On June 8 they appeared before the council 
and acknowledged the petition as their own, and having refused to give 
security for their appearance in a court of law, there was no alternative 
but to arrest them and send them to the Tower. The result was to make 
their journey thither an opportunity for a great demonstration. Crowds 
knelt to receive the blessing of the bishops, even the soldiers on guard at 
the Tower asked it as they passed. Every vessel on the river cheered 
their barge, and the contrast between the popularity of the bishops now 
and the unpopularity of their predecessors in 1640 could hardly have 
been more marked. Even the persecuted Nonconformists joined in the 
enthusiasm for the Episcopal martyrs, and a deputation of ten of their 
ministers waited on the bishops in the Tower. 

2 T 



658 The Stuarts 1688 

Two days after this memorable scene, the queen bore James a son. 
That the birth was genuine is not now contested, but for months rumours 

Birth of ^^^ been in circulation that the whole affair was a carefully 

an Heir. concocted sliam, and James, even with the knowledge of this, 
was so infatuated that he neglected the most obvious precautions to 
secure that the genuineness of his son and heir was placed beyond a 
doubt. At the birth itself, the chief persons present were Roman 
Catholics and courtiers, on whom no one relied ; neither the Princess 
Anne nor any of the Clarendon family were there, and it was easy to suggest 
that their absence was due to design. Accordingly, when the rumour 
went round that the baby was not the queen's child at all but had been 
introduced into the palace in a warming-pan, it found ready credence 
among all classes ; and the event to which the court had looked forward 
as the completion of the Roman Catholic triumph was taken to be the 
cuhninating iniquity in a long roll of treasons against the liberties and 
religion of the nation. 

The astute Sunderland, who saw clearly the probable result of James' 
conduct, wished him to take advantage of the birth of the prince to 
The Bishops' declare a general amnesty, which would have provided an 
Trial. escape from the unpopular course of prosecuting the bishops. 

The nuncio, too, was well aware of the king's error, and even Jeffreys 
would have drawn back, but James persisted that ' indulgence had ruined 
his father,' and declared that the trial should go on. Accordingly, three 
weeks later, the seven bishops appeared before the Court of King's Bench 
in Westminster Hall. The judges were Wright, AUibone (a Roman Catho- 
lic), HoUoway, and Powell. The jurymen were a carefully chosen body of 
citizens, and among them sat the court brewer, on whose interested obstinacy 
the crown relied, at any rate, for a disagreement of the jury. In opening 
the case, attorney-general Powis said that ' the bishops were accused of 
censuring the government, and giving their opinion about affairs of state ' ; 
and ' no man,' said he, ' may say of the great officers of the kingdom that 
they act unreasonably, for that may beget a desire of reformation, and 
the last age will abundantly show whither such a desire doth tend.' 
Against such an astonishing doctrine the counsel for the bishops — among 
whom, a young lawyer, John Somers, was distinguished — took their stand 
on the illegality of the king's dispensing power, and the lawful right of 
subjects to petition. In doing so, they received the support of Powell, 
who, to his honour, declared that 'if such a dispensing power were 
allowed, they would need no parliament ; all the legislature will be in 
the king.' The jury retired at seven in the evening, and were locked up 
all night. The brewer was obstinate ; but the arguments of a stout 



1688 James II. 559 

juryman, who declared that ' he would starve till he was as thin as a 
tobacco-pijDe before he would find such a petition a libel/ finally carried 
the day ; and when the court reassembled at nine o'clock on the 30th of 
June, a verdict of ' not guilty ' was returned, amidst shouts of applause 
which were taken up far and wide, till the whole city was in an uproar of 
enthusiasm. In the evening the sky was bright with bonfires, fireworks, 
and illuminations, and the pope was burned in effigy before the windows 
of Whitehall. 

Still the king would have been comparatively safe had he had the 
army with him ; but his folly in bringing it so near London had lost him 
its support. He had brought his men to Hounslow to overawe the 
Londoners, but the citizens had won over the army. The camp had been 
made a pic-nic ground, and the men were filled with popular sentiments. 
The morning of the verdict had been devoted by James to his favourite 
amusement of reviewing his troops, and while resting in Lord Feversham's 
tent the sounds of a mighty shouting came to his ears. ' What is that 1 ' 
said he. ' Nothing,' replied Feversham ; ' except that the soldiers are 
glad that the bishops are acquitted.' ' Do you call that " nothing ! " ' said 
James ; ' but so much the worse for them.' He then rode gloomily away. 

Still, after the experience of Monmouth's failure, the popular leaders 
felt that they could do nothing unless they could secure a regular army 
which would keep James' men in check till a free ijarlia- . 

^ . Appeal to 

ment could declare the will of the nation ; so that very William of 

night Admiral Herbert left London, disguised as a common 
sailor, carrying Avith him a letter to William of Orange asking him 
to come over with an army strong enough to secure the safety of his 
adherents, and to declare for a free parliament. The chief agents in this 
conspiracy were Henry Sidney, brother of Algernon, Admiral Russell, 
cousin of William Lord Russell, Danby, Shrewsbury, Lumley (who had 
effected the capture of Monmouth), and Compton, bishop of London; and 
they had the tacit support of Halifax, the connivance of Nottingham, 
and the promised assistance of Churchill, Kirke, and Trelawney, the most 
influential officers in the army. Russell, Sidney, and Devonshire were 
Whigs, but Danby, Lumley, and Compton were Tories; and among them 
they were prepared to answer for a general movement in William's favour, 
if only his plans could be kept secret till the moment for action arrived. 
William was now thirty-eight years of age. The anticipation of 
acquiring a dominant authority in England presented an alluring pro- 
spect to a man of his ambition, especially since, through the position of 
good offices of Burnet, her chaplain, Mary had lately WiUiam. 
signified her intention of placing in the hands of her husband all the 



660 The Stuarts 1688 

authority she might come to exercise as queen of England ; and it was 
clear that if he did not act at once the birth of the prince would for ever 
shut out from hun all hopes of enjoying it. At the same time, it was by 
no means easy for him to respond to the invitation. He had three 
things to fear : (1) that Louis xiv. would do all he could, not only to 
warn and help James, but also to stir up William's enemies in Holland 
to prevent his sailing ; (2) that, if he went to England, it would be 
thought that he had gone to head a religious war, which would alienate 
those Catholics who were his allies against France ; (3) that if he went 
over and won a battle with his Dutch troops over the English, he would 
rouse the patriotism of the English, and so incline them to support 
James. 

Louis did indeed warn James, and offered a contingent of troops, 
which by Sunderland's advice were declined ; but he played into 
William's hands in alienating the Dutch burgher party by 
prohibiting the use in France of all linen or woollen goods 
of Dutch manufacture, and even of Dutch herrings unless cured with 
French salt. At the same time, Louis quarrelled with the pope about 
the right, claimed by his ambassador at Kome, to offer sanctuary to 
criminals, so that the Catholic powers were divided among themselves ; 
and finally, though he had declared that any movement against England 
should be made a casus belli, he foolishly directed his arms against 
the Ehine provinces, and so left William's hands free. Such luck, 
however, was hardly to be expected ; and still less was it to be 
hoped for that James, whose experience at Hounslow ought to have 
shoAvn him sufficiently the feelings of his soldiers, should proceed to still 
further exasperate his English regiments by a wholesale introduction of 
Irishmen. He began with the regiment of the duke of Berwick, his 
illegitimate son by Arabella Churchill, Lord Churchill's sister. Here he 
might hope for success ; but lieutenant-colonel Beaumont and five officers 
refused to serve with the new-comers, and, though they were imme- 
diately cashiered, others followed their example. Before long, the 
' murders and insults ' committed by the Irish soldiery had comj)letely 
alienated any feeling of sympathy with the royal troops which might 
have lingered in the breast of the English nation. Thus relieved from 
his chief difficulties by the folly of his principal oiDponents, William made 
his arrangements, and issued a declaration, edited by Burnet, in which 
he enumerated James' bad acts, and declared that, as the husband of 
Mary, he was coming with an army to secure a free and legal parliament, 
by whose decision he would abide. 

In September James received positive information from Louis that 



1688 James II. 



G61 



William's preparations were for an invasion of Eni^land, accompanied by 
an offer of troops, which being refused, were immediately diverted to 
the Ehine. However, though James declined Louis' assis- james tries 
tance, wisely thinking that the arrival of a French refnment conciliation, 
would give the signal for instant revolution, he was at length alive to the 
extent of his danger, and attempted to avert it by a series of hasty 
concessions. He consulted the bishops whom he had lately prosecuted ; 
he ordered the dismissed lords-lieutenant and magistrates to be im- 
mediately restored ; announced that for defence against invasion he 
rehed solely on the loyalty of his subjects ; removed the suspension 
of the bishop of London ; restored the ancient charters of London and 
other cities and boroughs ; dissolved the Ecclesiastical Commission ; 
restored Dr. Hough and the expelled fellows of Magdalen ; made an 
attempt to give satisfactory evidence of the genuineness of the new-born 
prince ; and jjublished a general pardon, from which were excepted only 
a few persons who were serving with the Prince of Orange. 

William, however, had gone too far to retreat. The great lords who 
had sent the invitation were ready to raise an insurrection in the north. 
Lord Churchill — whose wife was the bosom friend of the 

Preparations 

Princess Anne — carrying out a declaration made in 1685, to aid 
that ' if ever the king was prevailed on to alter our religion 
he would serve him no longer, but withdraw from him,' had planned 
a secession in the army, and the flight of Anne to the rebels. Men who 
had gone so fiir knew that safety could only be purchased by success, and 
they urged William to persevere. Accordingly, on October 16th, the 
prince set sail, but his fleet had not reached the English shore when the 
wind veered, and a terrible storm scattered the ships along the Dutch coast. 
However, by dint of a fortnight's hard work, the expedition was again 
ready to sail. During the interval, feeling in England had been curiously 
confused. The bishops prepared a form of prayer against invasions. 
Evelyn recorded his fears that the king would not have the vigour to 
repel the invaders ' either by land or sea.' Others were praying for 
an east wind, which would keep the English fleet in the Thames. James 
did what he could to strengthen the army and navy, and conciliated 
opinion by the dismissal of Sunderland and Petre. 

It had been William's intention to land in Yorkshire, where he was 
expected by Danby, and whence he was informed that the ' roads were 
good to within fifty miles of London'; but an east wind William's 
detaining the English fleet in the Thames, he altered his landing, 
mind, passed the Straits of Dover, and, on November 5, landed in Torbay. 
Thence William marched to Exeter, where Burnet preached before him 



662 The Stuarts 1688 

in the cathedral, and where Ferguson, having thrust his way into the 
meeting-house of the Nonconformists, addressed his friends on the text, 
' Who will rise up for me against the evildoers ? ' The west had been 
cowed by the Bloody Assize. At Exeter William was joined by Sir 
Edward Seymour and Admiral Eussell ; but he waited over a fortnight 
without being joined by any nobleman of greater distinction than Lord 
Wharton. For a moment everything turned on the ability of Churchill 
to carry out his scheme of desertion. That ofl&cer contrived to arrange 
the army so that every facility was given to those regiments on whose 
disaffection to James he could rely ; but though Lord Cornbury, eldest 
son of Lord Clarendon, endeavoured to lead over his men, they refused to 
follow him, and he had to escape almost alone. The incident, however, 
was fatal to the morale of James' troops. No man dare trust another, and 
each was hopeful that when the critical moment arrived he might not be 
the last to range himself on the side of victory. Report even exaggerated 
the desertion, and Lords Danby and Lumley in Yorkshire, Lord Dela- 
mere in Cheshire, and the earl of Devonshire in Derbyshire immediately 
Rising in raised the standard of rebellion. At first James had pro- 
Yorkshire. pQge(j iq fight a battle in the neighbourhood of Salisbury, 
and had joined his troops with that object ; but disaffection met him at 
every turn. Churchill deserted to the enemy after being prevented, by 
mere accident, from handing over James as a prisoner. Prince George of 
Denmark, accompanied by the duke of Ormond, also joined the prince ; 
and, not knowing wdiom he could trust, James withdrew his army 
across the Thames and returned to London. There he learned that 
Anne had followed the example of her husband, and had fled, escorted by 
bishop Compton, to the canij) of the northern insurgents. 'God help 
me,' cried James, ' my very children have forsaken me.' 

Meanwhile William was steadily advancing, almost unresisted. 
Danby had raised York with cries of 'A free parliament, the Pro- 
testant religion, and no popery.' Newcastle, Hull, Bristol, 

I a 1 11 Co 

first Plymouth, Derby, and Nottingham were also in the hands 

of William's friends ; and a general cry for a free parliament 
had been raised, not only by the rebels, but by many of James' best 
friends. Accordingly James yielded, and after making arrangements 
for the escape of the queen and her child to France, he sent Halifax, 
Nottingham, and Godolphin to treat with the Prince of Orange, and 
ordered WTits to be issued for the election of a new parliament. 
Suddenly, however, he altered his mind ; burnt the writs with his own 
hand, and crossed the river to Vauxhall, taking with him Sir Edward 
Hales, and, with a childish idea of leaving everything in as much 



1688 James II. 



663 



confusion as possible, threw the great seal into the water. From 
Vauxhall, disguised as a country gentleman, he made his way to a ship 
and dropped down the river, but near the isle of Sheppey was arrested 
by some fishermen, who, according to some accounts, took him for a 
smuggler ; to others, as a runaway priest. By them he was taken to 
Faversham, where, his disguise being penetrated, he was escorted to 
Rochester, and thence, December 12, returned to Whitehall, where and 
on the road he was received with considerable enthusiasm. 

On the news of the king's flight London was thrown for some hours 
into a state of simple anarchy, aggi-avated by a rumour that a Protestant 
massacre had already been begun by the Irish soldiers. London 
Roman Catholic chapels were gutted and burnt ; ambassa- Riots, 
dors' houses pillaged ; and Roman Catholics and courtiers were in peril 
of their lives. Among others, none were sought for with greater energy 
than Petre and Jeffreys. The former had made good his escape, but 
Jeffreys was seized at Wapping, in the disguise of a common sailor, 
and with difficulty carried alive to the Tower, where he was lodged 
with Obadiah Walker and other unpopular characters. At length the 
exertions of the nobility and of the mayor and corporation restored some 
kind of order, and William was earnestly invited to come up to town. 

The reappearance of the king added a new element of difficulty to the 
situation ; but William insisted on his again quitting Whitehall, and 
James, escorted by some of his own guards, but carefully 

■ , ,. . James' 

guarded by Dutch soldiers, was again taken to Rochester. second ; 
There he spent four days in uncertainty ; but at length, '^ 

having made up his mind that William meant to be king, and every 
facility being offered him, he again made his escape. Behind him he left 
a paper in which he stated that he acted in fear of his life, and that 
he would be ready to return as soon as the nation had recovered from its 
delusion. This time he was uninterrupted ; and leaving England on 
December 23 he joined his wife and child in France, where a courteous 
and honourable reception was accorded them by Louis xiv., and a 
pension of ^40,000 allotted by him for their support. 

On December 19 William came to London, and took up his quarters 
in St. James' Palace. Some of his advisers wished him to assume the 
title of king, but as this would have been contrary to his The Con- 
declaration, he contented himself with calling together a 
meeting of the spiritual and temporal peers, of all those who had sat in 
any of the parliaments of Charles ii., and of the lord mayor, the alder- 
men, and fifty citizens of London, and asking their advice. They 
recommended a Convention (see page 611), which was accordingly 



664 The Stuarts 1688 

summoned for January 22. When it met, the House of Commons passed 
two resohitions : (1) That James ii., having endeavoured to subvert the 
constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original compact between 
king and people, and having by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked 
persons violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out 
of the kingdom, had abdicated the government, and that the crown was 
thereby vacant ; and (2) that experience has sho^vn it to be inconsistent 
with the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed 
by a popish prince. The reference to experience in the second resolution 
marks exactly the difference between the strength of the Whig position in 
1688 and its weakness in 1681. Of these resolutions, the latter was unani- 
mously adopted by the peers ; about the first there was more debate, occa- 
sioned by the dubious sense of the words ' original compact,' and by the 
question whether the throne could really be ' vacant.' ITltimately two 
parties appeared, one of which would immediately have offered the 
crown to William, the other would have retained the nominal sovereignty 
of James under a regency. The former was headed by Shrewsbury, 
Danby, and Halifax, and had a majority in the Commons ; the latter, 
led by Nottingham, Clarendon, Rochester, and Bancroft, commanded a 
majority among the peers. As a compromise, it was suggested to make 
Mary queen ; but this plan was unacceptable to William, who gave it 
to be plainly understood that he had not come to England ' to be his wife's 
gentleman usher.' After further debate, therefore, it was arranged 
that William and Mary should be asked to rule jointly, the actual 
work of government being, with Mary's full consent, reserved to her 
husband. 

That settled, the question arose whether an attempt should not be 
made to lay down the fundamental principles on which the English 
constitution w^as based, in order to create something of a ' compact.' To 
this many objections were urged, but eventually it was decided to embody 
in the offer of the crown a statement of James' unconstitutional actions, 
and of the rights of Englishmen under the constitution. This was the 
origin of the memorable Declaration of Right. This was 

The 

Declaration accepted by William and Mary, who were declared king 
^^ ■ and queen on February 18, 1689 ; and thus the great crisis 
in our history, known as the Revolution, w^as brought to a successful 
conclusion. 

The Declaration of Right, which afterwards was turned into an act of 
parliament under the title of the Bill of Rights, is one of the most 
important documents in Enoiish history. It brought to a close the 
great struggle between the king and the parliament, which had lasted 



1688 James II. 



665 



nearly one hundred years, by defining the law on a number of disputed 
points, all of which had, during this period, been matters of protest 
on the side of the parliament. After taking, one by one, the chief un- 
constitutional acts of James ir., it proceeded to make the folio wino- 
declarations : — 

1. The pretended power of suspending or dispensing with the laws, 

as assumed of late, is illegal. 

2. The late Court of Ecclesiastical Commission, and all other such 

courts, are illegal. 

3. Levying money by pretence of prerogative, without grant of 

parliament, is illegal. 

4. Keeping a standing army in time of peace, unless with consent of 

parliament, is illegal. 

5. Subjects have a right to petition the king. 

6. The election of members of parliament ought to be free. 

7. Freedom of speech and debate in parliament ought not to be 

questioned in any court or place out of parliament. 

8. Excessive fines must not be imposed ; and jurors, in cases for high 

treason, must be freeholders. 

9. For redress of all grievances, and for the strengthening of the 

laws, parliament ought to be held frequently. 
10, William and Mary were declared king and queen of England, and 
all who are papists, or who shall marry a papist, are declared 
incapable of possessing the crown. After the deaths of both 
William and Mary, the crown was to go to their children, if 
they had any ; if not, to the Princess Anne and her children ; 
and in case of their failure, to the children of William by any 
other wife. 
The effect of the Kevolution was threefold. In the first place, it 
destroyed the Stuart theory of the divine right of kings, enunciated in 
its crudest form by Filmer in his de Patriarchd, by setting up a king and 
queen who owed their position to the choice of parliament. In the 
second, it gave an opportunity for reasserting the principles of the 
English constitution which it had been the aim of the Stuarts to set 
aside. In the third, it began what may be called the reign of parliament. 
Up to the Revolution there is no doubt that the guiding force in directing 
the policy of the nation had been the will of the king. Since the Revolu- 
tion the guiding force has been the will of the parliament. 



CHAPTER VII 

WILLIAM AND MARY: 1689-1702 
William, born 1650 ; married 1677. Mary, born 1662 ; died 1694. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. 

France. Emperor. Spain. 

Louis XIV., d. 1715. Leopold i., d. 1705. Charles ii., d. 1700. 

The Revolution in Scotland and Ireland — War with France— Rise of Party 
Government — Financial Measures — Treaty of Ryswick— The Partition 
Treaties — The Grand Alliance. 

In character, the new sovereigns were the complement of each other. 
William, though beloved by his intimate friends, and admired far and wide 
for his abilities as a statesman and a soldier, was not likely to character 
make a popular sovereign. Society he hated ; talking, and all °^^^^^^^^- 
indoor games he abhorred ; and he found his chief recreation in the solitary 
sports of the chase, where, in spite of his frail constitution and asthmatic 
lungs, he always contrived to excel. Dauntless courage and resolute 
will made themselves visible in the fiery eyes, which shone out in striking 
contrast to his cadaverous face ; but his thin figure and rickety frame had 
nothino; about them to attract the admiration of the multitude. Nor 
were his habits more popular than his appearance. Brought up, as he had 
been, among those who were ready to put the most sinister interpretation 
upon his every word, a cold reserve had become part of his nature ; but 
among his intimate friends, or when, in the excitement of battle, the 
mask was removed, he could be genial and witty enough. Even to his 
wife he maintained the same reserve of manner ; and his paroxysm of 
agony when he was borne fainting from her deathbed was a surprise 
to ahnost all. In religion he cared Httle for outward forms, and showed 
to the full the Dutch genius for toleration ; in theology his views were 
Calvinistic. In foreign policy he was chiefly animated by hostility to 
Louis XIV., whose ambition he rightly regarded as dangerous to both 
civil and religious liberty, to the welfare of England and Holland, and to 

C07 



668 The Stuarts 1689 

the balance of power. At home he detested party struggles, was simply- 
desirous of finding expedients for securing a stable and consistent policy, 
and for bringing the force of a united England to bear upon foreign 
affairs. Being, therefore, neither a genial king, a good Englishman, a 
good churchman, a stout Whig or a hearty Tory, he failed to secure the 
popularity that would have been readily given to many an inferior man. 
Mary, on the other hand, with not a tithe of William's ability, was as 
genial and affable in society as her husband was the reverse, and her 
Character simple piety, purity of life, and munificent charities, gained 
of Mary. ^^^, Yier a love and admiration to which he could make no 
pretence. Like William, however, she hated idleness, and the court of 
the Eevolution, under the guidance of a queen ' who made the ladies 
about her ashamed to be idle,' soon presented a marked contrast to the 
Whitehall of Charles and James. In person she was 'majestic,' her 
expression noble, her courage serene ; and if her intelligence was not of 
the highest order, she showed herself in no way wanting in capacity 
when, in the absence of her husband, she was called on at several 
important crises to act alone. In the early years that followed 1688, the 
new sovereigns, as a pair, were probably stronger than either would have 
been without the other ; and the popularity of Mary, as the direct 
representative of the house of Stuart, w^as a matter of the first political 
importance. 

Though the ultimate result of the Eevolution was to place the real 
choice of ministers in the hands of parliament, neither William nor 
Choice of his subjects doubted that the duty of choosing the minis- 
Ministers. ^^^.g rested solely with him. With neither Whigs nor 
Tories was William in complete sympathy. While his views on foreign 
affairs inclined him to the Whigs, who agreed with him that it was 
better to fight Louis abroad than to give him peace to arrange an 
invasion of England, his wish for a strong executive inclined him to 
the Tories, whose principles were favourable to prerogative. Moreover, 
he was well aware that he owed his place to a temporary alliance 
between the Whigs and the Tories, so that he could not afford to 
alienate either ; and his common sense showed him that no ministry 
would be eftective which did not command the goodwill and respect of 
the House of Commons. Accordingly he tried to conciliate all parties. 
He chose his first ministry from the leaders of both political camps ; 
and by putting the treasury, the admiralty, and the chancery into 
commission, he endeavoured to satisfy as many as possible of the greedy 
claimants for office by whom he was surrounded. William himself acted 
as secretary for foreign affairs and as commander-in-chief ; Danby became 



1689 William and Mary 669 

president of the council ; Halifax, privy seal ; Daniel Finch earl of 
Nottingham, the stoutest of high churchmen, was one secretary of state 
the Whig Shrewsbury was the other, Godolphin and Charles Mordaunt, 
afterwards earl of Peterborough, were the leading members of the 
treasury board ; Herbert and Russell, of the admiralty. The great seal 
was handed to commissioners, of whom the most notable was the veteran Sir 
John Maynard. Besides these ministers, William placed his reliance on the 
advice of two men in whom he had especial confidence. These were William 
Bentinck, created earl of Portland, a Dutch nobleman who had risked 
his own life to nurse the prince through the small-pox, and Henry 
Sidney, the brother of Algernon Sidney, who was created first Lord 
Sidney and then earl of Romney. The obsequious judges of James ii. 
were dismissed, and new and better men appointed in their room. In 
February 1689 the convention was, without re-election, declared to be a 
parliament, and all its acts were declared to be good at law ; and in 
April William and Mary were crowned king and queen. 

To secure the means of nipping conspiracy in the bud, the Habeas 
Corpus Act was suspended ; and the necessity for distinguishing the 
friends and foes of the new sovereigns caused parliament to The Non- 
devise measures for weeding out all persons disaftected to the J"*"°^^- 
government. With this view, a new oath of allegiance and supremacy 
was imposed on all members of parliament, on all officers in the army 
and navy, and on all place-holders both in church and state — such as 
beneficed clergy, judges, and magistrates — under pain first of suspension 
and then of deprivation. Of the policy of enforcing the oath on the 
laity there were no two opinions ; the case of the clergy was more open 
to exception ; and William himself, while enforcing the oath on the 
bishops, would have preferred to excuse the beneficed clergy. Parlia- 
ment, however, was inexorable. Some members of the House of Lords, 
two Commoners, and a few of the laity, refused to swear ; but about 
four hundred clergy and university men — among whom the chief 
were Sancroft, Ken of Bath and Wells, and six other bishops, Dodwell, 
Camden professor at Oxford— declined to take the oath, and were 
deprived of their places. Holding together in hopes of better days, 
they formed the sect of the Nonjurors ; and the bishops having 
consecrated successors, and fresh clergy being ordained from tmie 
to time, the body did not become wholly extinct till the year 1805. 
From government they met with no persecution, William remarkmg of 
one of them, 'that Dodwell wants me to put him in prison, but I 
will disappoint him.' In the room of the Nonjurors Tillotson was made 
archbishop of Canterbury, Stillingfleet bishop of Worcester, Hough l)ishop 



670 The Stuarts 1689 

of Oxford, and Burnet bishop of Salisbury. On the whole, these men 
were superior in ability to their predecessors, and Burnet set an example 
of what a bishop could be to his clergy, which, if more widely imitated, 
might have had a great influence on the future of the church. 

The next business of parliament was to settle the revenue. The 
income of James ii. was found to have fallen little short of X'2,000,000 a 

The year. This was thought too much to settle once for 

Revenue, .^jj ^^ .^^^ sovereign, and accordingly the king's ordinary 
revenue was fixed at ^1,200,000, of which about £700,000, under the 
name of the civil list, was given to the king for the suj)port of the 
crown, and the rest was voted from time to time according to estimates 
prepared by the ministers. Special grants were also made for sj)ecial 
purposes. The sum of £700,000 was voted for the improvement of the 
navy ; £600,000 was handed over to the Dutch for the expenses of 
William's expedition ; and as soon as war broke out with France 
provision was also made for it. As a j)opular measure, the hated 
hearth-tax was abolished, and the additional sums required were 
provided chiefly by adding to the excise on wine and beer. These 
arrangements inaugurated the modern system of finance. Further 
steps were taken when William announced that for the future the 
national accounts would be laid before parliament whenever they were 
asked for ; and when, in 1697, an appropriation clause was passed, by 
which all the supplies of the session were definitely apportioned to the 
services for which they had been allotted. These changes supplied 
the machinery for enforcing the ninth section of the Bill of Eights ; 
and Burnet points out that it now began to be a maxim that 'a 
revenue fixed for a short and certain term was the best security 
the nation could have for frequent parliaments.' A similar principle 
was ai)plied in the arrangements for a standing army. 

Since the Restoration, the standing army had been looked upon with 
great dislike by the Whigs, and it was hardly more popular with 
The Mutiny the Tories ; but the necessities of the time clearly showed 
^^*' that England could no longer afi"ord to be without one. 

A device, however, was found by which, while the advantages of 
a standing army were secured, its danger to liberty was decreased. 
For the securing of discipline and the prevention of desertion, a 
Mutiny Act was enacted, by which military officers were empowered 
to deal with such cases according to martial law. The first Mutiny 
Act, however, was passed for six months only, and was then renewed 
for a year, and no longer ; so that, though the j)assing of the Mutiny 
Act has become one of the annual duties of parliament, its omission 



1689 William and Mary 671 

would at any time terminate the legal authority of government over 
all soldiers and sailors. This plan, coupled with the additional security 
that the means of paying them would cease at the same time, gave 
parliament such a complete control over the armed forces of the crown 
that, by a mere act of omission, it could deprive the crown of their 
support. The remodelling of the army was entrusted to John, Lord 
Churchill, now created earl of Marlborousfh. 

The Protestant Nonconformists had played such an indispensable 
part in the Revolution that they were rewarded by the passing of the 
Toleration Act. Some movement was also made for a TheToiera- 
comprehension bill ; but it came to nothing, partly because **°" ^'=*- 
the rank and file of the clergy were opposed to making the concessions 
which commended themselves to Tillotson and Burnet ; partly because 
the Presbyterians were the only Nonconformists who were favourable to 
comprehension, to which the Independents, Baptists, and Quakers 
were decidedly hostile. The comprehension scheme, therefore, fell 
through ; but it was provided by the Toleration Act that all Protestant 
Nonconformists who accepted the belief in the Trinity, and were 
willing to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy if offered them, 
and who held their services with open doors, should be fully j^rotected 
in the exercise of their religious rites. The act, therefore, became 
the Magna Carta of Nonconformity. It is remarkable that the solution 
of the religious question thus arrived at was in substance the same 
that had been set forth by Henry Burton in 1641 (see j)age 547). 
What made that possible now, which had seemed imiDossible in 1660, 
were the facts that there was now no fear of the military strength 
of Nonconformity, and also that the church, having tested its strength 
in defeating the Declaration of Indulgence, felt that toleration could be 
granted without fear of domination. William himself would have 
liked to go further, and to make room in his service for the admission 
of ' all Protestants who were willing and able to serve.' Parliament, 
however, showed no desire to make the admission of Nonconformists 
easier, and accordingly the Test and Corporation Acts were retained 
without alteration. Even the Roman Catholics, though a harsh law 
forbade them to live within ten miles of London, experienced little more 
interference in their worship, and the Unitarians, though excluded from 
the act, enjoyed in an irregular foshion the advantages of its provisions. 

As a satisfaction to their families and a vindication of justice, the 
attainders of Russell, Algernon Sidney, Alice Lisle, and Attainders 
several others were reversed. The sentence on Gates was 
cancelled, and that rascal received a pension of i'300 a year. So many 



672 The Stuarts 1689 

persons were liable to prosecution for the share they had officially taken 
in James' proceedings, and in the various consj)iracies and disturbances 
of the two last reigns, that a bill of indemnity was brought forward ; 
but the Whigs tried to introduce so many exceptions that it had to be 
dropped. Similarly, an act for restoring the forfeited charters was with 
difficulty saved from being turned by the Whigs into an instrument for 
excluding hundreds of Tories from office ; and the struggle between the 
two parties iDecame so violent that William, appalled at the prospect of 
governing with such a distracted assembly, was with difficulty restrained 
from returning to Holland. 

As a last resource, parliament was dissolved in January 1690, and 
William appealed to the country. In the new parliament the Tories 
The Act of found themselves in a majority, and the indemnity question 
Grace. ^^.^^ readily settled by the passing of an Act of Grace, pre- 

sented to parliament by the king. By its provisions a general indemnity 
was granted for all offences committed prior to the accession of the new 
sovereigns. A few exceptions, however, were made, including Ludlow 
and a few other surviving regicides, Sunderland, Sir Edward Hales, 
Obadiah Walker, Petre, Chief- Justice Herbert, Judge Jeffreys, and some 
others. Of these Jeffreys had died in the Tower ; and in practice 
no punishment was inflicted, even on men like Hales and Walker, who 
were already in the Tower. The others were either abroad or were 
allowed to pass unmolested, and Sunderland was soon afterwards 
admitted to a share of William's confidence. The increased strength of 
Toryism encouraged William to make several changes in the ministry. 
Halifax, whose character was always that of a dispassionate critic rather 
than of an active politician, left the government, and the Tory Danby, 
who had been created marquess of Carmarthen, took the lead. The 
violent Whigs, Mordaunt and Delamere, vacated their posts at the 
treasury, and Herbert ceased to be first lord of the admiralty. 

What added to William's ministerial difficulties was the fact that few 

people thought he would be able to hold his own against James and 

Louis, so there was hardly a statesman who did not wish 

Correspond- ^ ■ ^ • <. -n • ^ 

ence with to make limiself safe m case of a Restoration by stand- 
james. .^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ possible with both sides. Many, therefore, 

corresponded with James and the English exiles, not so much with an 
idea of doing anything themselves to bring James back, as in order to 
escape punishment if he happened to be successful. Almost all the 
great statesmen of the day did this, even Marlborough and Shrewsbury 
and Eussell. William usually knew of their doing so, but was not 
strong enough to take much notice of it. Marlborough, however, was 



1689 William and Mary 673 

his great difficulty, for that nobleman's well-recognised military talents 
and his influence over the Princess Anne, gave him enormous capacity 
for mischief; and in 1692, special attention having been drawn to his 
correspondence, he was deprived of his offices, and for a short time 
lodged in the Tower. 

We must now turn to the events in Scotland and Ireland. In Scot- 
land the policy of the last two kings had been in complete opposition to 
the wishes of the people. Episcopacy had been established The Scottish 
by law, and no one but an Episcopalian had been allowed to Convention. 
sit in parliament or to vote at elections. The Presbyterians had been 
subjected to severe persecution, and during the last reign Roman Catholics 
had been placed in the chief offices. As was natural, the news of events in 
England produced a violent reaction in Scotland. Everywhere the people 
rose against their persecutors, attacked the houses of the Roman Catholics, 
' rabbled ' the Episcopalian ministers, and drove them from their churches 
and manses. A Convention, elected according to the letter of the law 
would have been a farce. The law, therefore, was tacitly set aside, and 
a Convention assembled whose members were chosen by a majority of 
Presbyterian votes. This met on March 14, 1689, and it was unani- 
mously declared that James had 'forefaulted his right to the crown.' A 
'claim of right' was then drawn up, in which it was asserted that 
' prelacy and the superiority of any office in the church over Presbytery 
is a great and insupportable grievance, contrary to the inclination of the 
generality of the people, and ought to be abolished.' William and Mary 
v/ere then accepted as king and queen. 

Meanwhile, John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, holding a 
commission from King James, had retired into the Highlands, and was 
doing all he could to repeat the exploits of Montrose. His Rising of 
hopes rested on the deadly hatred which existed between ^""dee. 
the Campbells and the M 'Donalds, Camerons and Stewarts, who dwelt 
on their borders ; and he believed that the fact that the Revolution was 
accepted by Archibald Campbell, earl of Argyll, would be enough to 
array all the enemies of the Campbells under the banner of King James. 
In this he proved at any rate to be partially right, and by June a formid- 
able host of Highland warriors was gathered near Blair- Athole. The 
duty of opposing Dundee was entrusted by William to General Mackay, 
a Highland gentleman who had long served in the Dutch army, and who 
was well known for his bravery, efficiency, and— what was rarer still in a 
professional soldier of that day— his earnest piety. Mackay indeed 
embodied in his own person the virtues of Cromwell's Ironsides. Towards 
Blair- Athole Mackay marched, and had just passed through the pre- 

2u 



674 The Stuarts 1689 

cipitoiis ravine of Killiecrankie, and was resting his men on a small plain 
patch of even ground between the river Garry and the hills, when he 
was charged in front and on both flanks by Dundee's High- 
Kiliie- landers. In a charge the Highland practice was to fling the 

cran le. musket away after a single volley, and then to lay on with 
dirk and broadsword. Such tactics, which were practically identical with 
those of the Soudanese in our own day, were most formidable to 
disciplined troops, and Mackay's men were not only without the swift- 
firing weapons of modern civilisation, but were handicapped by a difficulty 
peculiar to the time. The bayonet was just superseding the pike, on 
which the infantry of Monk had relied in Highland warfare ; but as yet 
it was a clumsy weapon, which was fixed in the muzzle of the musket, so 
that when fixed firing was impossible. Firing, too, was a long business ; 
and while Mackay's men were fumbling with their weapons the High- 
landers were among them. A couple of minutes decided the day. One 
regiment alone held together ; the rest fled pell-mell, pursuers and pur- 
sued, down the gorge of the Garry, With difficulty Mackay rallied his 
broken troops, but the pursuit was ill maintained, for the victory of the 
clansmen had been rendered useless by the fall of Dundee, who hud been 
mortally wounded by a bullet which struck him as he stood erect in his 
stirrups adjuring his handful of horsemen to follow him to the charge. 

Dundee was succeeded by Cannon, a trained officer with not a spark of 
the genius of Dundee or the skill of Mackay. Still the Highland forces 
Failure of augmented ; but an attempt to storm the open town of Dun- 
the Rising. -^qI^ ^jjg magnificently repulsed by the Cameronian regi- 
ment, raised from among the fiercest followers of the preacher Cameron, 
and this check proved fatal. For some months Cannon kept a few men 
together, but was finally routed in June 1690, and William and Mary 
became undisputed sovereigns. 

In 1690 the first General Assembly of the Scottish Church held since 
1653 set up Presbyterianism, which has since been the established religion 
of Scotland. In his dealings Math Scotland, William was mainly advised 
by William Carstares, a Presbyterian divine of gT?eat foresight and modera- 
tion. His settlement was of the nature of a compromise, for Fletcher 
of Salton wished to set up an aristocratic republic, and the Cameroniana 
regarded even the Presbyterian leaders as little better than episcopalians; 
but William's determination to settle Scottish afiairs according to Scottish 
ideas has well borne the test of time. 

In 1691 the management of Scotland fell into the hands of Sir John 
Dalrymple, master of Stair (who, as secretary of state for Scotland, held 
in his hands the threads of all business), the earl of Argyll, and another 



1689 William and Mary 675 

Campbell, John, earl of Breadalbane. Dalrymple gave his chief atten- 
tion to the pacification of the Highlands, and he is chiefly responsible 
for a deed which has attracted more notice in modern times 
than many a crime of greater magnitude— the massacre of sacre of^* 
Glencoe. This cruel act was due to the ill-will between ^^^"'^o^- 
the Highlanders and the Lowlanders, coupled with the hereditary feud 
between the M'Donalds and the Campbells. A proclamation was issued 
ordering the Highland chiefs to swear allegiance to King William before 
January 1, 1692. The rude warriors made it a point of honour to delay 
submission as long as possible, and one, Maclan head of the M'Donalds of 
Glencoe, only reached Fort William on December 31, 1691. Unluckily, 
at Fort William there was no ofiScer qualified to take his oath, and he 
had to make the best of his way to Inverary. There he arrived on 
January 6, and was duly sworn ; but it is very doubtful whether the fact 
that he had made this tardy submission was ever reported to London. 
On the contrary, an example was wanted ; the M'Donalds of Glencoe 
were few in number ; they bore a bad character, and Sir John Dal- 
rymple, who is described by a contemporary as ' cunning as a fox, wise as 
a serpent, and slippery as an eel,' reported their case to the government as 
giving the opportunity desired. Accordingly, directly the news of 
M'lan's default reached London, an order was hurried off', signed by 
William himself, in the words : ' If the tribe of Glencoe can be weU 
separated from the rest, it will be a proper vindication of public justice 
to extirpate that sect of thieves.' To this DalrymjDle, on his own 
responsibility, added instructions that the 'affair should be secret and 
sudden,' and that the ' soldiers were not to trouble the government with 
prisoners.' These cruel orders were carried out with unspeakable 
treachery. The aff'air was entrusted to the Campbells. Captain Camp- 
bell of Glenlyon, with one hundred and twenty Campbells from Argyll's 
own regiment, were sent into the glen on February 1 with orders to 
keep on friendly terms with the M'Donalds till February 13, by which 
time all the outlets were to be secured. On that day they were to fall 
on their hosts and slay them all,— man, woman, and child. These orders 
were literally carried into effect ; and nothing but the folly of the soldiers, 
who used their noisy muskets instead of trusting to the silent thrust of 
the bayonet, prevented the complete success of the plan. As it was, only 
thirty-eight M'Donalds were killed, and three-fourths of the clan made 
their escape, but of these many perished in the bitterness of a Highland 
winter. Two years afterwards the tale had become sufficiently known in 
England to attract the attention of parliament. Dalrymple was dis- 
missed ; but so many were implicated in the deed that William found 



676 The Stuarts 1689 

punishment impossible, even if the feeling of the age had regarded the 
atrocity in a much more serious light than that in which the massacre of 
a horde of cattle-stealing natives would nowadays be regarded by 
European colonists. The cruelty naturally embittered the feelings of the 
Highlanders towards the government ; but the discouragement of the 
rebel clans, the opening up of better roads through the passes, and the 
building of forts in such strategical points as Inverness, Fort Augustus, 
and Fort William had the eflfect of keeping the Highlanders in awe for 
almost a generation. 

In Scotland it was a question between King James and King William ; 
in Ireland the point at issue was whether the English connection should 
be maintained or abolished. In that country the Catholic 
proclivities of James made him popular ; while the policy 
of Tyrconnel had roused all over the country the hope that the time had 
arrived for the declaration of Irish independence and for driving the 
English and Scottish colonists from the lands on which they had settled. 
Accordingly during the closing months of 1688, Tyrconnel had been doing 
all in his power to prepare for the coming conflict. He raised an army of 
40,000 men, and attempted to secure with Koman Catholic garrisons all 
the towns in which the colonists could take refuge. Of these by far the 
most important were Londonderry and Enniskillen, — one the capital of the 
Scottish, the other of the Cromwellian district. The turn of London- 
derry came first ; but on the approach of Tyrconnel's soldiers a group of 
apprentice lads shut the gates in their faces ; and, encouraged by the 
example of Derry, the Enniskilleners also held out. 

James left England on December 23, 1688, and on February 1, 1689 
he set out from Versailles to take command in Ireland. For his safe 
James in convoy Louis provided fifteen sail of the line, and also 
Ireland. furnished 2500 troops. James landed at Kinsale, and made 
his way to Dublin. There he issued brass money, worth about the 
hundredth part of its nominal value, and summoned a parliament to meet 
on the 7th of May. His next act was to hand over to the French 
ambassador an unhappy Huguenot named Roussel, who had been 
sentenced to be broken on the wheel for the crime of preaching to his 
fellow-Protestants amidst the ruins of his church. Only fourteen peers, ten 
The Dublin of whom were Eoman Catholics, answered James' summons to 
Parliament, parliament ; and in the Commons' House, which numbered 
250, the Protestants were represented by six members. The first act of 
the parliament was to declare the legislative independence of Ireland, and 
having done this, they proceeded to carry through a series of remarkable 
enactments. The Act of Settlement was repealed by acclamation. The 



1689 William and Mary 677 

estates of all absentees were vested in King James. Liberty of conscience 
was secured to all Christians ; but Protestants were forbidden to assemble 
in churches or elsewhere under pain of death. All schools and colleges 
were restored to the Eoman Catholics ; all Protestant churches were 
handed over to the priests, to whom also all tithes were to be paid ; 
and the stipends of all Protestant ministers in cities and corporate towns 
were stopped. The sum of ^20,000 a year was voted to Tyrconnel to be 
paid out of forfeited Protestant estates ; and lastly, an Act of Attainder 
condemned to death on capture, not less than two thousand persons, 
most of whose names were inserted without the pretence of investigation, 
unless they made their surrender before certain dates. Even James was 
horrified at the length to which his Irish friends were prepared to go. 
He was, however, powerless to stay the tide ; and throughout the length 
and breadth of the land the repeal of the Act of Settlement was followed 
by the forcible expulsion of the English and Scottish colonists, the slaying 
of their cattle, and the burning of their eff'ects. 

Into Londonderry and Enniskillen, as to cities of refuge, crowded the 
Scottish and English settlers ; and their capture alone was necessary to 
complete the work of extermination. At Londonderry 
Colonel Lundy, whom William had sent as governor, had of London - 
proved a traitor, and had prepared the way for the surrender ^ ^" 
of the town by sending away two English regiments, under Colonel 
Cunningham, which had been sent to aid in the defence. However, 
when James was known to be advancing, the refugees took the law into 
their own hands, deprived Lundy of his command, and under the lead of 
Major Baker and Captain Murray, and encouraged by the eloquent 
preaching of Walker, rector of the parish of Donaghmore, prepared to 
stand a siege. When James arrived he found that the wretched walls 
were already manned, prepared to stand a siege, and that every available 
man was under arms. 

The siege began on April 30, 1689. Assaults were delivered but 
repelled ; and as it was known that the stock of provisions was scanty, 
the sharp violence of a siege and bombardment was abandoned in favour 
of the slow but certain horrors of a blockade. To carry out the new plan 
James selected Rosen, a ruffian from the east of Europe, then in the 
service of Louis xiv. Eosen's idea of conducting the blockade was to 
collect all the old men, women, and chUdren who yet remained in the 
adjoining districts, and to drive them to perish of hunger or wounds 
between the lines of the besieged and besiegers. For forty-eight hours 
Rosen kept these unhappy wretches in torture, and then, alarmed by a 
threat that every Roman Catholic prisoner in the town would be hanged 



678 The Stuarts 1690 

in retaliation, sullenly i)ermitted the survivors to withdraw. Even James 
was horrified. Kosen was superseded, and his place taken by Hamilton. 
In June a relieving fleet under Kirke entered Loch Foyle, but a strong 
boom which had been thrown across the river prevented it from reaching 
the town. Week after week passed away, and the heroic garrison were 
reduced to stave off hunger with cats, rats, dogs and salted skins, and 
yet Kirke remained inactive. At length, when only two days' provisions 
were left, Kirke received j)Ositive orders to assault the boom. Two 
merchantmen, commanded respectively by a Derry man, Micaiah 
Browning, and Andrew Douglas, a Scot, suj)ported by an English 
officer. Captain Leake, broke their way through, and on the 28th of July 
anchored at the quay. Two days afterwards the siege, which had lasted 
no less than a hundred and five days, was raised. That very day the Ennis- 

g J - killeners, too, were victorious. Led by Colonel Wolseley, 

Newtown their force of irregular soldiers attacked James' general 
Macarthy, who had advanced with 6000 regular troops as 
far as Newtown Butler. At the last moment Wolseley gave his men the 
choice whether they would ' advance ' or ' retreat.' The descendants of 
the victors of Naseby and Eathmines voted unanimously for an advance. 
With shouts of ' No popery ! ' they carried all before them, slew Macarthy 
and 1500 of his followers, and drove 500 others into the waters of 
Loch Erne. 

These successes secured the safety of the colonists of the north, aiid in 
August Marshal Schomberg, a veteran of eighty, who had been turned 

^, ^ , o^it of the French service for the crime of being a Protestant, 

The Battle . . & J 

of the came over with a mixed force, and henceforth the efforts 

of James' troops were devoted to checking his advance. 
Schomberg's troops were poor, and wretchedly provisioned by Commissary 
Shales, an infamous peculator who had learned his business at Hounslow ; 
and it was all Schomberg's skill could do to hold his own till the summer 
of 1690, when William came over at the head of an excellent force and 
took the command in person. Before William, who declared that 'he 
had not come to Ireland to let the grass grow under his feet,' James' 
forces retreated, and took up a strong position on the south bank of 
the river Boyne, two miles above Drogheda. During the whole of 
June 30 the armies faced one another, and James' officers took advan- 
tage of a fair opportunity to fire two cannon-balls at William himself, 
one of which grazed his shoulder. At daybreak on July 1 the whole 
allied force advanced to the river, and crossed it in the face of the 
foe. The French soldiers and the Irish horse fought well ; but the Irish 
foot made a miserable exhibition, and in spite of the death of old 



1690 William and Mary 679 

Schomberg James' army was soon put to the rout. The disaster might 
have been more complete had WilHam followed Schoinberg's advice imd 
taken advantage of night to seize in advance the pass of Duleek through 
which James' retreat lay— a manrouvre from which he was probably 
deterred from fear of the embarrassing capture of James himself. He 
had really little cause for apprehension. Of the flying host, James 
himself was the first to reach Dublin, where he politely informed Lady 
Tyrconnel that ' her countrymen had ran away,' and was answered with 
the neat repartee : ' If they have, sire, your majesty seems to have won 
the race.' From Dublin he hurried on to Waterford. On the third day 
after the battle he had sailed for France, and left his supporters to 
their fate. 

The battle of the Boyne secured Dublin and all the centre of Ireland 
without a further blow ; but an Irish army under Sarsfield, a noble 
Irishman, and Lauzun, the French general, still held the line First Siege 
of the Shannon, the towns of Athlone and Limerick, and °^ Limerick, 
the ports of Cork and Kinsale. William himself marched against 
Limerick, but the siege was from the beginning a failure. The Irish 
who had run away from the Boyne fought valiantly behind the walls of 
Limerick. Sarsfield, who was in command, showed himself an admirable 
general, and distinguished himself by adroitly capturing William's siege 
train. Without heavy artillery William could make no impression on 
the fortifications of the town. Three assaults failed ; and, winter coming 
on, William raised the siege and himself retired to England, leaving the 
command to Ginkel, Mackay, and Talmash. Meanwhile a force of 
5000 men had been entrusted to Marlborough for the reduction of Cork 
and Kinsale. Marlborough performed the task without a Capture 
hitch, and earned from William the hearty praise that ' No °^ ^°^^- 
officer now living who has seen so little service is so fit for great com- 
mands.' In the spring of 1691, St. Ruth, a distinguished French officer, 
was sent over to take the command of the Irish army. In June Ginkel 
advanced to the siege of Athlone, a town which commanded capture of 
the passage of the Shannon, and was probably the most ^* 
important strategical point in the island. The English town on the east 
bank was easily taken, but between it and the Irish quarter ruslied the 
deep and rapid stream of the Shannon, and the only bridge was stoutly 
held. At length Ginkel determined to make an attempt to cross by a 
ford a few yards below the bridge. Mackay was to lead the assault, 
and though he did not approve of the plan he executed it as though it 
were his own, while he was bravely aided by the duke of Wiirtemberg 
and Talmash. Up to their necks in water, and carrying their officers 



680 TJie Stuarts 1690 

on their shoulders, the men forded the river. The Irish were taken 
by surprise, and in a few minutes the whole town was in Ginkel's 
hands. 

Meanwhile St. Euth, who had felt so sure of the town that he had 
declared that ' Ginkel's master ought to hang him for trying to take 

Battle of Athlone, and mine to hang me if I lose it,' had encamped 

Aughnm. ^.^^^ ^^ three miles from the place, and spent his time in 
quarrelling with Tyrconnel and snubbing the brave Sarsfield. On 
hearing of the disaster he broke up his camp and retreated to the hill of 
Aughrim, on the road to Galway. There, with a bog in front of his lines, 
he awaited Ginkel's assault. The Irish, whom St. Kuth had roused to a 
frenzy of patriotism and religion, fought splendidly, and Talmash with 
the foot was driven back again and again. At length Mackay's horse 
with difficulty struggled round the bog, and prej)ared to charge the Irish 
in flank. At that moment St. Euth was killed by a cannon-ball, and his 
foolish attendants concealed the fact even from Sarsfield. In conse- 
quence, at the critical moment there was no one to give orders, and 
Sarsfield with the reserve waited in vain for directions which never came. 
MeanwhUe Mackay pressed on ; Talmash redoubled his efibrts ; and the 
Irish, who had shown a bravery of which their conduct at the Boyne had 
given little indication, were scattered in hopeless rout. 

Galway then fell, and Tyrconnel and Sarsfield retired to make a last 

stand behind the walls of Limerick ; but before the siege began Tyrconnel 

died. Ginkel, being properly provided with artillery, made 

Siege of better progress than William, and when he had defeated the 
Irish cavalry without the walls, and had made himself 
master of the Thomond Bridge over the Shannon, Sarsfield declared his 
willingness to treat. The terms agreed on were two-fold : a military 
capitulation signed by the generals ; and a civil treaty signed on behalf 
of William by the lords-justices of Ireland. By the first, the Irish 
soldiers were allowed to march out of Limerick and to disband, enlist 
under William, or follow Sarsfield to France, at their pleasure. By the 
second, it was conceded that the Irish Eoman Catholics ' should enjoy such 
privileges in the exercise of their religion as were consistent with the law, 
The Treaty of ^^ ^^ ^^^1 ^^^ enjoyed in the days of Charles ii.' In accord- 
Limenck. ^^ncQ with the military treaty, about 11,000 men declared for 
service in France. Many deserted before they reached the ships ; enough, 
however, remained to fonn the celebrated Irish Brigade. Sarsfield bitterly 
remarked that 'if the English would change kings, the Irish would 
gladly fight them again'; and under a sterner discipline than that of 
Tyrconnel, and led by generals superior to James, the conquered at the 



1691 William and Mary 681 

Boyne and at Aughrim lived to vindicate on many a hard-fought field 
the innate valour of the Irish race. Had William and the statesmen of 
England had their way, the civil treaty of Limerick might have formed 
the basis for an equitable settlement of the long-standing feud between 
the Roman Catholic Celts and the Protestant settlers. Unhappily the in- 
dependent parliament of Ireland was more bigoted than they ; the repeal 
of the Act of Settlement, the Attainder, and the horrors of 1641 and 
1689 had eaten deeply into the heart of the Protestant Irish, and 
rendered them incapable of taking a fair view of the possibilities of the 
situation. To men who had with difficulty thrust off the yoke of an 
intolerant and vindictive majority, coercion seemed the only possible safe- 
guard against a recurrence of similar evils, and the treaty of Limerick, 
instead of being made a starting-point for gradual concession, was itself 
never carried out. 

James arrived in France just too late to take part in a French attempt 
to invade England. As soon as it was known that Louis xiv. had given 
active assistance to James, war against France was declared Tourviile in 
at the request of the English parliament, which assured the Channel. 
William ' that when he should think fit to enter into a war against the 
French king, they would give him such assistance in a parliamentary way 
as to enable him to support and go through with the same.' Accordingly 
William was enabled to j)lace himself at the head of a great European 
coalition, in which the forces of Great Britain, Holland, Spain, and the 
Empire were united against France ; and which for eight years waged war 
against Louis xiv. along the whole extent of his frontier, both by land 
and sea. For her share, Great Britain undertook to furnish 20,000 men 
for the land war, and in conjunction with the Dutch to undertake the 
naval war. In 1689 Marlborough and Talmash led a British contingent, 
under the prince of Waldeck, and distinguished themselves at the aftair 
of Walcourt ; while Herbert fought a slight and indecisive action against 
the French fleet ofi* Kinsale. However, in 1690, while William was in 
Ireland, Tourviile, the French admiral, came into the Channel with 
eighty-two ships, prepared to sweep the English fleet from the sea, inter- 
cept William's return from Ireland, and cover an invasion of England by 
James. On June 30, the very day William was wounded on the Boyne, 
Herbert, now Lord Torrington, and Evertsen, the Dutch admiral, with 
a combined fleet of sixty vessels, encountered Tourviile off" Beachy 
Head. Torrington was personally loyal and brave, and he was an 
experienced if somewhat luxurious seaman. He held strongly the view 
that the best defence against an invasion was an unconquered fleet ' in 
being,' and that to risk its destruction at such a crisis was sheer folly. 



682 The Stuarts 1691 

Nottingham, however, insisted on his fighting ; but Torrington, while 
obeying orders, took care not to risk the entire destruction of liis inferior 
fleet ; and, after a partial engagement, in which the Dutch bore the brunt 
of the attack, Torrington took their vessels in tow and fled into the 
Thames, pulling up the buoys as he passed to conceal the channel. By 
this means, however, he checkmated Tourville, who could not venture to 
divide his fleet while Torrington's squadron was intact ; and Torrington's 
conduct, though ill understood and condemned by landsmen, was fully 
apjDreciated by sailors. 

The crisis was terrible ; but the words, ' the French are coming,' 
acted like a spell. The national feeling rose, the Jacobites hung back. 
Burning of ^^^ Dryden, whose views on any occasion are a pretty fair 
Teignmouth. ^gg^ gf popular sentiment, gave voice to the feeling of the 
hour in his Gallic Invasion. Fortunately, instead of acting at once, 
the French, being short of transports, hesitated ; and in lieu of landing 
an army of 20,000 veterans, contented themselves with giving up to fire 
and sword the insignificant village of Teignmouth. In the Netherlands, 
or on the Rhine, such an event would have passed unnoticed, but English- 
men were not accustomed to experience in their own country the horrors 
of French warfare. The action roused the nation as one man. It was soon 
clear that to burn English villages was not the way to help James. All hopes 
of a Jacobite rebellion faded away ; and by the time the news of James' 
defeat and flight reached London, the crisis was passed. Loyal ofi'ers of 
assistance reached Mary from all sides ; and when William returned 
from Ireland he found himself more firmly seated on the throne than 
before. 

Between 1691 and 1697 William — taking advantage of the fact that 

while parliament sat during the winter months, military operations were 

conducted only during the summer — spent half the year at the 

on the head of his armies in Flanders, and half with his parliament 

at Westminster, and it is not easy to say which was the more 
arduous work of the two. On the continent he was the head of a coali- 
tion, large in numbers but divided in interests, operating against the French 
in Catalonia, in Lombardy, on the Rhine, and in Flanders, and confronted 
by the forces of a single nation, directed by a despotic sovereign, having 
everywhere the advantage of the central position, and directed by generals 
of first-rate ability. For many years William's actual antagonist was the 
celebrated Luxembourg, a foeman worthy of his steel, assisted by the 
celebrated engineer Vauban, a master of the art of fortification ; against 
whom William had enlisted the services of the great Coehorn. In the 
Netherlands, where William was personally engaged, the natural defences 



1692 William and Mary 683 

of the country are few, but have been improved ]iy fortification, and in 
general the war was one of sieges, varied by pitched battles between 
the covering army of the besiegers and the relieving force of the besieged. 
Of these fortresses the chief were Lille, Tournay, Mons, and Namur, 
which barred the road along the French frontier. Besides the war on 
land, there was constant fighting by sea, and a number of more or less 
successful expeditions were sent to harass the towns and villages on the 
French coast, which, if they eff'ected nothing striking, diminished the 
main French armies by compelling them to keep a number of men in 
garrison along the coast. In 1691, under the eyes of Louis, the French 
gained a decided advantage by capturing Mons before William could 
get his army in motion ; and during the remainder of the campaign 
Luxembourg successfully baflied all William's efi'orts to bring on a 
decisive engagement. 

In 1692, though William was again in Flanders, the interest shifted to 
the English Channel ; for Louis had collected a large army on the coast 
of Normandy, three hundred transports were ready, and ^^^ Naval 
James himself was only waiting the expected victory of ^^r. 
Tourville over the English fleet to carry out an invasion of England. 
The danger was pressing, as in the last naval battle the French had been 
victorious, and the government knew that Eussell, the admiral, had 
been corresponding with James. Fortunately at this crisis, 
James drew up and published a proclamation, in which he Proclama- 
declared that, if he were successful, he would punish not 
only men like Carmarthen, Nottingham, Tillotson, and Burnet, but the 
mob who had jeered him at Faversham, and all magistrates, judges, jury- 
men or gaolers who had served under William, or who had taken part in 
the arrest, conviction, or execution of any Jacobite whatsoever. This 
proclamation fell into the hands of the queen, who at once published it 
with explanatory notes ; and this clever move roused the whole country 
to indignation. Russell, too, though he was not unfriendly to James, 
had no idea of allowing an English fleet to be beaten by a French one : 
' Understand,' he said to a Jacobite agent, ' that if I meet them, I fight 
them — aye, though his majesty himself should be on board.' 

Consequently, when the hostile fleets met off* Cape La Hogue, nothing 
could withstand the vehemence of the English attack. The action 
began on May 19 in mid-channel, and after a running fight of three 
days, the mass of Tourville's fleet was glad to make its Battle of 

1-1 r A 1 1 La Hoguc. 

escape through a dangerous channel m the race ot Alderney ; 

while three French vessels, including the largest ship in the French navy, 

were burnt at Cherbourg, and the remainder took refuge under the 



684 The Stuarts 1692 

batteries which commanded the port of La Hogue. On the 23rd the 
transports were attacked, and by the 24th the greater number of them 
had been burnt under the eyes of James himself. Russell, Rooke, and 
Delaval were the heroes of the engagement, and so magnificent was the 
conduct of the seamen, that James himself exclaimed, in a moment of 
involuntary enthusiasm, ' See how my brave English fight.' La Hogue 
was distinctly the greatest naval victory won by the English between 
the defeat of the Armada and the battle of Trafalgar, and it com- 
pletely removed all fear of a French invasion. As a reward to the sailors, 
the royal palace of Greenwich was turned into a naval hospital. 

Unfortunately, the same summer saw William defeated at Steenkerke. 
Luxembourg had made himself master of Namur, and as a set-ojff to this 
Battle of disaster, William attempted to surprise him with an inferior 
Steenkerke. force. The action began well, but William was deceived as 
to the ground, which proved to be so broken that he was unable to make 
the rush on which he had reckoned for victory. In consequence, Luxem- 
bourg was able to throw his whole force upon the forlorn hope of the 
English. Its leader Mackay fell, and five British regiments Avere utterly 
cut to pieces. Much blame was attached to Count Solmes, a Dutch 
officer, who might have given them support, and who was reported to 
have said, during the heat of the action, ' Let us see what sport these 
English bull-dogs will make us.' 

In 1693, by an ingenious ruse, Luxembourg induced William to 
weaken his force by detaching a body of 20,000 men, and then, on 
Battle of the 29th of July, attacked him where he lay strongly 
Landen. entrenched behind the little river Landen, between the 
villages of Romsdorf and Neerwinden. From eight in the morning 
till four in the afternoon the allies held their ground, and the village of 
Neerwinden was retaken by their valour as often as it was carried by 
the impetuosity of the French ; but at length numbers prevailed, and 
the whole line gave way. William was in the thickest of the fight, and, 
while Talmash arranged the retreat, he strove, ' sword in hand,' to check 
the tide of pursuit. On the allied side fell Solmes ; on the French the 
gallant Sarsfield ; while the duke of Ormond, having been captured, was 
exchanged for the duke of Berwick, James' illegitimate son by Arabella 
Churchill, who displayed the valour of his mother's ftimily in repeated 
assaults on Neerwinden. Fortunately, Luxembourg failed to press his 
advantage, and in a few days William was ready, and even wishful, to 
fight him again. William, as a strategist and tactician, was no match 
for Luxembourg, and the British soldiers had not as yet had sufficient 
training to cope with the veterans of Louis ; but Steenkerke and Landen 



1694 William and Mary 685 

showed that, in valour and tenacity, they were the true sons of the 
victors of Agincourt and Crecy, and they were rapidly gaining the 
experience which enabled Marlborough to lead them to victory at 
Blenheim and Kamillies, 

At sea, too, 1693 was an unlucky year. In June the Smyrna fleet of 
four hundred vessels, carrying several millions worth of goods, sailed 
from the Thames for the Mediterranean. The main smyma 
English and Dutch fleets escorted it past Brest, and then ^*^^* ^°^*- 
left it to make the remainder of the voyage under the convoy of Rooke. 
Meanwhile, unknown to the English admirals, Tourville had slipped 
off" to Gibraltar, effected a junction with the Toulon fleet, and was 
lying in wait in the Bay of Lagos. Rooke fell into the trap, and though 
both the English and Dutch men-of-war fought admirably, about three- 
fourths of the merchantmen were captured, sunk, or dispersed. To the 
London merchants the loss was well-nigh irreparable ; but the Jacobites 
were delighted, and did all in their power to exaggerate the magnitude of 
the disaster. The government, however, was firm, and Mary's personal 
courage and popularity did much to restore confidence in the eventual 
success of its policy. As in many another contest, dogged perseverance 
was beginning to tell its tale ; and the steadiness with which tlie British 
settled down to reform their naval administration gave the best augury 
for eventual success. 

The year 1694, however, was marked by a disaster which, though of 
no great magnitude, was singularly disgraceful. An attack had been 
planned on Brest, and entrusted to Talmash. Now that The Attack 
Mackay was dead, Talmash was the best of the rising men, °" ^'■^^*' 
and, as such, incurred the jealousy of Marlborough, who actually disclosed 
the plan to James, and through him to the French government. Possibly 
the French knew of the expedition without Marlborough's assistance ; 
but, in any case, the fortifications were strengthened under the care of 
Vauban himself ; and when Talmash landed, batteries opened upon his 
troops in all directions, the force was cut to pieces, and Talmash himself 
was mortally wounded. At the time, Marlborough's treachery was un- 
suspected. 

Another event which contributed to restore Marlborough to favour 
was the death of Queen Mary. Unlike her husband, she had always 
been strong and vigorous, but in December 1694 she was The Death 
attacked with small-pox. That terrible disease, then °^ ^^'y- 
unmitigated by vaccination, claimed thousands of victims annually ; and 
Mary's case was a very bad one. She met it with her usual calm 
courage ; sent away from the palace every soul who had not had the 



686 The Stuarts 1694 

disease, arranged her papers, and then calmly awaited the course of the 
malady. In a few days it was fatal. The shock to William was the 
more terrible because it was so wholly unexpected, and for a few weeks 
he was completely prostrated. Before her death, however, kind 
messages passed between Mary and her sister Anne, and after her death 
the princess was received by William himself. Henceforth Anne was 
on friendly terms with the court, and the position of Marlborough and 
his wife changed accordingly. 

Within a few days of Mary's death died William's great antagonist 
Luxembourg ; and when the war was renewed in the spring, it was at 

Capture of ^^^^ apparent that the balance of skill had been altered. 

Namur. Luxembourg's successors — Villeroy and Boufflers — showed 
themselves in every move of the game inferior to William. The allies, 
therefore, attempted the recapture of Namur ; and in October that great 
fortress, whose capture was the proudest event of Louis' military career, 
was again in the hands of William. The siege began on the 2nd of 
July, and after a series of assaults in which General Cutts distinguished 
himself so much that his men called him the ' Salamander,' the town 
was taken. The citadel only remained ; and to save it, Villeroy 
attempted to divert William by a cruel bombardment of Brussels. 
William, however, was firm ; and in September the citadel also fell. 

The capture of Namur was William's crowning achievement. France 
was now exhausted, and though the war dragged on two years longer, it 

Peace of was not distinguished by any brilliant events. Negotia- 

Ryswick. tions wcro opened, and in 1697 a treaty was signed at 
Ryswick. In this, Louis agreed to give up all conquest taken since the 
treaty of Nimegaen in 1678, and — what was of vital importance to 
Great Britain — to acknowledge William as king of England. The 
treaty of Ryswick brought to a close the second stage of William's long- 
contest with France. In the first he had, as stadtholder of the Dutch 
republic, excited the enthusiasm of Protestant Europe by his noble, but 
not always successful, defence of the stronghold of Protestant freedom 
against the strongest of the Catholic powers. In the second, he appeared 
at the head of a great coalition, and as the sovereign of the country 
which had supplied the heroes of Crecy and Agincourt. Even in this 
stronger position fortune had not always been on his side ; but since. 
1693 the tide had been turning ; the terms of the peace of Eyswick left 
no doubt whatever on which side victory had been, and the rejoicings 
which hailed its completion testified the satisfaction of Britain with the 
results that had been attained. 

Having brought the war to a termination, it is now time to revert to 



1697 William and Alary gg-^ 

domestic affairs. Between 1690 and 1697 a great revolution had been 
effected in the constitution of the executive government. At his accession 
William had tried the experiment of forming an administra- pa^t go- 
tion from the leaders of both political parties. The plan vemment. 
however, did not work well. The opinions of the Whigs and Tories 
were so different that they could not act together ; and— what was more 
serious still— the House of Commons, left without the guidance of 
responsible leaders confident in the possession of a steady majority, was 
little better than a political mob swayed hither and thither by the 
passions of the hour. For this extremely serious state of affairs a 
remedy was suggested by the astute but unprincipled Sunderland. 
That statesman had made his peace with William by disclosino- to 
him the secrets of his fallen master, and though his name appeared 
among those who were excepted from the Act of Grace, there was no 
intention of prosecuting him. By degrees he acquired fresh influence, 
and though he held no office himself, his acute judgment on the conduct 
of affairs was always at William's disposal. Accordingly, in 1693, 
he advised William to form a united Whig ministry by gradually 
weeding all the Tories out of the government. His advice was taken ; 
and between 1693 and 1695 it was carried into effect with the best 
results, not only on the working of the executive government, but 
on that of the House of Commons. 

The rise of the Whigs meant the elevation to power of four very 
remarkable men — Edward Eussell, John Somers, Charles Montagu, 
and Thomas Wharton. Eussell had taken a leading part The 
in the revolution, had won the battle of La Hogue, was 'J""to-' 
the most efficient naval administrator of the time, and though at one 
period he had entered into correspondence with James, he had probably 
been led to do so more by his dislike of William's employment of Tories 
than for any other reason. John Somers had distinguished himself 
in the bishops' trial, and was the best constitutional lawyer of his 
time. Charles Montagu, who first gained celebrity by writing with 
Prior The Town and Country Mouse, was an admirable debater, 
and a bold and original financier. Thomas Wharton, son of the old 
Puritan, Philip Lord Wharton, with vices of magnitude enough to have 
ruined the reputation of the ablest statesman in a more austere age, had 
secured an influence in the House of Commons and in the constituencies 
which made his services invaluable. Diflerent as these men were, 
in politics they were all agreed ; and so close was their political partner- 
ship that they were usually classed together as the 'junto.' 

Accordingly, in 1693, Somers became lord keeper of the great seal. 



688 The Stuarts 1694 

and, in 1697, lord chancellor. In 1694, Russell, who had been treasurer 
of the navy from the beginning of the reign, became first lord of the 

The Whig admiralty. The same year, Montagu, who had been a mem- 

M inistry , ^^^ ^f |.]^g treasury board, became chancellor of the exchequer. 
Trenchard, an ardent Whig, who had been deep in all Shaftesbury's 
plans, and had been made secretary of state in 1692, was joined by 
the Whig Shrewsbury in the place of the Tory Nottingham ; while 
Wharton, who all along kept his place as controller of the household, 
became more and more influential. In 1695 the Tory duke of Leeds 
(formerly Danby and Carmarthen) was proved to have used his influence 
to aid a friend in securing a bribe from the East India Company, and was 
forced to give up his post. Godolphin, who was a clever financier, and 
had never identified himself strongly with party politics, remained the 
only Tory in the government ; but, in 1696, he too gave up his post. 

So long as the war lasted, the necessity of providing money for the 

troops, and, consequently, of keeping on good terms with the financiers 

of the city, was the keystone of domestic administration. 

National The series of measures taken with this object were due to 
^ ■ the genius of Montagu. In 1693 he originated the 

national debt. It had long been the practice for English kings to 
borrow on their own security, and parliament had often been asked 
to pay their debts. William's expenses, however, had been absolutely 
unprecedented. In 1693, the estimated expenditure was over 
^4,000,000, the estimated revenue about ^3,000,000, and it seemed 
impossible to add to the weight of taxation at the risk of an outburst 
of discontent. Accordingly Montagu adopted the device of a loan 
raised, not on the security of the king, but on that of the nation, and 
for that reason known ever after as the nucleus of the national debt. 
The plan found ready acceptance, for at that date, while city men were 
prosperous, fticilities for lending money on good security were few. 
The Whig capitalists took up the loan at once, and the plan once at 
work, its extension was rapid. Besides relieving the financial distress 
of the government, Montagu was acute enough to perceive that he was 
also adding immensely to its political strength. Nothing was more 
certain than that, if James were restored, all responsibility for the debt 
would instantly be repudiated, so those who had lent money were not 
only stout supporters of the government at ordinary times, but at 
critical moments saw the best security for their investments in again 
coming forward to help the government out of its difficulty. 

In 1694 the Bank of England was established. Up to this date mer- 
chants had either kept their cash in strong boxes in their own premises^ 



1697 William III. 



689 



or had intrusted it to the care of goldsmiths, who invested the money 
bat agreed always to meet bills drawn upon them by the depositor 
to the amount of the sum deposited. In this way the The Bank of 
goldsmiths' shops became, to all intents and purposes, England, 
private banks. There had, however, been in existence for some 
time public banks, such as the Bank of St. George at Genoa, founded in 
the fourteenth century, and that of Amsterdam, founded about 1610. 
Under William iii. the idea of starting such a bank in England was 
frequently mooted, and the notion eventually took shape in the hands of 
William Paterson, a Scottish jDrojector, Michael Godfrey, a London mer- 
chant, and Montagu. Accordingly the subscribers to a new government 
loan of ^1,200,000 were formed into a banking company. In return for 
their loan they received eight per cent, interest. This gave them, with 
a further sum of £4000 for management, an income of £100,000 yearly. 
They were allowed by act of parliament to receive deposits of money, to 
lend money at interest, and to issue promises to pay on demand, which 
were called bank-notes. By a special clause, however, the bank was for- 
bidden to advance money to government without a special act of 
parliament, the object of which was to avoid the risk of government 
making itself independent of parliamentary control. This institution 
was of great advantage to the country, because persons who had capital 
felt that they could safely trust it to the bank, whose regular income of 
£100,000 a year, independent of their banking transactions, was a 
guarantee against failure ; while the bank in its turn advanced money 
on moderate interest to enterprising peoj)le, on whose integrity and 
ability the directors of the bank relied. In this way trade was bene- 
fited, and both the depositor and the borrower advantaged. Such was 
the origin of the Bank of England, which became the model for the 
numerous joint-stock banks which now exist, while the private banking 
companies are the successors of the goldsmiths of an earlier stage of 
commercial development. The establishment of the Bank of England 
still further united the mercantile classes in support of the government, 
and as the bank was always ready to lend to the government whenever 
parliament authorised a loan, the collection of money on an emergency 
became easier than ever before. 

This was well showTi in 1696. In that year the country gentry, led 
by Kobert Harley, a man of moderate ability but with a genius for 
making himself necessary, wished to form a Land Bank, The Land 
which was to advance money on the security of land only. 
For this they agreed to lend to the government no less than £2,500,000 
at a rate of seven per cent. But the country gentlemen, unlike the 

2x 



690 The Stuarts 1694 

merchants, had very little money in hand, and no capitalist would put 
his money into a concern which was restricted to lend on land at a rate 
of four per cent., whereas he could get six per cent, in the open market ; 
and when the day came for the production of the ^2,500,000, only 
£7100 was produced, of which £5000 had been advanced by William 
himself in order to give a fillip to the undertaking. The position of the 
government was most serious, for the money was wanted immediately to 
pay the troops in Flanders ; but the emergency was got over by the 
public spirit of the shareholders of the Bank of England, who advanced 
£200,000 at a few days' notice. In consequence, the Whigs and the 
merchants became better friends than ever ; but the failure of the 
Land Bank was a sore disappointment to the Tories. 

The same year that the Land Bank was projected, the government did 
a great service to the whole country by renewing the coinage. Since the 
State of the great renewal of the coinage under Elizabeth (see pp. 423 and 
Currency. 453^ |.}^g standard of quality had been well maintained ; but 
the method of manufacture had become antiquated, and a system which 
worked fairly well in an agricultural country where transactions were 
few was not suitable to a thriving commercial community such as was 
growing up in England at the close of the seventeenth century. The 
method in use had been introduced in the time of Edward i., and con- 
sisted of cutting the coins from a sheet of metal and reducing them to 
the proper shape by the blows of a hammer. Such coins were rude in 
form and easily imitated, and it was so easy to clip them that under 
William really good coins were rare. Trade naturally suffered, because 
no one knew what the value of money was ; and, as merchants wished 
to weigh the money before they parted with their goods, business could 
not be carried on between people at a distance from each other. About 
the time of the Restoration, however, a mill had been set up in the Tower 
which turned out a superior coin — round, exact in weight, and with a 
serrated or 'milled' edge which showed at a glance whether the coin had 
been clipped or not. The milled coins were excellent, but no one who 
possessed a milled shilling would make a payment with it if he could 
secure one of the old make. He preferred to melt it down, or to send it 
out of the country. Consequently, the milled coins disappeared as fast 
as they were produced. As time went on, the old, from clipping and 
wear, became worse than ever ; and the medium of exchange became 
thoroughly out of order. Prices, too, rose at a rate which far surpassed 
the power of wages to keep up with them. A shilling would go no 
further than sixpence did a few years before. So great was the uncer- 
tainty as to the value of the currency that quarrelling was incessant, for 



1697 William III. (591 

buyers and sellers, after haggling over the price, began a new bargain 
over the coin. Every one was inconvenienced ; and among the poor 
who could protect themselves least, inconvenience amounted to positive 
suffering. Such a state of affairs was dangerous to the peace of the 
country. Penal laws proved an ineffectual remedy ; and it was impera- 
tive that by some device or other the bad coins should be withdrawn 
from circulation and good ones supplied in their place. Among others 
who devoted their attention to the subject were John Locke, who had 
already conferred an obligation on the world by his tract on Toleration ; 
and Isaac Newton, the discoverer of the law of gravitation. In a happy 
moment they were consulted by Montagu and Somers. 

The great difficulty in the way of renewing the coinage was to settle 
whether individuals should bear the loss in exchanging their old coins for 
new, or whether it should fall on the nation at large. At The Coinage 
length, on the motion of Montagu, it was decided by parlia- renewed, 
ment that, on and after a certain day, the use of the old coinage should be 
forbidden ; but that all who brought in coins before that date should, as 
soon as possible, receive their nominal value in new milled coins. By 
this plan the loss fell on the nation at large. The management of the 
transaction was entrusted to Somers, Montagu, Locke, and Newton. 
Newton had been chosen by Montagu to be master of the mint, and so 
rapidly did he improve the system of coining that at length he was able 
to turn out no less than eight times as many shillings per week as had 
ever been coined before. The 2nd of May 1696 was the last day for 
bringing in the old coins, and with all Newton's expedition it was the end 
of August before even a fair amount of the new money was in circulation. 
During these four months every one lived on credit ; but so strong was 
the faith in the honesty of the government, and so patient and good- 
humoured was the temper in which the people met their difficulties, that 
the time passed off without disturbance ; and when the new coins were 
in full circulation it was found that a great boon had been conferred on 
the community at large. The establishment of the national debt and 
the Bank of England, and the renewal of the coinage, form an epoch in 
the history of English commerce, and won for the government the good- 
will of all who were concerned in trade. 

Until the accession of William iii. the great object of Whig statesmen, 
and indeed of all Englishmen, had been to oblige the king to call frequent 
parliaments. To this spirit was owing the Act of Edward The Trien- 
III. enjoining annual sessions ; the Triennial Act of the Long 
Parliament ; and the clause in the Bill of Eights declaring that parlia- 
ments ought to be held frequently. However, since supplies had been 



692 The Stuarts 1694 

voted annually, and the Mutiny Act had to be renewed, there was no 
fear that parliament would not meet every year. But this was replaced 
by the apprehension that if the king got a House of Commons to his 
mind, he would never dissolve it ; and so that for long periods parliament 
might be out of accord with the country. Such an instance had occurred 
in the case of the Long Parliament of Charles ii., which had existed for 
seventeen years. To prevent this, in 1692 a Triennial Bill, fixing three 
years as the longest term of any parliament, was introduced by the 
Whigs, and passed through both Houses. William, however, thought 
that the bill trenched seriously upon the prerogative of the crown ; and 
though Sir William Temple, who had been consulted, explained through 
his secretary, Jonathan Swift, that in his opinion the king had nothing 
to fear, he met it by the exercise of his veto. In 1693 it was introduced 
again, but defeated at the third reading in the Commons. In 1694, 
however, the bill was more fortunate, and William, who had long decided 
not to oppose it again, gave his consent. It is remarkable that the par- 
liament which passed the bill was not allowed to run its full course, but 
was dissolved by William on his return from the capture of Namur, in 
order that the elections might be held while that glorious exploit was 
fresh in the minds of the voters. 

Ever since the Keformation, government had claimed to regulate the 
printing and publication of books, with a view to forbid such as might be 
Freedom of injurious either to religion or to morality, or were likely to 
the Press. spread seditious opinions. Till the meeting of the Long 
Parliament this duty had been exercised by the archbishop of Canter- 
bury, and persons who printed unlicensed books had been prosecuted in 
the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission. After the dissolu- 
tion of these courts, the press for a short time was free ; but the Long 
Parliament, alarmed by the flood of pamphlets which inundated the 
country, and absolutely unmoved by the abstract reasoning in favour of 
liberty of thought which Milton addressed to it in his Areopagitica, again 
obliged books to be licensed. At the Kestoration a Licensing Act was 
passed, by which the whole control of printing was vested in the govern- 
ment, and printing was allowed only at London, York, and the univer- 
sities. This restriction, it must be borne in mind, affected not only books 
but also newspapers, pamphlets, and literature of every description ; and 
meant that no one could get a hearing for any views either on politics or 
religion which did not accord with the views of government. Indeed, 
under Charles ii. it was laid down by the judges that, ' To print or pub- 
lish any newsbooks, or pamphlets of news whatever, is illegal ; that it is 
a manifest intent to the breach of the peace, and the offenders may be 



1697 William III. 693 

proceeded against by law for an illegal thing.' Such a power was too 
great to place in any hands ; but more efficient than general arguments in 
favour of a free press, which could not have the weight then which they 
have since gained from the experience of two centuries, were those 
derived from the anomalous manner in which the right of veto was 
exercised. Milton's Paradise Lost passed the ordeal with difficulty, 
while the most scurrilous and indecent productions of the Restoration 
drama were printed as a matter of course. No Whig newspaper could 
appear, while the Tory Sir Roger L'Estrange, whose name was omitted 
from the Act of Grace, could libel the ' country party ' in his Observator 
without any check. Ludicrous cases could be cited to show how per- 
functorily the work of examination was done by the licenser and his 
deputies. A book which entitled King William and Mary ' conquerors ' 
had passed, while a history of the 'Bloody Assize' had been stopped. 
Cases like these undermined the reputation of the Act ; and when, in 
1695, the Licensing Act, which was a temporary measure, expired, par- 
liament refused to renew it. Since that year there has been complete 
liberty to publish ; libels have, of course, been liable to prosecution like 
any other criminal offence ; but so long as they can keep out of the 
clutches of the law, writers may abuse either the government, the oppo- 
sition, or each other to their hearts' content. 

This revolution, though little noticed at the time, was as important in 
the world of thought as the much more celebrated Revolution in the world 
of politics. No sooner was the publication of thought free Effects of a 
than both thinking and writing themselves improved, and, 
as Milton had foretold, virtue herself was benefited and strengthened by 
often meeting her antagonists in ' a free and open encounter.' In politics 
the effect was instantaneous. Within a fortnight reappeared the [ntelli- 
gence Domestic and Foreign, which had been promptly suppressed on 
its first appearance in the days of the Exclusion Bill. It was quickly 
followed by other papers ; and in a few years the remotest villages were 
able to command intelligence which, though it may appear meagre to us, 
was full and accurate compared to what a few years before had been 
accessible even to Londoners, and the consequence was the rise of 
a public opinion which statesmen of neither party could afford to 
neglect. Nor was the effect on morality at all what had been expected. 
Instead of the press becoming coarser it became purer. Writers who 
depend on the general sale of their works must produce what the public 
will buy ; and nothing proves more clearly that the morality of the 
court of Charles ii. was not the morality of the average reading public, 
than the difference between the tone of the works which had the best 



694 The Stuarts 1694 

sale and of those which obtained most readily the patronage of the 
court. 

While engaged in this great series of constitutional, financial, and social 
reforms, and in waging a great European war, ministers had to be 
Assassina- constantly on the alert to detect and frustrate a series of 
tion Plots. plots which from time to time were formed against William's 
government or life. As early as 1691 Viscount Preston, a Eoman Catholic, 
who had been secretary of state under James ii., was arrested on board 
a vessel in the Thames when actually sailing to France with letters 
for James and Louis urging a renewal of Tourville's attempt. Condemned 
to die, he purchased his life by betraying his fellows, and received an 
ignominious pardon. In 1692, probably with the concurrence of James, 
a Frenchman named Grandval was despatched to Flanders in order to 
murder William. He was, however, betrayed by his accomplices and 
shot. So long, however, as Mary lived, her popularity was William's 
security, but her death made him much more liable to assassination, for 
his single life might be thought to stand in the way of a restoration. 
From that time forward he was in constant peril, and made the work 
of guarding his life more arduous by his fearless disregard of danger. 
The most formidable of these conspiracies was detected in 1696. It 
combined two designs : one, the raising an insurrection in England, 
supported by a French invading force ; the other, the assassination of 
William. The former of these was to be managed by Berwick, the 
latter by a group of desperate conspirators headed by Sir George Barclay, 
a Scottish follower of Dundee, and Robert Charnock, formerly a fellow of 
Magdalen College, who are said to have received a commission from 
James authorising them to attack the Prince of Orange in his winter 
quarters. Under this euphemism was concealed a design to surround 
his coach in a dark lane near Turnham Green, as he was on his way 
to Hampton Court, to kidnap him if he made no resistance, but to 
cut his throat if he did. Happily this diabolical plot was betrayed 
to the government, and the conspirators were seized in their beds. 
The whole design therefore came to nothing ; and James, after waiting 
in vain at Calais for the lighting of the beacon which was to announce 
from Dover cliffs the death of his son-in-law, retired in disappoint- 
ment to St. Germains, The government, on the other hand, made 
the best use of their good fortune. The opportunity was seized to 
band together the whole nation in an association similar to that formed 
in 1584 for the protection of Queen Elizabeth. Four hundred and 
twenty members of the House of Commons and eighty-three peers 
signed a parchment, binding them, in case of the king's murder, to aid in 



1697 William III. 



695 



taking a signal revenge on the assassins, and to support the accession of 
Anne as arranged in the Bill of Rights. Signatures were then invited 
from the general public ; and so great was the indignation aroused by the 
infamous assassination plot, and the scarcely less terrible project of a 
French invasion, that the document was signed by the vast majority of 
the population, and the red ribbon of the association was to be seen 
on almost every hat. At no moment before or after did William enjoy 
such unanimous popularity as when he had just escaped from what 
appeared to his enemies certain destruction. Of the intending murderers 
Charnock and seven others were hanged, but Barclay escaped. 

Just before the conspiracy was detected, but not in time to give the 
conspirators the benefit of its provisions, parliament had passed an 
important Act regulating trials for treason. Up to this time Treason 
the conduct of these trials had given every assistance to the Trials, 
government, and put the accused at a great disadvantage. Till the trial 
began a prisoner was neither informed of the names of the jury nor of the 
exact charge which was to be brought against him, and witnesses for his 
defence were not allowed to be examined on oath. This state of things 
arose from the old form of trial based on the ordeal, which regarded the 
process as an attempt of the prosecution to prove the guilt of the prisoner, 
the business of the jury being to return a verdict of not guilty, unless 
the guilt of the prisoner admitted of no possible doubt. This method, 
excellent in theory, had in practice proved quite inefficient to secure fair 
play, especially in trials for treason. For a long time, however, no 
change had been made, partly because so long as Whigs only were tried 
Tories felt that there was much to be said for making treasonable 
practices dangerous, partly because the case of j^ersons accused of treason 
was no worse than that of other accused persons, and it seemed anomalous 
to give Guy Fawkes or Anthony Babington advantages which were denied 
to a poor shoplifter. However, fortune's wheel had now made the Tories 
the conspiring party, and before William had been long on the throne all 
parties were agreed that something must be done. Accordingly, by the 
new Act, the prisoner was to have a copy of the indictment and a list of 
the jury five days before the trial, and his witnesses were to be examined 
on oath. By the law of Edward vi. two witnesses were necessary for 
conviction ; but the safeguard conveyed by this rule had been narrowed 
by the crown lawyers to such an extent that Algernon Sidney was 
convicted on the evidence of one witness and the testimony afforded by 
some unpublished papers found in his desk. By the new law two 
witnesses were required to one open act of treason, or one to one, and one 
to another open act of the same kind of treason. (See page 434.) 



696 The Stuarts 1697 

This law, while it secured the safety of innocent men, undoubtedly 
made it harder to convict the guilty. Indeed, it was said satirically 
Fenwick's that the object of the Act was 'to make treason as safe as 
Case. 230ssible ' ; and in the case of Sir John Fenwick, who was 

accused of treason in 1697, a guilty man nearly escaped through its 
provisions. Fenwick was an old member of parliament who had taken 
an active part in forwarding the Bill of Attainder under which Monmouth 
had suffered. The Revolution made him a conspirator, and in 1695 he 
was certainly generally cognisant of the intentions of Charnock and 
Barclay. For some months he lay hidden, but was at length arrested ; 
and an intercepted letter which he had sent to his wife left no doubt 
whatever of his guilt. A London grand jury returned a true bill, but 
before his trial came on he attempted to purchase mercy by sending 
to William a rambling statement in which Shrewsbury, Russell, Marl- 
borough and Godolphin were accused of treasonable correspondence with 
St. Germains. To William this was no news, and he wisely determined 
to leave Fenwick to his fate ; but before the day of trial came on it was 
announced that Goodman, one of the two witnesses against him, had 
absconded. The Whigs, however, were not to be thus baulked. They 
voted Fenwick's confession to be scandalous ; then having satisfied 
themselves what Goodman's evidence would have been, passed a Bill of 
Attainder against Fenwick, to which the Lords agreed, and William, 
having given his consent, Fenwick was beheaded. 

The conclusion of the peace of Ryswick in 1697 proved in another way 
a turning-point in English politics. So long as the war continued, the 
nation recognised the paramount importance of military 
larity^" a success, and had cheerfully borne the burdens entailed by 
Standing ^]^g y^^^ . \^^^ with peace a reaction set in, and the national 
dislike to taxation, the unpopularity of standing armies, 
and insular prejudice against foreigners, had opportunity to assert them- 
selves. Accordingly, in the general election of 1698, the cry of the Tories 
was for peace and retrenchment, and a, majority of that party were 
returned. These men had little sympathy with William. Most of them 
belonged to the class of landed gentry on whom taxation for the war, 
especially the land-tax of £2,000,000 a year, had fallen very heavily ; and 
they had not only failed to obtain a share in the prosperity secured to 
the mercantile classes by Montagu's measures, but also had been bitterly 
disappointed by the failure of Harley's Land Bank, and they most unfairly 
ascribed the fiasco to the jealousy of the Whigs. Moreover, they had, 
and could have, no such thorough acquaintance with the condition of 
European affairs as was necessary to ajjpreciate William's foreign i^olicy ; 



1700 JVilliam III. 697 

and they did not understand his view that it was as needful to keep up 
a strong standing army and to be ever on the watch against the ambition 
of Louis XIV. England, they said, would do well to avail herself of her 
insular position, keep ou^ of foreign complications, and trust for defence 
to her fleet and her militia. 

Accordingly the army, which had already been reduced to 10,000 men, 
was further cut down to 7000, and a proviso was added, ' these to consist 
of his majesty's natural-born sul)jects.' The object of the Army 
last clause was to compel William to part with his Dutch reduced, 
guards, who formed the most obvious subjects for an attack upon 
foreigners so savage that Daniel Defoe was moved to write his satire of 
the True-horn Englishman, in which he derides the English claim to 
purity of descent, and reminds those people ' who deride the Dutch and 
rail at new come foreigners so much,' that they were themselves descended 
from swarm after swarm of foreign conquerors and refugees, and that 
their vaunted motto, ' A True-born Englishman,' was but ' a metai^hor 
invented to express a man akin to all the universe.' 

Another excellent subject for combining an attack upon William and 
the Dutchmen with an ostentatious care for economy was found in the 
Irish grants. William, like many other men who have no The Irish 
gift for general popularity, was dearly attached to a small ^'"^"t^- 
body of friends, such as Bentinck, Keppel, and Auverquerque, and he 
had lavished upon them extensive grants of land, especially in Ireland. 
Such grants had also been given to Lord Romney, who, as Henry Sidney, 
had been one of his chief advisers, to such stout soldiers as Ginkel 
Lord Athlone, and Ruvigny Lord Galway ; and a large estate belonging to 
James ii. had been given to Elizabeth Villiers, now Lady Orkney, who 
had been William's mistress before he came to England, and who after her 
marriage had been the confidential and valued adviser of some of the 
leading Whigs. A committee was appointed to inquire into the Irish 
grants, and its report showed that nmch land had been given away 
contrary to a promise of William that ' he would not make any grants 
of the forfeited lands in England and Ireland till there had been another 
opportunity of settling that matter in parliament.' This promise had 
been made in 1691, and parliament had done nothing since ; but the 
worst part of the matter was that the shares of Auverquerque, Keppel, 
and Portland's son, William Bentinck, whose public services Avere little 
or nothing, were very much larger than those given to Ptomney, Athlone, 
and Galway. Of this undoubtedly strong case the Tories made the very 
most, and in 1700 an Act was passed through parliament by which the 
whole of the grants were resumed. 



698 The Stuarts 1700 

The differences of opinion between the Tory House of Commons and 
the Whig House of Lords gave rise at this time to a constitutional 
• struggle of considerable importance. By a usage which 
dated since the time of Henry v., the Lords had no right to 
amend a money bill which had passed the Commons. Accordingly, 
when a measure was in hand of which the Lords were certain to disap- 
prove, an ingenious Tory devised the expedient of ' tacking ' it to a money 
bill. The Lords had then either to pass both, or to render themselves 
unpopular and throw government into confusion by stopping supplies. 
In the case of the Resumption Bill this was done with success ; but it 
remained to be seen whether the country would approve of a plan which 
put the whole control of public affairs into the hands of the House of 
Commons, and reduced the power both of the House of Lords and of the 
king to an absolute nullity. 

Confronted with this difficulty, William effected a change of ministers. 
In 1692 he had begun to modify the construction of his ministry, in 

A Tory order to bring it into better agreement with a majority of 

Ministry. Whigs ; he now reversed the process, and began cautiously 
to recall the Tories. In 1697 Shrewsbury resigned, and was succeeded 
by Jersey ; in 1697 Montagu's place was given first to Tankerville 
(formerly the Lord Grey of Monmouth's rebellion), and in 1700 to 
Godolphin ; Russell resigned in 1699, and was replaced by Bridgewater ; 
and Somers, who had been the subject of vehement parliamentary attack, 
gave up the chancellorship. In 1700 Rochester took office as lord- 
lieutenant of Ireland. The presence of Jersey, Godolphin, and Rochester 
was designed to appease the Tories ; but the ill effects of endeavouring 
to amalgamate the heads of both parties in a coalition ministry were soon 
apparent. 

In 1700 the question of the succession again became pressing. Of 
Anne's seventeen children most had been born dead, and four daughters 
The Act of ^^<i one son had died in infancy ; but one son born in 
Settlement. 1689, created duke of Gloucester, and called William in 
compliment to the king, reached the age of twelve. Marlborough was 
appointed his governor ; and the king had been pleased with the 
child's fondness for martial exercise, and his telling him, on one occa- 
sion, 'that he was learning to help to beat the French.' However, 
in July 1701, he too died, and it became necessary to make a new 
arrangement for the succession. James' reliance on France, and his 
unlucky proclamation, had done nothing to win him favour ; and in 
1698 an act had been passed to forbid all intercourse with the exiled 
royal family either b}^ word or writing, and no Jacobite exile (as James' 



1701 William III. 699 

followers were now called) was permitted to return and settle in William's 
dominions without a government licence. Accordingly, in 1701, parlia- 
ment, though Tory, passed the Act of Settlement, by which, in case of 
the death of both Anne and William without children, the crown was 
settled on Sophia, wife of the elector of Hanover, and daughter of Elizabeth, 
Electress Palatine, the daughter of James i., and on her lawful heirs. 
Sophia stood by no means next in succession to Anne. Henrietta, duchess 
of Orleans (see page 626), had left descendants who are now represented 
by the reigning family of Italy ; and Sophia had numerous elder 
brothers and sisters who had left children. She was, however, the 
nearest to the direct line who belonged to the Protestant faith, and 
consequently, as all Roman Catholics were excluded by the Bill of 
Eights, she was, after Anne, the next legal heir to the throne. Parlia- 
ment, therefore, chose the fittest member of the royal family, just as 
the Witenagemot used to do in the days before the Norman Conquest. 
The circumstance that the Act of Settlement was passed by a parlia- 
ment in which the Tories were predominant, turned out to be of great 
importance, for it committed the Tories, as a party, to the principle of the 
Hanoverian succession, and as it was an arrangement heartily approved 
by the Whigs, the matter was thus placed outside the lines of party 
politics. 

The Tories, though they passed the Act of Settlement, showed their 
hostility to William by adding a series of fresh limitations to the royal 
prerogative, which were to take effect when the Act came constitu- 
into force. By these, among other things, (1) the king was Jjf^^^^gg ^^ 
not to leave Great Britain or Ireland without the consent of the Act of 
parliament ; (2) no foreigner could be a member of the 
Privy Council, hold any post under the crown, or receive any grant of 
lands ; (3) no person who held office under the crown, or received a 
pension, could be a member of the House of Commons ; (4) no pardon 
under the great seal could be pleaded as a bar to an impeachment ; 
(5) judges were to hold their places quamdiu se bene gesserint, and were 
only to be removed from office on an address of both Houses of Parlia- 
ment. With the exception of the fourth and fifth, none of these were ever 
operative. The first and second were repealed to oblige George i. The third, 
which would have rendered our present system of government impossible, 
was repealed in 1705, and it was provided that henceforward, though mem- 
bers of the House of Commons who receive a salaried office from the crown 
ipso facto vacate their seats, they are not ineligible for re-election. 

In 1701 the Tories impeached Bentinck (duke of Portland), Somers, 
Orford (formerly Russell), and the earl of Halifax (formerly Montagu), 



700 The Stuarts 1700 

for their share in the partition treaties. These treaties were the outcome 
of a European difficulty. Charles ii., who had been king of Spain since 
The Spanish 1665, when at the age of four he had succeeded his father, 
Succession. phiU^D iv., had always been weak both in mind and body, 
and had no children. One of his sisters, Maria Theresa, had married 
Louis XIV. ; another, Margaret, married the emperor Leopold i. More- 
over, his aunt Maria was herself the mother of Leopold. It was doubtful, 
therefore, whether Maria, Theresa, Margaret, or Maria was the true heir 
of Charles. The claims of these three princesses were represented respec- 
tively by the dauphin of France, Joseph, electoral prince of Bavaria, and 
the Archduke Charles of Austria.^ 

The question was very important ; for in Europe the Spanish king 
possessed Spain, ten provinces in the Netherlands, the kingdom of Naples 
and Sicily, the duchy of Milan, and the islands of Sardinia, Majorca and 
Minorca ; in the New World, large dominions in America, such as 
Mexico, which at that time included California and other large jDortions 
of the modern United States, Central America, and all South America 
except Brazil and Guiana ; Cuba, Trinidad, and other West Indian islands, 
and the Philij^pine Islands off the coast of Asia. If the French prince suc- 
ceeded, it was thought that French influence would be predominant in 
Spain, and also that it was not impossible that the croAvns of France and 
Spain might actually be united, and that in that case the power of France, 
both in Europe and in the colonies, would be overwhelming. If the 
Austrian were chosen, very great, though not overwhelming, power in 
Europe would be given to the Austrians. The English dreaded most the 
union of the French and Spanish colonies ; William himself feared the 
aggrandisement of France in Europe. The Austrians naturally wished 
either for a share or for the whole ; the French, of course, the same ; the 

1 THE SPANISH SUCCESSION. 
Philip III., King of Spain, d. 1621. 



Philip IV., d. 1665. Maria == Emperor Ferd. in. 



I I I 

Charles II., Maria (1) Margaret=Leopoldi.,=p(2) Princess 



d. 1700. Theresa= Louis XIV. I d. 1705. 

I Electress of 

Louis, dauphin, d. 1711. Bavaria. 



of Neuburg. 



I I i I I 

Louis, Duke of Burgundy, Philip. Joseph, Joseph I., Archduke 

d. 1712. Electoral d. 1711. Charles, 

I Prince, d. 1740. 

Louis XV. d. 1699. 



1701 William III 7qj 

Dutch feared for their colonial trade, and were aghast at the idea of 
Beeing French influence, and possibly the French standards, permanently 
established on their southern frontier. In these circumstances William 
desired to take the lead, and to devise some plan by which war could be 
avoided. There were three courses open to him : first, to abandon all 
care for the Spanish succession ; second, to come to some arrangement with 
France beforehand ; third, to prepare, as France was doing, to make an 
advantageous war whenever Charles ii. should die. The first seemed to 
William foolish. The third was rendered impossible by the temper of the 
English parliament, who refused to grant a single soldier. He, therefore 
fell back on the second ; sent Portland, on whose judgment he completely 
relied, to Paris, and endeavoured to come to terms with Louis xiv. 

Accordingly a compromise was efi'ected, by which the crown of Spain 
was given to the electoral prince, a lad of thirteen, whose accession 
would have avoided most of the difficulties ; and shares were The Partiti 
also allotted to France and Spain in consideration of their Treaties, 
claims being abandoned. However, in 1699, the electoral prince died, 
so a new partition had to be made between the Austrian and French 
claimants. William secured Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, Sardinia, 
and the colonies for the Austrian Archduke Charles, a plan which secured 
the interests of Holland and England ; while the dauphin was to receive 
Naples and Sicily, the province of Guipuscoa, Elba, one or two other 
small islands ofi" the Italian coast, and the duchy of Milan. Of these, 
Guipuscoa was important, because it gave Louis an outpost across the 
Pyrenees ; Elba, as a naval station ofi" the Italian coast. Milan was to 
be exchanged for Lorraine, in order to round ofl' the French dominions on 
the north-east. 

For these arrangements there was much to be said ; but they turned 
out a complete failure. The Austrians took no pains whate\«er to 
ingratiate themselves with the Spaniards, and Louis xiv. Louis' 
was willing to seize any opportunity to better the position Action, 
of France. The second treaty was concluded in 1699. Charles died 
in November, 1700 ; and between the two events the French party at 
court had gained such an ascendency over the mind of Charles, that he 
made a will leaving the whole of the Spanish dominions, not indeed to 
the dauphin, but to the dauphin's second son, Philip, duke of Anjou. 
Louis at once declared for the will ; and the Spaniards, who naturally 
disliked seeing their empire disintegrated, and whose opinion in our day 
would have been regarded as decisive, declared enthusiastically for the 
French prince. Accordingly, Louis, remarking ' that the Pyrenees had 
ceased to exist,' despatched his grandson to take possession of Spain, 



702 The Stuarts I70i 

while he himself seized the Netherlands, and sent home the Dutch 

garrison which the Spaniards had permitted to garrison some of their 

frontier towns, 

William was indignant ; but he could do nothing, for the mass of his 

subjects drew a great distinction between the accession of the dauphin 

and that of a younger son : and were also indignant, not only 
Impeach- , ..*.'. , ^, , , / 

ment of at the partition treaties being made at all, but also at the 
readiness with which William had agreed to hand over, to 
one who would some day be king of France, the kingdoms of Sicily and 
Naples. The Tories, therefore, seized the opportunity to injure the 
Whigs by impeaching Bentinck, Russell, Somers and Montagu of treason 
for their share in these negotiations, and actually asked the king to 
dismiss the four lords before they had been tried. Besides the general 
charge connected with the partition treaties, special charges were brought 
against each. Somers was accused of putting the great seal to unreason- 
able grants of crown lands ; Portland with receiving such grants ; 
Halifax with embezzlement and nepotism ; Orford with corruption ; and 
over and above this, the ill-doings of Captain Kidd, who, having been sent 
to the South Seas to put down piracy, had himself turned pirate, were, by 
an excess of party malevolence, charged against Orford and Somers, who 
had been in part responsible for sending him. The charges against 
Somers were taken first, but by that time the outrageous violence of the 
Tories had produced a reaction ; and the relations between the Lords and 
Commons had been strained by the practice of ' tacking.' The Lords, 
feeling themselves on the winning side, threw obstacles in the Commons' 
way, and when the members of that House refused to ajDpear on the day 
fixed for the trial, the Lords declared Somers acquitted ; a few days 
later, Orford was equally fortunate ; and parliament was prorogued with 
a view to a dissolution. 

The House of Lords was not alone in resenting the party violence of 
the lower House. In 1701 the grand jury of the county of Kent, led by 
The Kentish William Colepepper, drew up a petition, well known as the 
Petition. Kentish Petition, in which they respectfully asked the House 

to throw away 'the least distrust of his most sacred majesty,' and 'to turn 
their loyal addresses into bills of supply.' When this was presented, the 
house showed itself almost as angry with the petitioners as James ii. had 
been with the seven bishops. The petition was voted to be ' scandalous, 
insolent, and seditious,' and the five gentlemen were put into custody. 
It was soon plain, however, that the action of the Commons was little 
more popular . than that of James. A clever and pointed memorial, 
probably drawn up by Daniel Defoe, and generally known as the Legion 



1702 William III. 703 

Memorial, was widely circulated, and did much to inflame the feeling of 
the country against the Tories. 

The tide was, therefore, already on the turn when parliament was dis- 
solved ; but before the elections took place an event occurred which 
changed the whole aspect of aff'airs ; for on the death of j^^^^j^ ^^ 
James 11. in September, 1701, Louis xiv., in a fit of quixotic James 11. 
generosity, and in complete violation of his engagements at Ryswick, 
acknowledged James Edward, afterwards known as the Old Pretender then 
aged thirteen, as king of England. Louis could hardly have done William 
a better turn. The idea of a king of France presuming to dictate who 
should be king of England roused the whole nation, both Whigs and 
Tories, and for the moment united both parties in support of William's 
policy. Everywhere Whig candidates were returned by large majorities, 
and some of the leading Tories had difficulties in finding seats. Loyal 
addresses came in from every side. The ' pretended prince of Wales ' 
was attainted of high treason ; and it was resolved that no peace 
should be made with France till Louis had made reparation. Abundant 
supplies were voted ; to secure the Protestant succession parliament 
imposed an oath ' to uphold it ' on all those who held employment in 
church or state ; and William was able again to recall his Whig 
ministers, to increase his army, and to gather together the scattered 
threads of the Grand Alliance. 

All Europe was arming, and William saw himself about to fulfil 
the dream of his life by leading a victorious army to the invasion of 
France, when, on February 20, a fall from his horse broke Death of 
his collar-bone. Such a slight accident would have been Wiiham. 
nothing to a strong man, but to one worn out with anxiety and work it 
was fatal ; and on March 8 the king died. William was a great king, 
but not a popular one. His manners never won him the afi'ection of the 
nation ; and his far-reaching schemes were appreciated only by a few. In 
attempting to rule with a free parliament he had a difficult part to play. 
The experiment was new ; his own character was too positive and inde^ 
pendent to submit itself readily to a policy of which he disapproved, 
merely because it was supported by a parliamentary majority. The 
statesmen with whom he had to deal had been brought up in the bad 
school of the Restoration, where corruption and self-seeking had gone far to 
poison public life. It is not surprising, therefore, that he made mistakes ; 
and he has also sufi'ered in the estimation of posterity by the attempts 
which have been made to exliibit him as faultless. But, when the worst 
has been told— and it has been fully admitted that there were many things 
to cavil at, both in his private life and his political career— he has the 



704 



The Stuarts 



1702 



glory of having brought England safely through a great crisis, and of 
being the first sovereign, not only in England but in the world, to work 
a parliamentary government, in the modern sense of the term, with some 
approach to success. 



CHIEF DA TES, 









A.D. 


Battle of Killiecrankie 1689 


Siege of Londonderry, 






1689 


Battle off Beachy Head, 






1690 


Battle of the Boyne 






1690 


Battle of Cape La Hogue, . 






1692 


Battle of Steenkerke, 






1692 


National Debt founded, 






1693 


Battle of Landen, 






1693 


Bank of England founded, . 






1694 


Triennial Act passed, . 






1694 


Death of Mary 






1694 


Censorship of the Press expires, 






1695 


Coinage renewed, 






1696 


Peace of Ryswick, 






1697 


Act of Settlement, 






1701 


Death of James II 






1701 



CHAPTER VIII 

ANNE: 1702-1714 
Born 1665 ; married, 1683, Prince George of Denmark. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 

France. Emperors. 

Louis XIV., d. 1715. Leopold i., d. 1705. 

Joseph I., d. 1711. 
Charles vi. , d. 1740. 

Character of Marlborough — The War of the Spanish Succession — Blenheim 
Raniillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet— The Union of England and Scotland 
— Ministerial Intrigues— Prosecution of Sacheverell and Fall of the Whigs — 
The Treaty of Utrecht — The Schism Act— Death of Anne. 

It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than existed between the 
character of William and that of his successor. William had towered 
head and shoulders above most of the statesmen of his character of 
time ; he had been his own minister of foreign affiiirs and ^""^• 
his own commander-in-chief ; and his wishes had been the principal 
influence in determining the policy both of England and Holland. 
Anne, though not exactly what would be called deficient, was certainly 
not clever. She took her ideas from others ; and from girlhood had 
been under the influence of her friend Sarah Jennings, who had married 
John Churchill, now earl of Marlborough, and was wholly devoted to the 
interests of her husband. Nevertheless, the character of Anne was not 
without its influence. With her accession, the personal popularity of the 
English sovereign was restored. Her domestic misfortunes ensured 
sympathy and consideration ; her real jjiety and devotion to the interests 
of the church conciliated churchmen ; plots against her life were unknown; 
and, at her accession, all parties set themselves to make her path easy, 
instead of merely giving her the half-hearted support which was the 
most that William had been able to command, even from his friends. 
Above all, if William was entirely Dutch, and the Pretender entirely 
French, Anne, as she told parliament, was in heart ' entirely English ' ; 

2y 



706 The Stuarts 1702 

and the insuW prejudice against foreigners, which had been injurious to 

William, was now enlisted on the side of Anne. Except, however, in 

connection with the church, Anne took little active interest in the 

politics of the country. It was Marlborough, therefore, rather than 

the queen, who really succeeded William as ruler of England, and 

for a long time his was the guiding spirit both at home and abroad. 

John Churchill, earl of Marlborough, was now fifty-two years of age, 

and in full vigour both of mind and body. Though his character was 

marred by much insincerity and much meanness, he was, 
Character ol , . -^ ,. . , , "^ , . .1 , • 

Marl- both m politics and m war, a great man. As a youth his 

° °"^ ■ fine presence and engaging manners had won him notice 

and admiration, and throughout his life he had turned all his gifts to the 
advancement of his personal ends. Though, hitherto, he had had no 
opportunity of displaying his talents on a great scale, he had always 
shown himself equal to the performance of everything which he had 
undertaken. In natural gifts he had indeed been fortunate. His health 
was uniformly good, and he was capable of enduring extreme fatigue ; 
his temper was admirable ; his courage undaunted ; his nerve un- 
shaken ; and whether dealing with friends or foes, his manners were 
distinguished by a politeness that never varied. With these moral 
qualities he united intellectual gifts of a very high order. His views 
on current affairs were large, clear, and eminently practical. Though 
so badly equipped with book learning that ' he did not love writing,' his 
despatches and state papers were perspicuous and forcibly expressed. 
His parliamentary oratory was suited for its jDur^DOse ; above all, he 
knew how to make everything he did subordinate to his main end. For 
example, though a general of such uniform success that he never fought 
a battle without winning it, or besieged a town without taking it, he 
kept fighting in its proper place as a means to an end, and is said never 
to have fought ' unless he saw great political results certain to arise out 
of a victory certain to be obtained.' His patience was inexhaustible ; 
and he fortified himself against disappointment by a certain dash of 
fatalism. ' As I think,' he wrote, ' that most things are governed by 
destiny, having done all that is possible one should submit with patience.' 
Marlborough had always been a strong Tory, and he gave the chief places 
in the government to Tories. He himself was commander-in-chief and 
/j.jjg ambassador to Holland. Godolphin, who completely shared 

Ministry. \-^{^ views, and whose interests had been allied to his own 
by the marriage of their children, took the chief charge of English affairs 
as lord treasurer. The high Tory Nottingham, whose solemn face and 
sententious manner had won him the sobriquet of ' Don Dismallo,' was 



1703 An7ie 707 

one secretary of state, and Sir Charles Hedges, another Tory, was the 
other. A place was even fonnd for Jack Howe, who had been the most 
virulent of all the maligners of William. On the other hand, the names 
of Halifax, Orford, and Somers were omitted from the list of the new 
privy council. Tory, however, as the new ministers were, their policy 
was Whig. The Grand Alliance— composed of England, Holland, the 
Emperor, the new king of Prussia, the Elector Palatine, and the Elector 
of Hanover— was fully maintained ; and parliament resolved that ' too 
much cannot be done for the encouragement of our allies, and to reduce 
the exorbitant power of France.' War was declared ; and though in the 
general election which followed the accession of Anne the Tories won 
largely, 40,000 troops were voted for the land service, and 40,000 sailors 
and marines for the fleet. 

At first the designs of the allies were somewhat indefinite, but 
eventually the Archduke Charles, the younger son of the Emperor 
Leopold, was set up as a claimant to the Spanish crown. 
The war was carried on in the Netherlands, on the Ehine, 
in north Italy, and in Spain itself. In the Netherlands Marlborough, 
who had been, through the influence of William's friend Heinsius, 
made commander-in-chief of the Dutch, as well as of the English, took 
the chief command ; the Margrave Louis of Baden was on the Ehine ; 
and Prince Eugene of Savoy was usually intrusted with the conduct of 
the war in Italy. Louis of Baden was brave, steady, but exceedingly 
slow and mechanical. Eugene, who was the cousin of the Duke of 
Savoy, and who, being refused a commission by Louis xiv,, had taken 
service under the emperor, was probably the best general the Austrians 
ever possessed, and also a man of excellent temper and of unselfish 
devotion to the cause which he had espoused. 

The Spanish Netherlands, which were for a time the chief seat of the 
war, are in shape an irregular quadrilateral figure, of which the southern 
face was guarded by the great fortresses of Lille, Tournay, The Nether- 
Mons, and Charleroi ; the eastern by Namur and Liege ; the ^^"'*^- 
northern by the Ehine ; the western by the sea ; and at the opening of 
the war the whole district was in the hands of the French. In 1702 
Marlborough's great exploit was to capture Li^ge, for which he was made 
a duke, and received a pension of £5000 a year. In 1703 he made 
himself master of the lower part of the Ehine, on which Bonn is the 
chief fortress ; and thus secured both an entry into the Netherlands 
and communication with his allies on the Ehine. 

These successes, however, were neutralised by the defeat of Louis of 
Baden at Friedlingen, and by the action of the Elector of Bavaria, who 



708 



The Stuarts 



1703 



The Cam- 
paign in 
Bavaria. 



suddenly declared for Philip, and admitted a French force into his elec- 
torate. This opened to the French the valley of the Danube and the 
road to Vienna ; and to aid the Elector Louis despatched 
first Villars, then Marsin, and finally Tallard. It seemed 
clear that, unless vigorous stej)s were taken, the war would 
be brought to an abrupt conclusion by the capture of Vienna itself. In 
these circumstances Marlborough determined on a bold stroke. Leaving 
the Dutch frontier under a strong guard, he marched across country into 
Bavaria, uniting his forces with those of Louis of Baden, and arranged 
with Prince Eugene for a grand attack on the French. At Donauwerth, 
on July 2, 1 704, Marlborough and Louis of Baden routed the Bavarians, 
who occupied a strong position on the Schellenberg, and thus secured 




the passage of the Danube. The Elector, however, refused to come to 
terms ; and Marlborough, though ' reluctantly,' gave over Munich and 
the neighbourhood to fire and sword. Meanwhile, Tallard had joined 
the Bavarians ; and Louis of Baden having withdrawn himself to the 
siege of Ingoldstadt, to the great content of Marlborough and Eugene, 
the two friends advanced up the Danube and attacked the French and 
Bavarians at Blenheim (Blindheim) on August 13. 

Tallard, Marsin, and the elector of Bavaria had drawn up their forces 
on a low ridge of ground lying nearly at right angles to the north bank 

_. „ , of the Danube — there about one hundred yards wide and 

The Battle . . -^ 

of Bien- unfordable. Their right was at Blenheim, their centre behind 

Unterglau, their left at Oberglau ; and their whole line was 

defended by the marshy stream of the Nebel. [Their force numbered 



1704 Anne 709 

about 60,000 men ; that of the allies 52,000. The attack began at noon ; 
but the brave Cutts and his men could make no impression upon 
Blenheim, the streets of which were barricaded and the houses loopholed ; 
and on the allied right, Eugene, hampered by the ground and by the ill 
conduct of some Austrian cavalry, fared little better. In these circum- 
stances Marlborough — who is described by an eye-witness as ' being in 
all places wherever his presence was requisite, without fear of danger, or 
in the least hurry, giving his orders with all the calmness imaginable ' — 
placed himself at the head of his cavalry, and inflicted a fatal blow on 
the French centre. This decided the day. The French and Bavarian 
forces were cut in two ; Eugene was able to drive the elector and Marsin 
from their positions on the left ; and 11,000 of Tallard's best troops, 
being left isolated in Blenheim, were forced to surrender. Before night- 
fall, Marlborough despatched to the duchess a pencil note, written 
characteristically on the back of an old hotel bill, to tell her to ' give his 
duty to the queen, and let her know that her army has won a glorious 
victory. M. Tallard and two other generals are in my coach, and I am 
following the rest.' The importance of the victory was immense. Had 
Marlborough been beaten at Blenheim, Vienna would almost certainly 
have been taken, England would have been invaded, and probably the 
line of James ii. restored. Southey, in his poem of Blenheim, makes 
Caspar declare that ' what they fought each other for ' he was never able 
to tell ; but the English of Anne's day had no such difficulty. The 
principle at stake was that of national freedom, or, in other words, 
whether England or France should choose the English dynasty ; and 
they were so proud of Marlborough's success, and so thankful for their 
relief, that parliament asked the queen to give him the estate of Wood- 
stock, near Oxford, and a pension for himself and his descendants. The 
estate accordingly was given, and Blenheim House erected on it. It 
is still held by Marlborough's descendants in the female line on condi- 
tion that a flag is placed by them in St. George's Chapel at Windsor 
on each anniversary of the great victory. 

The same year another brilliant achievement gave England something 
which, though not appreciated at the time as equal to the victory of 
Blenheim, has been recognised by succeeding ages as of capture of 
little, if any, less importance. On August 1, the prince 
of Hesse-Darmstadt, with Sir George Rooke, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and 
Sir George Byng, formed the siege of Gibraltar ; and on the 4tli, one of 
the moles having been stormed, and some sailors having scaled the rock 
while the Spanish sentries were at mass, the fortress surrendered. The 
merit of appreciating the importance to England of possessing this 



710 The Stuarts 1704 

fortified rock, which guards the narrow straits which unite the Atlantic 
and the Mediterranean, is to be largely ascribed to John Methuen, then 
ambassador at Lisbon, and his son Paul ; and the correctness of his 
opinion has been amply recognised by his successors. The same states- 
man also united England and Portugal in a long-enduring alliance by 
the negotiation of the Methuen Treaty, in 1703, by which it was 
agTeed that Portugal should give a free market to English wools, and 
that, in return, England should admit Portuguese wine at a duty one- 
third less i^than that levied on the wines of France, Up to this date 
French burgundy, French claret, and Spanish sack or sherry had been 
the chief wines drunk in England. Their place now began to be taken 
by port. 

In 1705 Marlborough wished to advance into France itself by the line 
of the Moselle — along the same route as was employed by the Germans 
in 1870 — but partly because he was ill-supported, and partly 
in the because Marshal Villars had occupied a position too strong 

to be forced, he desisted from his design, and turned aside 
to attack the line of earthworks with which, after the fall of Liege, the 
French had guarded their right flank from Antwerp to Namur. These 
were forced, and nothing but the impracticability of the Dutch generals 
prevented Marlborough from attacking the French at Waterloo, and 
gaining, as he said, ' a greater victory than that of Blenheim.' The 
opportunity, however, was lost ; but in 1706 Marlborough found himself 
more independent, and utilised his freedom to gain the great victory of 
Ramillies. 

In this battle the French army, consisting of 60,000 men under the 
command of Villeroy and the elector of Bavaria, was drawn up in the 

Battle of shape of a crescent, with the hollow side towards the allies. 

Ramilhes. ipj^gij. \[j^q occupied a ridge of comparatively high ground, 
and stretched from near Autre Eglise, on the river Glieet, to near Tavieres, 
on the Mehaigne. The key of the whole position was a tumulus called the 
Mound of Ottomond, situated on their right centre, and near it their line 
was cut by a Roman road. Except along the line of this road their 
position was covered by the marshy ground, through which ran the two 
sluggish rivers. The allied forces numbered 62,000 men, and were 
drawn up opposite to the French and at the farther side of the marshes. 
Marlborough, however, recognising that if he could not get across the 
marshes neither could the French, first attracted the attention of the 
French generals to their extreme left, and then concealing his movements 
behind some undulating country, concentrated the mass of his forces for 
an attack along the firm ground by the Roman road. Having the 



1706 



Anne 



711 



shorter distance to march, he was thus superior at the point of attack, 
and succeeded in taking from the French the Mound of Ottomond, from 
which his cannon could sweep the whole of the French lines. This 
clever move won the day ; and the French fled from the field in disastrous 
rout, losing all their baggage and most of their artillery, and in killed, 
wounded, and prisoners, no less than 15,000 men. 




BATTLE OF RAMILLIES, MAY 1706 



The position of KamiUies, near the south-eastern corner of the Nether- 
lands, made the victory of immense political importance, for Marl- 
borough was now in a position to take in the rear all the Resuitsjs^f 
French troops who were farther than he was from the 
French frontier, and they were obliged either to evacuate or surrender 
Brussels, Ostend, Antwerp, and Ghent, and confine themselves to 
defending the frontier towns, of which the chief were Lille, Tournay, 
Mons, Charleroi, and Namur. 'We have done in four days,' wrote 
Marlborough, 'what we should have thought ourselves happy it we 
could have been sure of in four years,' and ' so many towns have sub- 



712 The Stuarts 1706 

mitted since the battle that it really looks more like a dream than the 
truth.' 

In other quarters, too, the year 1706 was a fortunate one for the allies. 
Prince Eugene won a great victory at Turin, and in Spain Madrid 
Peterborough itself fell for a time into the hands of the allies. After the 
in Spain. capture of Gibraltar, the English troops in Spain were placed 
under the command of Charles Mordaunt, earl of Peterborough, who had 
been well described as ' the last of the knight-errants.' He was an erratic 
but able man, celebrated for the recklessness and rapidity of his move- 
ments, but possessing a real genius for war, and a temperament so ardent 
that he spared neither toil nor money in pushing on the dilatory 
Spaniards and the lazy Gennans who surrounded the Archduke Charles 
— 'the Vienna crew,' as he contemptuously called them. In 1705 Peter- 
borough captured the important seaport of Barcelona, the capital of 
Catalonia, the district most friendly to Charles ; and also made himself 
master of the province of Valencia ; and in 1706 Lord Gal way, advancing 
from Portugal by Ciudad Rodrigo and Salamanca (see map for year 1808), 
made himself master of Madrid. Meanwhile Barcelona was besieged by the 
French under Marshal Tesse, and was in imminent risk of capture, when 
Peterborough flew to its defence. Holding a commission from the queen 
to command when present in person both by land and sea, he put ofi" in 
an open boat, and for two nights sought the English fleet, which was off 
the coast under Admiral Leake (see p. 678). On the second night he fell 
in with it, and sailed with all speed to Barcelona. However, the French 
had been warned of his approach, and had already abandoned the siege. 
Their fleet was gone, and Peterborough's ' flattering hopes ' of a great 
naval victory were disappointed. The town, however, was saved. 

These great successes, which might be thought to have sufficiently 
' reduced the exorbitant power of France,' naturally raised the question 
Peace Ne- ^^ ^ peace. To this Louis would have been prepared to agree 
gotiations. Qj^ ^|-^g very favourable conditions of leaving Spain, the 
Netherlands, and the Indies in the possession of the archduke, granting 
the Dutch a barrier of garrison towns along the Netherlands frontier, 
recognising Queen Anne's title, and giving some commercial advantages 
to the English and Dutch, on condition that Philip should keep Naples, 
Sicily, and Milan with the title of king. These terms seemed very fair, 
and the Dutch would have accepted them ; but in Marlborough's opinion 
they were inadequate, and he persuaded the allies to reject them — a 
decision which it is not easy to defend. The war, therefore, entered 
upon a second stage ; but no fighting of gTeat importance occurred till 
1708. 



1707 Anne 71 3 

Meanwhile several important events had occurred at home. In 1702 
and 1703 the attention of the Tory majority in the Commons had been 
devoted less to the war than a struggle over ' Occasional Occasional 
Conformity.' By the Test and Corporation Acts no one Conformity, 
could be a member of a corporation, or hold a civil or military office 
under the crown, unless he had taken the sacrament according to the 
forms of the Church of England. Many Protestant Nonconformists had 
no objection to do this once and then attend their own chapels as usual. 
For example, the queen's husband, Prince George of Denmark, had 
taken the sacrament in order to qualify himself for the office of lord 
high admiral ; but usually attended the services held in a private 
Lutheran chapel ; and numbers of mayors, aldermen, and others did the 
same. This practice was called occasional conformity, and was strongly 
denounced by some churchmen, whose eagerness to keep office for them- 
selves blinded them to the fact that it was the Nonconformists and not 
the churchmen who were in danger of losing their reputation for con- 
sistency. Accordingly, under the guidance of Nottingham, Rochester, 
and Seymour, bills forbidding the practice were passed by the Com- 
mons in 1702, 1703, and 1704 ; but were each time thrown out in the 
House of Lords, where they received little support from the government, 
and were stoutly opposed by Bishop Burnet and the junto of Whig peers. 

Other matters tended to alienate the extreme Tories. Rochester had 
long been out of accord with his colleagues, and so marked was the 
opposition of other ministers to the general policy of the Ministerial 
government that even the patient Marlborough wrote ' we are Changes, 
bound not to wish for anybody's death ; but if Sir E. Seymour should die, 
I am convinced it would be no great loss to the queen or to the nation.' In 
1704 Rochester, Nottingham, Sir Charles Hedges and Seymour left office ; 
Harley became secretary of state, and St. John secretary at war. Robert 
Harley was the son of Sir Robert Harley, a Herefordshire ^^^^^ 
squire of Presbyterian principles who had fought against 
Charles i. At the Revolution the son had distinguished himself by 
raising a troop of horse for the Prince of Orange, and soon afterwards 
he had entered parliament. Harley 's leading principle was a dislike of 
party violence and party watchwords, as he said of himself, ' he had no 
inclination to any party ; he had no objection to any party ; he had no 
antipathy to any party.' He was a poor orator, but he had a genius 
for intrigue and management, and was chosen ' Speaker of the House ' in 
1700. Marlborough was his friend, and it was to his in- g^ j^j^^ 
fluence that he owed his place. Unlike Harley, Henry St. 
John was a young man of most brilliant gifts, a great speaker, a great 



714 The Stuarts 1707 

writer, a great administrator, but of little or no principle, who had 
attached himself to the Tory party chiefly because he saw that his 
talents fitted him to give voice to the discontent of the Tory squires, to 
whom, according to his own phrase, he ' was able to show game.' He 
was now quite ready to take office, and as secretary for war he found ample 
occupation for his talents. Harley and St. John, when they took office, 
were both in favour of the war ; but after the rejection of the peace pro- 
posals of 1706 the views of both underwent a change. During the redis- 
tribution of posts Marlborough also found a place at the admiralty for a 
young Whig squire, Robert Walpole, whose vote and influ- 
ence it was most desirable to secure. Ministerial changes, 
however, did not stop with the introduction of moderate Tories, and 
when the elections of 1705 proved extremely favourable to the Whigs, 
the junto were wishful that the ministry should include some thorough- 
going Whig member of their party. For this purpose they put forward 
the claims of Charles Spencer, earl of Sunderland, son 

Sunderland. i. 

of the old minister of James ii. He was now thirty 

years of age, son-in-law of Marlborough, very able, but of an awk- 
ward temper and violent disposition. However, in 1705 he was sent 
as ambassador extraordinary to Vienna, and in 1706 his accession to 
office as secretary of state marks the point at which the Whig in- 
fluence began to be predominant in what had at its beginning been so 
clearly a Tory administration. 

At home decidedly the greatest undertaking of Marlborough's ministry 
was the negotiation of a legislative union between England and Scot- 
land. Since the accession of James i. the two countries, 

Scottish 

Union except for a short time under Cromwell, had had separate 

propose . parliaments, and had in fact been independent of each other. 
This arrangement had not worked well, and both countries had some- 
thing to complain of. The chief grievances of the Scots were that by the 
terms of the English Navigation Acts they were not permitted to trade 
with the English colonies, and that they were exposed to the hazards of 
war in accordance with English policy. 

The ill-will of the Scots to England was much aggravated by the failure 
of the Darien Scheme. In 1693 the Scottish parliament had given its sanc- 
The Darien tion to the formation of a Scottish East India Company to 
Scheme. trade with Africa and the Indies. The leading spirit of this 
body was William Paterson, one of the originators of the Bank of England ; 
and he devised a far-reaching scheme for colonising the Isthmus of 
Darien, and there establishing a mart which should be the emporium of 
the New World much as Alexandria had been of the Old. The Scots took 



1707 Anne 71 5 

up the idea with avidity ; but their eagerness and the glowing reports 
which Paterson circulated of the prospects of the new company aroused 
the jealousy of the Dutch and also of the English East India Company, 
which saw that although the enterprise was nominally Scottish, many of 
the shares were in English hands, and naturally feared that its monopoly 
was in danger. However, with the £400,000 subscribed in Scotland, 
tlu*ee stout ships and two tenders were equipped, and set sail from Leith 
in July 1698, carrying twelve hundred able-bodied colonists besides 
women and children, and were followed by other ships in the course of 
the next year. The colonists landed on the Isthmus of Darien, and 
erected, near Panama, a fort named after St. Andrew ; but the enterprise 
proved a complete failure. Instead of setting about the cultivation of 
the soil, the colonists wasted their strength in a fruitless search for 
gold. The climate was so unhealthy that numbers perished from fever. 
The English colonies in America and the West Indies were hostile, and, 
according to the strict letter of the Navigation Laws, refused to supply 
them even with bread. These causes were in themselves sufficient to 
ruin the scheme ; but besides this the Spaniards claimed the soil on 
which the colonists had settled, and as they saw that the colony could 
only have been formed to trade, contrary to Spanish law, with the 
Spanish colonies, were naturally hostile. Eventually in 1700 they 
blockaded the settlement, and starved the Scots into surrender. By 
this time most of the colonists had perished miserably ; Paterson and 
others had returned home, and the survivors with difficulty made their 
way back to Scotland. Even under the most favourable conditions it is 
not easy to see how the plan could have succeeded, for Scotland had not 
at that time the commercial resources to create a flourishing trade ; but 
the failure in itself caused much misery, and, aggravated as it was by 
the open hostility of the English, produced the utmost bitterness between 
the two countries. The English felt that while things remained as they 
were, the union of the crowns might be dissolved at Anne's death by the 
refusal of the Scots to accept the successor named in the Act of Settle- 
ment. On the other hand, the Scots feared that if they consented to a 
legislative union between the two countries, the Presbyterian Church of 
Scotland might suffer, that the laws and customs of their country might 
be altered, and that they might have to raise additional taxes to pay off 
the English national debt. 

William saw clearly that the true remedy was to be found in tlie 
union of the two parliaments, and the opening of all opposition 
trade to both countries, and his dying suggestion was that °f the Scots, 
commissioners should meet to settle the terms of union. Conunissioners 



716 The Stuarts 1707 

accordingly were nominated by Anne ; but though they were agreed 
in general as to the desirability of a union, they, failed to agree about 
financial details, and their sittings were discontinued. At this the 
Scots were much chagrined. Accordingly, the Scottish parliament of 
1703 exhibited a most hostile spirit ; resolved that Presbyterianism was 
the only true Church of Christ in the kingdom ; passed a Bill of Security, 
by which it reserved to the Scottish parliament the right of refusing to 
acknowledge the successor to the throne named by England, 'unless 
there should be such forms of government settled as should fully secure 
the religion, freedom, and trade of the Scottish nation ' ; and at the same 
time transferred the nomination of Scottish ministers of state from the 
crown to the parliament. 

On this, Somers took the lead in passing a measure by which he 
designed to show the Scots what was the logical outcome of the separa- 
Somers' ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ crowns. By this it was enacted that, after 
Act. Christmas 1705, unless the succession to the crown of Scot- 

land should be decided by that time, every native of Scotland, not a 
settled inhabitant of England, or serving in her majesty's forces, should 
be taken and held for an alien ; and that, after the same date, no Scottish 
cattle, sheep, coals, or linen, should be brought into England. Orders 
were also given to repair the fortifications of Berwick, Carlisle, Newcastle, 
and Hull, and to exercise the militia of the four northern counties. The 
Scots now saw that England was in earnest, and again gave their consent 
to the nomination of commissioners, upon which the hostile clauses of 
the Act of 1704 were at once repealed. 

As before, the chief difficulties in the way of an agreement lay in the 
church, the law, and the taxes ; and on all these points England gave 
The Terms way. The Established Church of Scotland, and the Scottish 
of Union, ijj^^yg and judicial procedure were secured. To equalise the 
burdens of the two countries, England paid Scotland ^398,000, which 
was to be used to pay ofi" the Scottish national debt and to indemnify 
the shareholders of the Darien Company. The commercial advantages 
of England were thrown open to the Scots without reserve. The Scots 
were not to be liable to any of the terminable taxes which had already 
been voted by the English parliament ; and a sum of £20,000 was sent 
to Scotland to pay up to date the salaries of all the Scottish officials — a 
transaction which has sometimes been spoken of as bribery. On the 
other side, the Scots agreed that the title of the united kingdom should 
be Great Britain. There was to be no separate parliament for North 
Britain ; but forty-five members for Scottish counties and boroughs were 
to sit in the British House of Commons ; and sixteen peers, chosen at 



1707 Anne 



717 



each general election to represent the peers of Scotland, were to sit in the 
House of Lords. No new Scottish peers were to be created. 

When the commissioners had completed their deliberations, an Act 
embodying their views was submitted to the Scottish parliament, and 
was accepted by it with some slight modifications. In her ^^6 Uni n 
speech recommending the bill to the English parliament completed. 
Anne told the members ' that they had now an opportunity of putting 
the last hand to a happy union of the two kingdoms, which she hoped 
would be a lasting blessing to the whole island, a great addition to its 
wealth and power, and a firm security to the Protestant religion.' In 
this spirit the bill was considered ; and the whole of the Scottish 
amendments having been accepted without demur, the Act of Union 
received the royal consent ; and the united parliament of Great Britain 
met for the first time on October 23, 1707. 

It is certain that the Union was and remained for a long time exces- 
sively unpopular in Scotland ; in 1706 the articles of union were burnt 

by the mob ; a considerable number of the nobility and 

t . T \ • . . 1 • • 1 , , Question of 

all the Jacobites Avere agamst it ; and it is probable its Popu- 

that, during the early years of its existence, the feeling ^^^ ^' 
against it increased rather than diminished. This was largely due to the 
injudicious introduction of English officials into Scotland, to the churlish 
spirit exhibited to the Scottish members in London, and to the passing 
in 1712 of the Veto Act, by which, in opposition to the wishes of the 
Scots, private patronage was restored in the Scottish Church. Happily 
the British government soon recognised the folly of such conduct ; and 
after Walpole came into power, he was careful to set a precedent of 
administering Scottish aff'airs through Scotsmen, and of paying careful 
regard to the feelings and prejudices of the North Britons. In conse- 
quence, the principle of a legislative union received fair play ; and in 
time its solid advantages secured it, if not the love, at any rate the 
appreciation of the Scottish people. This was due to the fact that both 
nations gained largely by the arrangement. England was relieved from a 
great danger ; and while Scottish susceptibilities on matters of religion 
and law were fully considered, the advantage which she gained by being 
allowed free trade with England and with the English colonies was 
weU worth a small sacrifice of sentiment. The Union, indeed, made 
the fortune of Scotland ; but it is remarkable how much her chance of 
profiting by it had been secured by the provisions of a single act of her 
national parliament. This was a law, made in 1697, by which it was 
enacted that in every parish in Scotland a school should be established, 
and a schoolmaster maintained. It is to the system of national education 



718 The Stuarts 1707 

thus inaugurated that Scotland owes her long enjoyment of the 
reputation of having the best-educated peasantry in Europe ; and, as a 
natural consequence, in every walk of life where education is needed 
Scotsmen have, all over the world, taken a position quite out of 
proportion to their numbers. To this, also, is largely due the immense 
rapidity with which Scotland was able to profit by the new openings 
offered to her by the Union ; and the rapid growth of Glasgow and of 
the manufacturing industries of the Lowlands soon gave the most 
satisfo-ctory evidence of increasing commercial prosperity. Hardly 
of less importance than this was the change of English sentiment 
towards Scotsmen, and particularly towards the Highlanders, who, 
within a hundred years from the time when they had been regarded 
as a curse to the country, came to be looked on as one of the most 
popular sections of the community. In our own time, too, the popu- 
larity of Highland scenery, which yearly attracts thousands of English 
visitors, and the settlement of the court at Balmoral, have carried this still 
further ; and the union of two races who, having met each other without 
loss of honour on many a hard-fought field, have decided to throw the 
glories of each into a common stock, and to consign to a well-merited 
oblivion everything that might imperil the existing goodwill, has become 
indissoluble. 

The year after the Union, the discontent of the Scots encouraged 
Louis to attempt to stir up a Jacobite rebellion in Scotland, The plan 
-Pl^g was weU laid, and intrusted to Forbin, the best of the 

Pretender. French sailors. He was to take the Pretender on board at 
Dunkirk, and land him, with 4000 men, on the shore of the Firth of 
Forth, when it was hoped that the English garrison of 1700 men would 
be easily beaten, and that the country would rise eagerly in the 
Pretender's favour. However, the exj)edition was kept waiting a week 
while the young prince was laid up with the measles ; and before it 
sailed the government had been warned. Accordingly, Byng, with sixteen 
ships, was close on the heels of Forbin's five. Against such overwhelming 
odds Forbin could do nothing ; and when Byng overtook him off the 
Firth of Forth, he was glad to escape with the loss of only one ship, and 
to bring the Pretender safely home again. 

The year 1707 was distinguished by a series of remarkable and un- 
expected French successes in Flanders, Germany, and above all in Spain ; 
but in 1708 Marlborough and Eugene eff'ected a junction in Flanders, 
Battle of '^^^ ^^^6 war was resumed with vigour. In the early spring, 
Oudenarde. ^]^g French, aided by some of the inhabitants, again secured 
Ghent and Bruges ; and in order to secure their communication with 



1707 Anne 719 

these towns, laid siege to the fortress of Oudenarde. Eugene's troops 
had not yet come up, but, hurrying forward in person, he joined Marl- 
borough, and the two advanced to save the town. The French were 
commanded by the duke of Vendome and by Louis' grandson, the duke 
of Burgundy. Vendome was a soldier of great ability, but of such 
brutal manners as disgusted the young prince. Consequently their 
counsels were divided ; while Marlborough and Eugene displayed here, 
as everywhere, the most perfect harmony. The decisive l)attle was 
fought near Oudenarde itself. The armies were on the march, and there 
was no regular position or formation on either side ; but whilst Eugene 
and Marlborough directed all their efforts to the common advantage, the 
orders of Vendome were twice countermanded by his young and 
inexperienced colleague. In these circumstances the allies gained a 
decisive victory. Marlborough would have preferred to follow up their 
success by an immediate invasion of France, but even Eugene thought 
this plan too bold until Lille had fallen ; and accordingly the allied 
forces formed the siege of that town, Eugene undertaking the siege of 
siege itself, and Marlborough covering his operations. The Liiie. 
defence was intrusted to Marshal Boufflers, formerly governor of Naniur ; 
and the siege attracted the attention of all Eurojie. On the allied side 
Marlborough, of course, stood on the defensive ; and the chief incident 
was the skirmish of Wynendale, where Generals Webb and Cadogan, 
two of Marlborough's best officers, recalling the exploit of Sir John 
Fastolf (see page 326), successfully defended a convoy of provisions 
against much superior numbers. The siege lasted from August 22 till 
December 9, when Boufflers, after doing all that man could do, sur- 
rendered the citadel. Bruges and Ghent were recovered immediately 
afterwards. 

In 1709 Louis put the command of his troops into the hands of 
Villars, the marshal who had successfully defended the Moselle in 1705 ; 
and though his forces were inferior, his dispositions were Battle of 
so judicious that even Marlborough and Eugene did Malpiaquet. 
not venture upon an attack. Accordingly, on July 7, they formed the 
siege of Tournay ; and on September 3 the citadel capitulated, after a 
defence which seemed feeble by the side of that of the heroic Boufflers 
the year before. Mons was next invested. To save it, Villars and 
Boufflers advanced with 90,000 men, and fortified themselves in a strong 
position near Malplaquet, between the woods of Laniere and Taisnieres, 
which they defended by entrenchments and by breastworks of felled 
timber. There, on September 11, they were attacked by Marlborough 
and Eugene with an army of equal strength. Never before had such an 



720 The Stuarts 1709 

obstinate struggle been 'seen in this war. Marlborough and Eugene 
each fought in the very front rank. Eugene was struck on the head by 
a musket ball ; Villars was disabled by a wound in the knee. In the 
allied army, the Highlanders of Athol, fighting under Lord Tullibardine, 
specially distinguished themselves ; among the French were consf)icuous 
the exiles of the Irish brigade. On both sides, but especially among the 
assailants, the slaughter was frightful ; but eventually the French centre 
was pierced, and Boufflers was forced to lead his men, still fighting and 
still unbroken, from the bloody field. The French lost 12,000 men, the 
allies not less than 20,000. It was a terrible sacrifice of life, but it 
served the purpose of securing an uninterrupted siege of Mons, and on 
October 20 the garrison capitulated. Lille, Tournay, and Mons were 
thus in the hands of the allies, and the road into France was fully open. 
Meanwhile in Spain fortune had been very fickle. In 1707 Peter- 
borough had been recalled, and his place taken by General Stanhope. 
War in However, while Stanhope was detained at Barcelona the 
Spain. allied army in Castile was attacked by the French forces 

under the duke of Berwick, who had by this time risen to be one 
of the best officers in the French service, and was utterly routed at 
the battle of Almanza. This battle restored the central provinces to 
Philip, and henceforward the character of the war recalled the old 
rivalries of Arragon and Castile — Arragon with its chief towns, Barcelona 
and Valencia, being for Charles ; and Castile, with Madrid, for Philip. 
In 1708, however, an allied force under Staremberg and Stanhope took 
Sardinia ; and the same year Stanhope, by the capture of Port Mahon, 
Capture of secured for Great Britain the possession of the island of 
Minorca. Minorca, which has the best harbour in the Mediter- 
ranean, and was thought by him to be so important that ' it would give 
the law to the Mediterranean both in war and peace.' In Italy, on the 
whole, owing to the absence of Eugene, the French gained ground ; but 
there seemed little chance of decisive success, while the battle of Mal- 
plaquet had fully demonstrated that there was no diminution in the 
valour either of the French soldiers or of their commanders. 

Louis, however, was particularly desirous of bringing the war to a 

close. His armies had uniformly been defeated, his finances were in 

complete disorder ; and for some time he had been taking 

Negotia- advantage of every opportunity to negotiate with one or 

tions. other of the allies. He was now ready not only to renew in 

their fullest interpretation the off'ers he had made in 1706, but even went 

further, and offered to give up all pretensions to any of the Spanish 

dominions. The allies, however, were now desirous of pressing for more. 



1710 Anne 72i 

and met Louis' advances by the preposterous demand that Louis should 
not only give up the Spanish claims of his grandson, but actually take an 
active part in expelling him from Spain. To such a request no self- 
respecting king could possibly agree. Louis declared that 'if he must 
wage war, he would rather wage it against his enemies than his children.' 
Accordingly the war was suffered to dragon. Little good, however, came 
to the aUies from their obstinacy. Marlborough, indeed, invaded France 
and captured Douay in 1710, and Bouchain in 1711 ; but in Spain the 
allies suffered an overwhelming disaster. When the campaign opened, 
Stanhope seemed to be carrying all before hmi and won over the 
French the battles of Almenara and Saragossa ; but by a Battle of 
turn of fortune he was forced to capitulate at Brihuega by ^rihuega. 
Marshal Vendome, who had been despatched by Louis to retrieve the 
falling fortunes of his grandson. 

We must now return to affairs at home. The election of 1708, which 
took place at the moment of the scare caused by the attempt of the Pre- 
tender to land in Scotland, turned out well for the Whigs, and Ministerial 
further ministerial changes were made. For some time the ^"trigues. 
personal relations between the ministers had been anything but happy, and 
in 1708 Godolphin wrote, ' the life of a slave in the galleys is paradise as 
compared to mine.' Harley was at the bottom of the trouble ; and that 
born intriguer was making use of a bedchamber quarrel to push his own 
fortunes to the injury of his colleagues. During the course of the last reign 
the duchess of Marlborough had taken compassion on a family of penniless 
cousins, and had charitably provided for each of them at the expense of 
the state. One got a commission in the army, another a place in the 
customs, one daughter became honorary laundress to the little duke of 

Gloucester, and a second, Abigail, became a bedchamber ., t^h 

' 5 & ' Abigail Hill. 

woman to the Princess Anne, and held the same office 
when her mistress became queen. Abigail was a lady of sweet temper 
and pleasant manners. Presently she attracted the notice of the queen, 
who was gradually learning to resent the imperious behaviour of the duchess 
of Marlborough. Anne found pleasure in the society of the younger lady, 
took interest in her love affairs, and when she married Francis Masham, a 
gentleman-in-waiting, honoured the wedding with her presence. The 
rise of the new fiivourite was watched with the utmost disgust by the 
duchess ; but her efforts to thwart her fortune turned against herself, for 
the kind-hearted queen was shocked with her ' inveteracy against poor 
Masham,' and her obvious design to ' ruin her cousin.' 

The political importance of all this, however, lay in the fact that 
Abigail was also a cousin of Harley, and that he found means to use her 

2z 



722 The Stuarts 1710 

as his representative at court with a view to undermine the influence of 
Marlborough and Godolphin. To effect this he worked upon Anne's fears 
Hariey for the welfare of the church, which had all along inclined 
dismissed, j^gj. ^^ ^^iq Tories, of whom she was accustomed to speak 
as the ' Church Party ' ; and the first symptom the queen showed of 
returning independence was the appointment of several Tory bishops 
without consulting the leading ministers. At this Godolphin and 
Marlborough took alarm, and determined on the first opportunity to rid 
themselves of their intriguing colleague. Their chance came when a 
clerk in Harley'e office was detected in sending to the Pretender copies 
of Harley's state papers. Though Hariey was guilty of nothing but 
great carelessness, it was easy to throw doubts on his fidelity. The 
queen, however, stood firm, and Marlborough and Godolphin were com- 
pelled to resort to resignation in order to compel the queen to abandon 
him. Eventually, however, their tactics succeeded. In February 1708 
Hariey resigned, and was followed by Henry St. John and other Tories, 
whose places were filled by Whigs — St. John's place in particular 
being taken by Robert Walpole. The ministry had now become to all 
practical purposes a Whig ministry, but the Junto still pressed for more 
power. Their chief weapons of attack were found in the admiralty 
office, which was presided over by Prince George of Denmark and Marl- 
borough's brother, Admiral Churchill ; and by dexterously making use of 
these, and even threatening to bring forward the Prince's name, when he 
was lying on his deathbed, the queen was compelled to receive Somers 
as lord-president of the council, Wharton as lord-lieutenant of Ireland. 
On the death of Prince George, Edward Russell, Lord Orford, again 
became first lord of the admiralty. 

These changes occurred between 1708 and 1710, but though apparently 
triumphs for the Whig party, they were won at the expense of much 
Sacheverell's irritation, and ultimately paved the way for a great Tory 
Sermons. reaction. As in most other cases, it was a mistake of the 
government which fired the train. For some time a pulpit controversy 
had been going on between the High Churchmen, who pressed the 
doctrine of passive obedience to an extent which could barely be recon- 
ciled with the Revolution, and Low Churchmen, who extolled the Revolu- 
tion almost to the extent of removing all check upon rebellion. How- 
ever, on November 5, 1709, Dr. Sacheverell, a city clergyman of more 
pretensions than ability, preached before the corporation of London a 
sermon entitled 'The perils among false brethren both in Church and 
State.' In this and in a previous discourse preached at Derby Assizes in 
the preceding summer, he violently attacked the Revolution ; inveighed 



1710 Anne 723 

against ' the toleration of the Genevan discipline '. ; spoke of ' the wily 
Volpones in high places, whose atheistical double-dealing was propagating 
all sorts of heresies and schisms ' ; and declared that the church was at 
that very moment ' in great peril and adversity.' The sermon created a 
considerable sensation ; and Sacheverell's next step was to publish it 
along with his Derby discourse, in which the ministry had been spoken 
of as 'a band of associated malignants intent on persecuting the church 
and betraying the constitution.' The combination of audacity, ribaldry, 
and party politics of course made everybody read the sermons, and 
no less than 40,000 copies were sold. 

In these circumstances the ministers determined to strike a blow, not 
so much from personal anger at Sacheverell, but because it seemed a 
favourable opportunity to get an authoritative condemnation Sacheverell 
of the principles of the clerical party. For this reason, i"^peached. 
instead of an ordinary prosecution, Sacheverell was impeached by the 
Commons for high crimes and misdemeanours, and tried before the House 
of Lords in Westminster Hall. As time went on, however, it became 
clear that the ministers had made a great mistake. To the mind of the 
average Englishman the employment of the whole machinery of parlia- 
mentary judicature to punish a flighty and insignificant clergyman for the 
offence of preaching and publishing a foolish sermon appeared very like 
persecution ; and accordingly the mass of the nation, whether approving 
of Sacheverell's views or not, ranged themselves on the side of what 
seemed to be the victim of tyranny. At his trial the most respectable 
clergymen appeared by his side. Anne herself attended it, and her 
coach was surrounded by the mob, shouting — ' We hope your majesty is 
for High Church and Dr. Sacheverell.' In spite, however, of this 
display of feeling, it was impossible that the Lords should avoid con- 
demning the extreme views on non-resistance which Sacheverell had put 
forward, and accordingly he was found guilty ; but his punishment 
merely consisted of a prohibition to preach for three years, and an order 
that his sermon should be burnt by the common hangman along with 
the famous decree which the Oxford convocation had seen fit to publish 
on the day of Lord Kussell's execution. For some time, however, 
Sacheverell's popularity was immense. At every town which he passed 
on his way from London to a Welsh living to which he had been pre- 
sented, he was received by shouting crowds. Thousands flocked to hear 
him read j^rayers, and his services were in general request among Tory 
magnates for the christening of their babies. 

Of this reaction the queen took advantage to get rid of her Whig 
ministers. The trial ended on March 20, 1710, and in April 



724 The Stuarts 1711 

Shrewsbury, who, though formerly a Whig, had now joined the Tories and 
voted for Sacheverell's acquittal, was made lord-chamberlain. In June, 
Tory Sunderland was deprived of his secretaryship, and in Sep- 

Reaction. tember, Godolphin, who had stuck to his post in spite of 
the fall of Sunderland, was himself deprived of office ; and the fall or 
resignation of Somers, Orford, Wharton, Halifax, and Walpole quickly 
followed. Their places were taken by Tories. Harley became chancellor 
of the exchequer, and soon afterwards treasurer ; St. John, secretary of 
state ; Harcourt, Sacheverell's leading counsel, chancellor ; Ormond 
succeeded Wharton as lord-lieutenant ; and Admiral Sir John Leake 
took Orford's post as first lord of the admiralty. Marlborough alone 
retained his post as commander-in-chief. In September parliament was 
dissolved. At the general election the Tories, who rallied their forces to 
the cry of ' The Church in danger,' carried all before them ; and the 
Whigs, who had steadily gained at the elections of 1705 and 1708, found 
themselves in a hopeless minority. 

In 1711 an incident, trivial in itself, served further to strengthen 
the administration. A French refugee named Guiscard, thinking his 
The Duchess services ill requited by the new ministers, wrote to Paris 
borough '^^^ offered to betray what he knew. His letters were 

dismissed. intercepted ; and, being brought before the council for 
examination, he seized the opportunity to stab Harley in the breast with 
a small penknife. The wound was trifling, but the attack called out such 
an outburst of popular feeling that the ministers felt themselves strong 
enough to attack Marlborough. The duchess had already been dismissed, 
and her offices divided between the duchess of Somerset and Mrs. 
Masham. In the course of the year, therefore, a commission of public 
accounts was named to examine into the financial operations of the late 
administration, and among other irregularities it reported that no less 
Marlborough than £177,000 had passed into the hands of the duke of 
attacked. Marlborough, for which he was accountable to the state. 
The report was presented in December 1711, and the queen at once 
deprived Marlborough of all his posts, ' that the matter might have an 
impartial examination.' Every efi'ort was made to convict the duke of 
peculation ; but' he was able to show conclusively that the sums named 
had been paid to him, according to the evil practice of the time, as per- 
centages on the victualling of the army and the pay of the foreign trooj)S, 
and that such sums had always been paid to the commanders-in-chief of 
the alUed troops in Flanders. Unsatisfactory as it was that a commander 
•should make money in this way, tliis defence was complete, and the 
•charge fell to the OTound. In 1712 a somewhat similar accusation was 



1711 Anne 



725 



brought against Walpole, who was reported by the same commission to 
have been guilty of corruption in connection with the bestowal of a 
certain contract for forage. By a strictly party resolu- waipole 
tion of the House of Commons he was expelled from i^arlia- i^nprisoned. 
ment and sent to the Tower, where he remained till the dissolution of 
1713. As to the facts, however, he made an exceedingly strong defence ; 
and the whole affair must be regarded as an attempt of the Tories to rid 
themselves of an opponent whom Harley had already declared to be 
worth ' half the Whig party.' Its result was to add immensely to 
Walpole's popularity and influence. 

The first object of the new ministers was the conclusion of peace with 
France. In this they were opposed both by the Whigs and also by 
the Tory high churchman, Nottingham, whom Harley had pg^ce Poiic 
pointedly excluded from office. Piqued at the slioht, of the Tories. 
Nottingham agreed to make common cause with his old opponents ; but 
stipulated as the price of his alliance that no further opposition should be 
offered to the passing of a bill to forbid occasional conformity. To these 
terms the Whigs agreed ; and though they had successfully ojDposed the 
Occasional Conformity Bills of 1702, 1703, and 1704, they suffered a pre- 
cisely similar measure to pass in 1711. 

The alliance with Nottingham offered to the Whigs some hopes of a 
return to office, which were further strengthened by the accession to the 
coalition of the dukes of Somerset and Marlborough ; and creation of 
they had even gone so far as to plan an administration, in '^°'^y Peers, 
which Somers was to be the chief, and Walpole the leader of the House of 
Commons. At this crisis, Harley and St. John determined to baulk their 
opponents by creating a Tory majority in the House of Lords, and to do 
this they created twelve new peers. This high-handed act, which was 
virtually a coiip d'etat, was carried out in December, 1711 ; and when 
parliament met after the Christmas holidays, it was found that the allies 
had lost the majority on which they had relied. The indignation of the 
Whigs was intense, but nothing could be done. Even the new peers 
themselves seem not to have felt wholly comfortable in their new position, 
a feeling which was not lessened when the sarcastic Wharton inquired 
whether they meant to vote singly, or through their foreman, as though 
they had been a common jury. 

Having thus secured their position at home, the ministers pushed on 
their negotiations with all rapidity ; and Ormond, who succeeded Marl- 
borough as commander in Flanders, was forbidden to make Treaty of 
any hostile movement. Ostensibly, the terms of peace were Utrecht, 
considered by a congress at Utrecht ; in reality, they were negotiated 



726 The Stuarts 1711 

between Harley, St. John, and the Marquis de Torcy, through the agency 
of a French priest living in London, the Abbe Gaultier ; and eventually 
Bolingbroke, accompanied by Matthew Prior, went over in person to 
Versailles. The chief obstacle arose from the difficulty of making a satis- 
factory formula for the renunciation of the crown of France by Philip, 
who, by the rapid deaths of two successive dauphins, in 1711 and 1712, 
stood next in succession to the French crown after Louis' great-grandson, 
afterwards Louis xv., then a delicate child of two years old. Eventually, 
however, Philip gave the required promise, and the treaty was then fully 
concluded at Utrecht, and signed on March 31, 1713. 

The peace was a compromise, made possible by several unforeseen events, 
especially the death in 1711 of the childless Emperor Joseph, and the elec- 

Terms of ^^^^ ^^ hisjplace of Archduke Charles ; so that his elevation to 

Peace. ^j^g crown of Spain would have simply restored the dangerous 
superiority of Charles v. Accordingly, it was agreed that Philip of 
France should be king of Spain ; but the fullest guarantees were given 
that the crowns of Spain and France should never be united. With 
Spain went the Indies, and other colonial possessions of Spain. On the 
other hand, the new Emperor kept the Spanish Netherlands, henceforward 
to be known as the Austrian Netherlands ; and the Barrier Treaty of 
1709, by which it had been arranged that the Dutch were to retain the 
right to garrison the chief frontier towns as a barrier against France, was 
maintained in force. To Austria also went Milan, Naples, and Sardinia. 
Sicily was given to Savoy with the title of king, sometime afterwards 
was exchanged for Sardinia, and henceforward the head of the House of 
Savoy was styled King of Sardinia. In Europe, England kept Minorca 
and Gibraltar. She also received the valuable monopoly of the slave 
trade, known as the Assiento, and the right of sending one ship a year 
to trade with the Spanish colonies. To England also were assigned 
Acadie (now called Nova Scotia), and the island of St. Christopher, 
often caUed St. Kitt's, in the West Indies. Her right to Newfoundland, 
subject to certain French fishing rights which still exist, and to the 
Hudson's Bay territory was also secured. Louis agreed to acknowledge 
the Protestant succession. 

The whole treaty was bitterly disliked by Austrians, who were indignant 
at the aggrandisement of the Duke of Savoy, and at the commercial 
disabilities which the English and Dutch imposed on her new Nether- 
landish subjects. At first she refused her consent, but her inability to 
Desertion of carry on the war by herself was demonstrated by the series 
our Allies. ^f defeats which followed the withdrawal of Ormond, and 
she was compelled, eventually, to consent to a general peace to which 



1713 Anm 



12\ 



also the Dutch also agreed. Such conduct towards the allies who had 
for so long fought by our side, especially the almost treacherous conduct 
by which Prince Eugene had been left in the lurch by Ormond, to say 
nothing of the neglect to secure terms for the Catalans, who had been firm 
supporters of Charles' cause in Spain, were disgraceful to the English minis- 
ters, and were commented on severely by the opposition. The Whics 
however, were powerless to stay the course of events, for even in the House 
of Lords the votes of the twelve new peers carried the day for the Tories. 

Having settled this important matter, the Tory leaders had time to 
consider the policy of the future. Anne's death could not be long 
delayed ; and though, as a party, the Tories had committed ^he Suc- 
themselves to the Act of Settlement and the succession of cession, 
the Electress Sophia, a considerable section of the supporters of the 
ministry were prepared to make a bold push in favour of the Pretender. 
Though subsequent events showed that the mass of the nation was true 
to the principle of the Hanoverian succession, there was so little enthusiasm 
that it was easy to mistake the feeling of the country, and the Jacobites 
appear to have thought that the prompt action of a determined ministry 
would turn the scale in favour of the Stuart claimant. Probably the 
event turned on the action of the Pretender himself. If he had consented 
to change his religion as his great-gTandfather, Henry iv., had done, his 
restoration would have been highly probable ; and the step was urged 
on him even by some of his Catholic adherents. Nevertheless, to the 
honour of his principles, he refused to be a party to such hypocrisy. 
In these circumstances, his chances were more than doubtful ; and 
so cautious were the actions of the ministers, that to this day it is 
difficult to say what their plans were, or even that there was any plan 
at all. At such a time, the contrast between the two leaders— 
Harley (now earl of Oxford), and St. John (now Viscount Boling- 
broke)— showed itself in clear colours. Oxford was all hesitation, and 
though it is certain that he entered into communication with the Pre- 
tender, he did his best at the same time to ingratiate himself with 
the electress. Bolingbroke, on the other hand, was all for energy 
and action, but it is doubtful whether he really designed more than 
to make himself and his party necessary to the expected Hanoverian 
sovereign. 

However, whatever was their ultimate intention, the ministry worked 
hard to secure the ascendency of the Tories. They intrusted the Cinque 
Ports to Ormond (who, though he had fought by the side of Tory Pre- 
William at Steenkerke and Landen, was now a decided Jaco- parations. 
bite), expecting that as warden he could either take measures to hinder 



728 The Stuarts 1713 

any attempt to land troops in aid of the electress, or make the way easy 

for a descent of the Pretender. Shrewsbury, on whom a similar though 

unfounded reliance was placed, was made lord-lieutenant of Ireland. 

The earl of Mar became secretary of state for Scotland. About the same 

time, Atterbury was made bishoj) of Eochester, and Swift was put off 

with the deanery of St. Patrick's. Meanwhile, the reduction of the 

army, which followed on the conclusion of peace, was used to get rid of 

those officers and regiments which were believed to be most strongly 

imbued with Whig principles. 

In face of these measures, however, the Hanoverian party was by no 

means idle. Stanhope, who had been released from captivity by the 

peace, was their chief agent in arranging the military 
Precautions ^ ' ,■-,.... ^ -, 

of the measures which might, in the last resort, become necessary ; 

'^^' while the duke of Marlborough, who, since his dismissal, 

had resided abroad, established himself at Brussels ready to return to 
England at a moment's warning. As soon as parliament met, in February, 
1714, every effort was made by the Whigs to compel the ministers to 
commit themselves on the question of the Protestant succession ; and in 
order to secure the presence in England of an actual member of the House 
of Hanover, Schutz, the minister of the elector in London, made an 
application for the summons to sit in the House of Lords, which the 
electoral prince, afterwards George 11., was entitled to demand as duke of 
Cambridge. This move, however, had tragic consequences ; for Queen 
Anne, bitterly resenting such an attempt to bring her a prospective heir 
to England, wrote in such a bitter strain to the electress, that the morti- 
fication of reading it was shortly followed by an apoplectic fit, from which 
the aged electress — she was then eighty -three — never recovered. She 
was a kindly personage, whose one ambition was to die queen of 
England. Her place in the line of succession was taken by her son 
George ; and the idea of the electoral prince visiting England was 
dropped. 

These events, and the excitement caused by the repeated illnesses of 
the queen, which indicated that her death could not be long delayed, 
roused party feeling to fever heat. On the one hand, the 
of the Tories in the Commons expelled from the house Richard 

Country. Steele, who had offended the party by the publication of a 

pamphlet named The Orms, in which he discussed the succession question ; 
while the Whig peers, unable to strike in person at Swift, who was well 
known to be the author of a violent publication entitled The Public 
Spirit of the Whigs, compelled the government to prosecute the printer. 
At length parties joined issue over the celebrated Schism Act, a measure 



1714 Anne 729 

designed by Bolingbroke to crush the dissenters, and to win for ever 
the favour of the High Tory party. This Act enjoined that no one, either 
in Engknd or Ireland, should keep either a public or private 
school unless he were a member of the Church of Eng- schism 
land, and licensed by the bishop of the diocese, and that ^^^' 
no one be licensed unless he had received the communion accordino- to 
the forms of the Church of England within the year, and subscribed 
the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. The second reading of this 
Act passed the House of Commons by 237 against 126; "and the 
third reading in the Lords by 77 against 72 ; but a strong protest was 
entered against it in the journals of the upper house, which was sioned 
not only by all the most noted of the Whig peers, but also by several 
bishops. 

Its passing was, however, fatal to the concord of the ministry. By 
birth and education Oxford was a Nonconformist, and had no sympathy 
with such a measure ; and the eagerness with which it was Oxford's 
pressed forward by Bolingbroke brought to a head the lono-- Dismissal, 
suppressed antipathy between the lord-treasurer and the secretary. In 
vain Swift, who^ was keen-sighted enough to see that discord meant ruin, 
strove to reconcile them. Lady Masham, to whom Oxford had owed his 
rise, went over to his rival ; and bedchamber intrigue, to which Oxford 
had so long trusted, proved in the end his destruction. On July 27, 
after a heated altercation carried on at a council meeting, presided 
over by the queen in person, Oxford was dismissed, and for a 
moment Bolingbroke and the Jacobites seemed to have the game in their 
hands. 

At this moment, however, the whole aspect of aflairs was changed by 
the sudden illness of the queen, who was seized with an aj)oplectic fit on 
the morning of July 30. The crisis, therefore, came before niness of 
Bolingbroke and his friends were prepared with their plans, ^^^ Queen, 
and while they hesitated the Whigs acted with decision and vigour. 
Marlborough was still abroad, but Shrewsbury (who at the _ . . 

>= ' '' ^ Decisive 

eleventh hour declared for the principles he had supported action of 

the Whigs 

in 1688), Somerset, the lord-chamberlain, who had long held 
himself aloof from the party, and Argyll, made their way to the council- 
chamber and insisted that the post of lord-treasurer, which was then 
vacant, should be given to Shrewsbury. To this, in a lucid interval, Anne 
agreed, and almost immediately sank back into lethargy. Two days 
later, on August 1, she died. Atterbury implored Bolingbroke to pro- 
claim the Pretender at Charing Cross, and even offered to head the 
procession in his lawn sleeves. The impetuous prelate found no sup- 



'30 



The Stuarts 



1714 



porters. The collapse of the Tories was for the time complete, and the 
Whig lords, with Shrewsbury at their head, carried into effect without 
opposition the arrangements which had been prepared to secure the 
succession of the Protestant heir. Even Bolingbroke confessed that 
fate had been too much for him. 



CHIEF DATES. 











A.D. 


Battle of Blenheim, 1704 


Battle of Ramillies, 








1706 


Scottish Union, . 








1707 


Battle of Oudenarde, . 








1708 


Battle of Malplaquet, . 








1709 


Impeachment of Saeheverell, 








1709-10 


South Sea Company formed, 








1710 


Treaty of Utrecht, 








1713 


Schism Act passed, . 








1714 



Book VIII 



THE HOUSE OF HANOVER 



XIX.— THE KINGS OF FEANCE SINCE 1609. 



Louis XIII., 
1609-1643. 



Louis XIV., 
1643-1715. 

Louis (dauphin), 
d. 1711. 



Louis, 

Duke of Burgundy, 

d. 1712. 

I 

I 

Louis XV., 
1715-1774. 

I 

Louis (dauphin), 

d. 1765. 



Philip, King of Spain, 
d. 1746. 



Ferdinand Charles, 

of Spain. King of Naples. 



Louis XVL, 
1774-1793. 

I 
Louis XVII., 

never reigned, 
d. 1795. 



Louis XVIII. 
1815-1824. 



Charlpjs X., 

1824-1830, 

abdicated. 

Grandfather 

of the Count 

de Chambord, 

who died 

without children, 

1884. 



Philip, 

Duke of Orleans, 

d. 1710. 

I 
Philip (Regent), 
d. 1723. 
Great-great-grand- 
father of 



Louis Philippe, 

1830-1848. 

I 



Duke of Duke 
Orleans, d'Aumale. 
d. 1842. 

I 
Count de 

Paris, 
d. 1894. 

I 

Philip, 

Duke of Orleans. 



XX.— THE HOUSE OF STUAKT. 



James II., 
1685-1688, d. 1701. 

I 



James iii. 

(the Old Pretender), 

d. 1765. 



Louisa Maria Theresa, 
b. 1692, d. 1712. 



I 

Charles Edward 

(the Young Pretender), 

d. 1788. 

732 



Henry, Cardinal, of York, 
d. 1807. 



XXL— THE HOUSE OF HANOVER 



George I., 

1714-1727. 

I 

I ^1 

George II., Sophia = Frederick William, 



1727-1760. 



King of Prussia. 



Frederick the Great. 



Frederick, 

Prince of Wales, 

d. 1751. 



Augusta 
of Saxe-Gotha. 



William, 

Duke of Cumberland, 

d. 1765. 



George III., = Sophia Charlotte 
1760-1820. of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. 



I I 

George IV,, = Caroline Frederick, 

1820-1830. of Duke of 

I Brunswick. York, 

Princess d. 1827. 
Charlotte, 
d. 1817. 



William IV. 
1830-1837. 



Edward, 
Duke of 

Kent, 
d. 1820. 



Victoria 
1837- 



Albert 

of Saxe-Coburg, 

d. 1861. 



Victoria = Frederick, Albert Edward, Alfred, Arthur, Leopold, 



Princess 
Royal. 



German 
Emperor, 



Prince of Wales, Duke of Duke of Duke of 

I Edinburgh. Connaught, Albany, 

lid. 1884, 



William II. , Albert Victor 

German Edward, 

Emperor. d. 1892, 



George 
duke of 
York, 



Princess May 
of Teck. 



George Patrick Andrew David. 



733 



CHAPTEK I 

GEOKGE I. : 1714-1727 
Born 1660 ; married 1682, Sophia Dorothea of Brunswick. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 

France. Spain. Emperor. 

Louis XIV., d. 1715, Philip v., d. 1746. Charles vi., d. 1740. 
Lovus XV., d. 1774. 

The Whig Ministers — Jacobite Rebellion of 1715 — Foreign Policy — Stanhope and 
Sunderland — The South Sea Bubble — Walpole in Power — Wood's Halfpence. 

Contrary to all expectations, the proclamation of the new king passed 
off without disturbance. The sudden death of the queen seei^ to have 
Quiet paralysed the Jacobites, and it soon became clear that 

Accession, throughout the country the friends of the Hanoverian suc- 
cession had an overwhelming majority. So quiet, indeed, was every- 
thing that George made no hurry to appear among his new subjects, and 
did not land in England till September 18. Till his arrival the govern- 
ment was carried on by the seven great officers of state, and eighteen 
' Lords Justices,' to whom Addison acted as secretary. Among these 
were Shrewsbury, Somerset, Argyll, Nottingham, Cowper, Halifax, and 
Townshend ; but the names of Marlborough, Somers, and Sunderland 
were omitted. Marlborough's exclusion was j)robably due to the offence 
which George had taken at the great captain's reticence on military 
aflfairs ; that of the other two to a determination to keep at a distance 
the great party leaders ; but whatever were his motives, Marlborough 
received amjale compensation in the magnificent and spontaneous recejD- 
tion which was given him by his countrymen on his return from the 
continent, and neither Somers nor Sunderland suffered any abatement of 
influence. 

The new king had a few useful qualities ; but he was not likely to 

make a popular sovereign, for his merits made little show, while his 

Character failings were easily seen. In appearance he was a small, 

of George, ^eavy-looking man, of kindly disposition and faithful to 

his friends. His intellectual capacity was second-rate, but he was 

734 



1714 George I. 7.35 

diligent and business-like. As a soldier he had fought bravely at Landen 
and Steenkerke, and had for some time commanded an army on the Rhine 
but though he had certainly discussed the march to Blenheim with Marl- 
borough he had no pretensions to be a great commander ; and in civil 
matters, though he had made a good elector of a second-rate German 
state, and was beloved by the Hanoverians, he was not the man to shine 
on a larger field. Moreover, he was fifty-four years of age, of fixed 
habits, knew no English and little French ; naturally cared more for 
Hanover and the Hanoverians than for his new subjects ; and, though 
honest himself, was surrounded by courtiers, both men and women, 
whose one wish was to make as much as they could out of a new field 
for corruption and intrigue. But when this has been said, the worst 
has been told ; and George had one great merit, which, in the eyes of 
Englishmen, ought to outweigh all defects. He thoroughly trusted his 
ministers, and though he often wished to have his own way where the 
interests of Hanover were involved, he allowed them to do what they 
thought best in England. Such a king was exactly what England 
wanted ; for under George's unostentatious rule, the system of party 
government, which we have seen growing up during the last two reigns, 
took root, and became a recognised principle of the English constitution. 
At the commencement of each of the last two reigns, the experiment of 
a mixed ministry had been tried, but with such ill success that both 
William and Marlborough had been compelled to have recourse to a 
homogeneous administration. Warned by their experience, George at 
once gave his confidence to the Whigs, and, avoiding the great party 
leaders, chose for his ministers a set of younger men, of which Townshend, 
Stanhope, and Walpole were the chief, along with Sunderland and 
Nottingham. 

Lord Townshend, then aged thirty-eight, was the son of a Norfolk cava- 
lier, and had married Walpole's sister. He was a man of rough exterior, 
but of excellent heart— feared by strangers, but beloved by ^^^j^ghend. 
those who knew him best ; of upright character, energetic 
and assiduous in business ; no orator, but always listened to with 
attention because he spoke to the point. So far his chief claim to 
distinction had been the negotiation of the Barrier Treaty. He was now 
made secretary of state in succession to Bolingbroke. His colleague 
Stanhope, aged forty-one, was both a statesman and a soldier, dis- 
tinguished for bravery on many fields. He had taken a leading 
part in the impeachment of Sacheverell, but being cap- gtanhope. 
tured at Brihuega, and imprisoned till the peace, he had 
been absent from England at the fall of the Whig ministry. Since 



736 * The Hanoverians 1714 

his return he had been deep in the councils of the Whigs, and in 
Marlborough's absence had been their most trusted military adviser. 
As a soldier he was beloved by his men, to whom it is related that 
he always said, ' Come on,' and not ' Go on.' In civil life Steele speaks of 
'his plain dealing, generosity, and frankness, his natural and pleasing 
eloquence in assemblies, and his agreeable and winning behaviour in 
conversation.' Walpole (see p. 714) had distinguished liimself as secre- 
tary at war, and his prosecution in 1712 had raised hun to the front 
rank among the Whig leaders. 

Parliament sat for six months after Anne's death, and was then 
dissolved. At the general election the country reversed the verdict of 1710 
and 1713 by sending back a large majority of Whigs. In consequence, 
the government felt itself strong enough to attempt, according to 
the practice of the time, to set on foot a prosecution of the late ministers. 
As soon as Parliament reassembled, a committee, of which Walpole 
was the chairman, was appointed to enquire into the guilt of the late 
„ ministers. Its report, drawn by Walpole, advised the 

Prosecution r ^ ^ r i 

of the Tory impeachment of Oxford, Bolingbroke, and Ormond, on a 
general charge of having treacherously sacrificed British 
interests and British honour at the Treaty of Utrecht, and also of having 
intrigued to restore the Pretender. As soon as the decision was known, 
Bolingbroke escaped to the continent, Avhither he was eventually 
followed by Ormond, and Oxford alone remained to brave the storm. 
He was arrested, and sent to the Tower. The flight of Bolingbroke and 
Ormond was taken by parliament as equivalent to a confession of guilt, 
and they were at once attainted. With regard, however, to Oxford, the 
more his case was examined, the less likely did it appear that his 
conviction could be secured. His conduct in negotiating the Treaty of 
Utrecht had received the approval both of parliament and of the queen, 
while the evidence of his connection with the Pretender was to be found 
only at Versailles. Accordingly, a year later, the charge was reduced 
from treason to misdemeanour, and in 1718 the proceedings were allowed 
to drop, and the fallen minister was set at liberty. By the flight of 
Bolingbroke the Jacobites lost little, but that of Ormond was a great 
blow to their cause, as it had been hoped that he would put himself at 
the head of a western insurrection ; but his natural hesitation — and 
possibly his military instinct that such an insurrection, unless backed by 
French troops or Highlanders, would be of no avail — deterred him from 
the attempt. 

The elections had passed over quietly, but during the spring and 
sunmier Jacobite riots occurred in many places, particularly in the 



1715 George /. -j-^- 

midland counties. At Oxford the cry of the mob was, 'James iii 
and no pretender !' In Staffordshire the Tory rabble pulled down the 
meeting-houses of the obnoxious nonconformists, with shouts 
of ' Hiuh church and Ormond for ever ! ' Such occurrences ^'°*^' 
required prompt measures ; and in order to strengthen the hands of the 
local authorities. Parliament passed the Riot Act, which is The Riot 
still in force. This provides that, if twelve or more persons ^*^*- 
unlawfully and riotously assemble against the peace, and do not disperse 
within one hour after being ordered to do so in the king's name by a 
justice of the peace or other lawful authority, they shall be guilty of 
felony ; and if after such order any one is killed in resisting those 
who are charged to disperse them, no one shall be held guilty of his 
murder. 

The riots were only symptoms of the prevalence of a very dano-erous 
feeling. There is no doubt that Jacobitism was very widespread ; and 
short of Jacobitism, there was a strong suspicion of every- 
thing which savoured of Whiggism, a feeling which had * '^'"" 
been stimulated by the publication in 1708 of Lord Clarendon's History 
of the Great Rehellion. For years it was the text-book in which the 
history of the seventeenth century was studied in every parsonage and 
country house, and its strong partisan colouring cast a glamour over the 
royalist cause which was most favourable to the interests of the Stuarts. 
Jacobitism was strongest in the west, where Sir William Wyndham had 
great influence, and in Lancashire, where the number of Roman Catholic 
families was very considerable; In Scotland, too, dissatisfaction with 
the Union, joined with the usual antagonism of many of the Highland 
clans to constituted authority, and especially to any government which 
was favoured by the Campbells, gave the Jacobites hopes of organising a 
successful rebellion. The best hope of the Jacobites lay in a simultaneous 
rising in England and Scotland, supported by the presence of the Pre- 
tender, in person at all events and, if possible, backed by a body of foreign 
troops. Of this Bolingbroke was well aware, but even his skill could not 
overcome the difficulties in his path. First, the flight of Ormond 
deprived them of their only military leader ; then the dying condition of 
Louis XIV. paralysed the politics of the French court ; then the British 
government arrested Wyndham, who was the life and soul of the 
western Jacobites ; and, finally, the Pretender gave orders to the earl of 
Mar to begin an insurrection in Scotland, without waiting till England 
was ready to move. 

Accordingly, on August 1, Mar set out from London, and making his 
way by sea to Scotland, raised the Highland clans. In this he showed 

3 a 



738 The Hanoverians 1715 

much address, and by the end of September was at the head of a far larger 
force than any Montrose had ever commanded. To cope with him the 
Mar's government despatched Argyll to the north. He found hmi- 
Rising. ggjf^ however, far outnumbered, and had to content himself 
with encamping his scanty forces under the walls of Stirling. Fortu- 
nately for him, Mar showed at this crisis none of the qualities of a 
great commander, and instead of pushing on and overwhelming Argyll, 
Forster's ^^ allowed himself to be detained at Perth. Meanwhile, 
Rising. Thomas Forster, member of parliament for Northumberland, 
assisted by the earl of Derwentwater, had collected a body of cavalry on 
the border, and had been joined by another party of horse raised by Lord 
Kenmure in the neighbourhood of Dumfries. To aid them. Mar de- 
spatched brigadier-general Mackintosh with a corps of Highlanders to 
Kelso, whence the whole body crossed the border, and made their way 
into Lancashire. They reached Preston at the end of November, and 
occupied the town with a badly armed force of some three thousand men. 
There they were attacked by General Wills with a small but efficient 
force ; and Forster, who had been named commander — not for any 
military qualities, but solely because he was not a Roman Catholic — 
showed his incompetency by not even defending the bridge over the 
Ribble, and confined his exertions to barricading the main streets. There, 
Surrender however, his men fought well, and the first assault was 
at Preston, j-epulsed; but when General Carpenter joined Wills, Forster 
abandoned hope, and — much to the disgust of his officers and men — 
surrendered at discretion. 

On the very day of the surrender at Preston, Mar at length summoned 
courage to march against Argyll ; and as he had 10,000 men to Argyll's 
Battle of 3300, no difficulty was expected. Argyll, however, marched 
Sheriffmuir, q^^ ^o meet him, and drawing up his forces on the open 
ground of the Sheriffmuir, on the road to Dunblane, oflFered battle. The 
fight which followed was one of the most singular in history. Each 
commander fought on his own right, each carried all before him, and 
each, on hearing of the disaster to his left, returned to the field ; but 
Argyll's men were the fewer and apparently the more exhausted, and, 
above all, had to be drawn up at the foot of a slope, while the rebels 
were on its summit. At this moment a vigorous charge would have 
carried the day ; and Argyll was making the best dispositions for a 
desperate defence, when, for some unexplained reason. Mar gave the 
signal for retreat. It was then that one of the disgusted Highlanders 
gave voice to the well-known sentiment, ' Oh, for an hour of Dundee ! ' 
The battle of Sheriffnmir, though it was rather a defeat for Mar than 



1715 George I. 739 

a victory for Argyll, was decisive of the issue of the campaign, and 
Mar made no further effort to break the bridling line of the Forth. 
Even the arrival of the Pretender in person was unable to The Old 
restore the energy of the troops. On both sides the dis- Pretender, 
illusionment was complete. He expected to find a numerous, well- 
disciplined, and victorious army ; they a handsome, active, and energetic 
leader. He found a disheartened and ill-armed rabble ; they saw before 
them a tall, thin, pale young man, slow of speech, and without a smile. 
Nothing further was attempted. In January the rebels retreated 
from Perth, and on February 4 the Pretender and Mar abandoned their 
followers, and made the best of their way to France. Of the noblemen 
taken at Preston, Lords Derwent water and Kenmure alone were 
beheaded ; and the fact that this was done with the full approval of the 
kindly and lenient Walpole is strong evidence that a stern example was 
necessary. Forster and Mackintosh both escaped. 

The miserable failure of these insurrections, even making allowance 
for the incompetency of Mar and Forster, showed clearly that no rising 
was likely to be successful which was not aided by a foreign chances of 
force. Such an army might be supplied by France, Spain, ^"°^^^e" ^'d. 
or Sweden, and the foreign policy of George's ministers was chiefly 
directed to prevent such aid being given. Fortunately the death of 
Louis XIV., which occurred on September 1, 1715, completely changed the 
policy of the French court. His successor was his great-grandson, Louis 
XV., a little boy of five years old, in delicate health, who was under the 
regency of his cousin, the duke of Orleans, generally known as Philip the 
Regent. By blood the next heir to the throne was Louis' uncle, Philip 
of Spain, but his claim was barred by the Treaty of Utrecht, and Philip 
the Regent, as next in succession after him, was, therefore, desirous of 
maintaining the treaty (see pedigree, p. 732). In accordance with this 
view, and advised by the clever Abbe Dubois, the regent negotiated 
a treaty with England ; recognised the Hanoverian succession, and for 
some years this alliance between England and France was the dominat- 
ing fact in European politics. For the first time, therefore, since 1688, 
the government of France was really friendly to England. 

Spain was more dangerous. Philip himself was a feeble personage, 
wholly under the dominion of his wife, but his minister, Alberoni, was 
one of the most distinguished men of the day. By birth the ^j^g^^^. 
son of a gardener, he had raised himself to be the chief 
power in Spain. Alberoni had the good sense to perceive that the loss 
of her outlying possessions in Italy and the Netherlands had not really 
destroyed the power of Spain, and he had sufficient address to secure a 



740 The Hanoverians 1715 

period of peace, during which the finances, the army, and the navy 
could be placed on a sound footing. With returning prosperity the 
ambition of Alberoni expanded, and he now looked forward to restoring 
Spain to her place among the Great Powers, and regaining the pro- 
vinces she had lost by the treaty of Utrecht, His plans were viewed 
with suspicion, both at Paris and Vienna. In 1717, incensed by the 
arrest of a Spanish subject, Spain declared war against Austria. As a 
first step she attacked and conquered the island of Sardinia, and in 1718 
sent an expedition to Sicily. In consequence of the threatening attitude 
of Spain the triple alliance was extended to include Austria, under the 
title of the quadruple alliance, and Admiral Byng received orders to 
hinder any attack on Sicily. Accordingly, when he arrived 

Cape there he brought on an action with the Spanish fleet^olf 

Passaro. Q^pe Passaro, in which the British were victorious. This 
check to his plans roused the anger of Alberoni, and he at once 
retaliated by taking up the cause of the Pretender. 

His first scheme was to foment the anger of Charles xii., the eccentric 
soldier who then reigned in Sweden, and who had been exasperated 
vTT against Britain by the circumstance that George had recently 
purchased from Denmark the duchies of Bremen and 
Verden, l^etween the Lower Elbe and the Weser, which, till overrun by 
the Danes in 1710, had belonged to Sweden since the year 1648. 
Accordingly, Alberoni had little difficulty in inducing him to fall in with 
his suggestion of an invasion of Scotland. Such an event would have 
been most formidable, for Charles was no contemptible general, and his 
appearance in the Highlands at the head of a strong force would have 
been a signal for a rising to which Mar's rebellion would have been a 
trifle. Happily for England, the conquest of Norway was to be under- 
taken as a preliminary, and Charles' death before the fortress of Fredericks- 
hall in December of 1719 removed a very serious danger. 

Charles having failed him, Alberoni then invited the Pretender to 

Spain, and prepared a SiDanish expedition to England. It consisted of 

5000 soldiers, under the command of Ormond, with weapons 

Spanish ' . • i V, 

invasion of for 30,000 more, but it was shattered by a storm m the Bay 
of Biscay. Only two ships with 300 men reached Kintail in 
Ross-shire, and the small force they carried was utterly routed in 1719 
at the pass of Glenshiel. In Spain itself, and at sea, Alberoni suffered 
numerous disasters at the hands of the British and French, and at 
length his removal from office was made a condition of peace by the 
allied powers. The condition was accepted. Alberoni fell from power 
and left Spain for his native Italy, and a general peace was concluded 



1720 George I. 74 •[ 

in 1720, of which the most interesting item was the acceptance by the 
newly-crowned King of Sicily (see p. 726) of the island of Sardinia 
in lieu of Sicily ; and a general pacification followed, mainly due to the 
joint influence of the unusual alliance between England and France. The 
chief credit for the defeat of Alberoni must be ascribed to Stanhope. 

At home the chief measure of the government had been the passing of 
the Septennial Act. For some time the policy of the Triennial Act had 
been called in question, and it had been bitterly declared 
that under it parliament spent its first year in trying Septennial 
election petitions ; its second in discussing measures ; and ^^' 
its third in awaiting dissolution. However, in 1716, it was found that 
unless some change were made a general election would have to take 
place in 1717. Considering the agitated state of the country, ministers 
refused to run the risk, and proposed to extend the life of the existing 
and future parliaments to seven years. The bill passed both Houses by 
large majorities, and appears to have excited little opposition outside the 
House. Its importance was very great. It strengthened the House of 
Commons against the House of Lords, partly by adding to its perman- 
ence, partly by relieving individual members of their dependence on 
individual peers who then nominated a large number of the members of 
the Lower House ; and it is noteworthy that from the date of its passing 
more pains were taken by ministers to keep some of their best men in the 
Lower House. It also made the policy of the House less fluctuating, 
and aided the Whigs to consolidate their power between one general 
election and the next. The aged Somers praised it on the ground that 
' it would be the greatest support to the liberties of the country ' ; 
Carteret, as ' increasing the credit of England abroad by adding to the 
stability of ministers.' Its chief effects at present are to give greater 
security against violent changes of policy ; to insure that the policy of 
any set of ministers has a fair trial ; and to secure time for the subsidence 
of the party passions which are kindled by a general election. It also gives 
greater independence to the members than they would have if elections 
were more frequent, and saves the country much expense. 

In 1717 the Whig triumvirate broke up. Like all parties with a large 
majority the Whigs were peculiarly liable to internal quarrels, and at this 
date the loyalty of members of the same cabinet to one cabinet of 

'' '' 1 xi T^ Marvels. 

another was not so strong as it has subsequently become. ^ 
Very early, therefore, there were symptoms of strained relations between 
ministers, and Lord Sunderland, who was exasperated at being relegated 
to the unimportant position of lord-lieutenant of Ireland, did what he 
could to foment them. The difficulties arose not so much from any one 



742 The Hanoverians 1717 

cause as from a series of petty piques and misunderstandings — for on 
general politics the ministers were agreed ; but among other things 
the King was annoyed by Townshend being friendly with the Prince of 
Wales, whose comparative popularity made him odious to his father. 
Moreover, the fact that Stanhope and Sunderland were at Hanover 
while Townshend was in London, and that all dealings between them 
were by letters exchanged at long intervals was most unfavourable to 
harmony. Accordingly, George dismissed Townshend from his post of 
secretary of state, but endeavoured to appease his anger by making him 
lord-lieutenant of Ireland. Townshend for a time submitted, but the 
relations of the ministers were little improved, and in 1717 George 
suddenly dismissed Townshend from the lord-lieutenancy. Walpole, 
contrary to George's strongly exjDressed wishes, immediately resigned, 
and with him William Pulteney, who was an excellent speaker and a 
close ally of Walpole. Their retirement was followed by a reconstruc- 
tion of the government. Stanhope became first lord of the treasury 
and chancellor of the exchequer. Sunderland reaped his reward by 
being made secretary of state, with Addison as his colleague. A little 
later Stanhope was raised to the peerage, and gave up his post as chan- 
cellor of the exchequer to Aislabie. In 1718 Sunderland became first 
Lord of the Treasury, and Stanhope took the post of Secretary of State. 

Stanhope was an able and broad-minded minister. Sunderland, with 
great ability and industry, was of an exclusive and oligarchical turn of 

mind. The influence of the one is seen in the repeal of the 
Stanhope . 

and Acts against Schism and Occasional Conformity ; of the 

other in the abortive Peerage Bill. Both Stanhope and 
Sunderland were firm believers in toleration, and with Sunderland's full 
concurrence Stanhope introduced a bill, ingeniously entitled, ' An Act 
for Strengthening the Protestant Interest,' by which it was proposed to 
repeal the Schism Act, and the Act against Occasional Conformity, and 
those portions of the Test and Corporation Act which applied to Pro- 
testant Dissenters. It was soon apparent how little hold the theory of 
toleration had secured over the minds of Englishmen. All the bishops 
but four opposed the measure ; many peers, among others the Whig 
Devonshire and the Tory Nottingham supported them ; and eventually 
the second reading was only carried by 86 to 68. Warned by this. 
Stanhope dropped the proposal to touch the Test and CorjDoration Acts ; 
but even with this modification, the second reading in the Commons was 
only passed by 243 to 202 ; and to his great disgrace Walpole, Avho had 
formerly described the Schism Act as more worthy of Julian the 
Apostate than of a Protestant parliament, spoke and voted in the minority. 






1720 George I. 743 

The fate of this measure showed clearly that Sunderland had been right in 
declaring that any ' attack on the Test Act would ruin all,' and Stanhope, 
who would gladly have done away with all the disabilities, both of the 
Protestant Dissenters and of the Roman Catholics, felt that he could go 
no further without rousing the hostility of the Anglican Church, which 
had already proved fatal to Godolphin and Marlborough. 

Sunderland's scheme was even less successful. Its nominal design was to 
secure the House of Lords from any repetition of the coiqj d'etat of Queen 
Anne, by restricting the number of peers ; but in reality, ^he Peerage 
it was designed to serve Sunderland's oligarchical views by ^^''i- 
increasing the relative importance of the nobility, and by putting the House 
of Lords in a position to set at defiance the wishes, either of the House 
of Commons or the crown. He hoped to make it palatable to the Commons 
by indirectly preventing the Hanoverian kings from conferring peerages 
upon foreigners. The bill provided that only six more peerages, beyond 
the then number of one hundred and seventy-eight, might be created. 
Extinct peerages were, however, to be filled up, and, to insure frequent 
vacancies, the new peerages were to be confined to heirs male. The six- 
teen elective Scottish peers were to be replaced by twenty-five hereditary 
peers from that country. The bill passed the Lords readily enough, and 
would j)robably have passed the Commons too, had it not been for the 
determined opposition of Walpole, who saw more clearly than any other 
man of his time the importance of securing, at all hazards, the predomin- 
ance of the Lower House. His speech was a masterpiece, appealing both 
to the political instincts of the members, and to their fomily and social 
prejudices and ambitions. The bill, he declared, would take away a 
great inducement to virtue, ' for there would be no way of arriving at 
honour but through the winding sheet of an old decrepit lord or the grave 
of an extinct noble family.' ' It was obvious,' he said, ' that whatever 
the lords gained, must be acquired at the loss of the Commons and the 
royal prerogative ' ; and finally he asked his fellow-commons how the 
lords could expect them to consent to a bill to prevent themselves and 
their descendants from being made peers. With these homely arguments 
he 'bore down everything before him,' and the bill was rejected by 209 
to 177. Had it passed, the rule of the Whig oligarchy, who were then 
in power, would have been made perpetual, and nothing short of a revolu- 
tion could have broken down the opposition of the House of Lords when 
it chanced to disagree with the Commons. 

The same year that saw the rejection of the peerage bill witnessed the rise 
of the South Sea scheme. The South Sea Company had been founded by 
the Tory ministry in 1711. In principle, the new company was created 



744 The Hanoverians 1717 

on the same lines as had been followed by Montagu in the formation of 
the Bank of England. The holders of bonds or floating debt, to the value 
Th s th ^^ £19,000,000, were formed into a company, which was to re- 
Sea Com- ceive from the government an interest of six per cent, guaran- 
teed on certain customs duties, the sum of £8000 a year 
for management and the exclusive right of trading in the Pacific Ocean and 
along the east coast of South America from the Orinoco to Cape Horn. 
The new company was regarded as a Tory institution, and at the treaty 
of Utrecht sjDccial care was taken of its interests. For its benefit, the 
monopoly of the African slave trade or assiento had been secured for 
England, and also the right to send one ship a year to trade with the 
Spanish colonies. The company, therefore, flourished, and in 1717 the 
value of its shares was considerably above par. 

In the early days of George i., the increase in the national debt, and 
especially the heavy burden of the terminable annuities, were creating 
much apprehension. As the stability of government increased, its credit 
improved, and the rate of interest steadily declined. In 1717, govern- 
ment took advantage of this to reduce the interest on the debt payable 
both to the South Sea Company and to the Bank of England from 6 to 
5 per cent., and the two companies advanced 4| millions at 5 per cent, to 
enable the government to pay oft' those of its creditors who preferred it. 

The South Sea scheme of 1719 was, in its origin, a proposal to carry this 
process a step further. The subject was mooted between Sir John Blunt, 

^ , the chairman of the company, Aislabie, chancellor of the 

Proposals i. </ •> i 

of the exchequer, and Sunderland, the first lord of the treasury. 

^ ^' The scheme, as it first stood, was moderate ; but the friends 
of the Bank of England obtained leave for it to make a proposal, and in 
consequence of this the two companies bid against one another till all idea 
of prudence had disappeared. Eventually the South Sea Company won 
the race, and agreed to take over the whole of the debt at 5 jDcr cent., and 
to pay the government no less than 7^ millions of money to pay off" its 
floating liabilities and such fund-holders as did not fall in with the 
scheme. 

At first it was doubtful what the fund-holders would do ; but within a 

few days the vast majority of them accepted shares in the company to 

the value of 8i years' purchase of their annual income. 

Apparent " ■^ ^ 

Success of Not a doubt of the success of the scheme crossed the public 
mind, and confidence was increased by the circumstance 
that at Paris a similar scheme was on foot, and that glowing accounts of 
the untold wealth conferred on France by the transactions of the Missis- 
sippi Company were circulated in London. Another influence which 



1720 George I. 745 

added to the rage for speculation was the fact that at that date the 
opportunities for investment were few, the wealth of the country was 
rapidly increasing, and consequently a tremendous rush was made to 
secure shares in an undertaking which seemed to be guaranteed by all the 
authority of the statesmen of the day. In consequence, the £100 shares, 
which at the beginning of the year were at 130, rapidly rose in value. 
All through the spring and summer of 1720 the value continued rising, 
and in August it reached the gigantic price of £1000 per share of £100. 
To make this value profitable, the company would have to pay at least 50 
per cent. ; but so sanguine or infatuated were the directors, that they 
made a public announcement that after Christmas 1721 the dividend 
should never fall below this sum. 

Meanwhile, the rage for speculation was so great that other companies 
came into the field. Some were sensible but premature ; others were 
absurd. One was for smelting iron by pit coal ; another for Rival 
'insuring masters and mistresses against losses caused by the Companies, 
carelessness of servants ' ; another ' for a wheel for perpetual motion ' ; and 
a fourth for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody 
to know what it is. As chairmen of the companies appeared the names 
of dukes and earls, and even the Prince of Wales came before the public 
as chairman of a Welsh copper company. Most of these companies had 
no legal standing, and the South Sea Company commenced proceedings 
against them. Their action, however, opened the eyes of the public to the 
recklessness of the original speculation. Shares immediately fell. By 
October the stock had fallen to 300 ; by the end of November it was at 135, 
and there it stayed ; but all those who had been foolish enough to pay 
above that price, and failed to sell out, lost their money, panic and 
Terrible ruin followed ; for men and women of all classes, ^"*"- 
statesmen and cobblers, ladies and laundresses, had alike joined in the race 
for wealth. Sunderland lost, Walpole gained ; the prudent Pope added 
to his income, the careless Gay lost his. Public credit seemed likely to be 
annihilated, and no one could foresee what would happen. The Jacobites 
were triumphant. In these circumstances one name was on every lip as 
that of the man who might save the country. From the first Walpole had 
opposed the scheme as too gigantic for safety, though he had no scruple 
in making money by it himself; but as he had opposed everything 
proposed by Stanhope and Sunderland, his advice had been unheeded, 
and moreover he had since rejoined their administration. Now, 
however, his warnings were remembered, and his advice was eagerly 
listened to. 

At the same time a loud cry was raised for the punishment of the 



746 The Hanoverians 1720 

directors ; and an investigation was demanded. Its researches soon laid 
bare a mass of corrupt dealing, which, though probably not unusual 
in the case of companies at that date, caused intense excitement. It 

The Dilin- ^^^ found that large quantities of wholly fictitious stock had 

quents. been assigned to ministers and others as the price of their 
support. Ten thousand pounds each had been given to the duchesses of 
Kendal and Sufi"olk. The names of Sunderland, Craggs, Aislabie, and 
Charles Stanhope, a cousin of the earl, were all mentioned as persons who 
had received complimentary assignments of stock. Of these, Sunderland 
and Stanhope were with difficulty acquitted. Craggs died of small-pox 
the very day the report was published. His father committed suicide. 
Aislabie was expelled. The culpable directors were fined. Gibbon's 
grandfather had to give up £95,000 out of a fortune of £100,000. Earl 
Stanhope was not badly implicated ; but his fury at the gibes of Lord 
Wharton was so great that he was taken ill in the House of Lords and 
died a few days later. Sunderland was compelled to resign. 

These changes made way for Walpole, who succeeded Sunderland as 
first lord of the treasury, and Aislabie as chancellor of the exchequer. By 
his advice it was arranged that the capital of the company 
Company should be £33,000,000, on half of which an interest of 
ga ise . g _^^^ cent, was to be paid by the government down to 
1727, and 4 per cent, afterwards ; and shareholders were to have 33 per 
cent, of their nominal capital. In this way the nation was able to look 
forward to a reduction of 1 per cent, in the interest on the national debt 
after six years. Gradually the disturbance in trade subsided. Hapjiily 
there had been no destruction of capital, as in the case of the Darien 
scheme. Some were richer, and some were poorer, but the wealth of the 
nation remained the same ; by degrees confidence was restored and trade 
settled down into its accustomed channels. 

Walpole now became first lord of the treasury and prime minister of 

England. He is the first to whom this title is usually given, though as 

early as 1677 Evelyn speaks in his diary of Lord Arlington 

Prime as having been ' secretary of state and prime minister.' By 

IVIinistcr • 

this, however, he merely means the leading minister, and 
from the earliest times one among the king's ministers could usually 
be thus distinguished. Under the Normans and early Plantagenets 
it was the justiciar, such as Roger le Poer, or Hubert de Burgh ; under 
the later Plantagenets and early Tudors it was usually the chancellor, 
such as William of Wykeham, Morton or Wolsey. Under the later 
Tudors and the Stuarts it was sometimes the chancellor, sometimes the 
lord-treasurer, sometimes the secretary of state. Burleigh was first 



1721 JValpole 747 

secretary of state, and then lord-treasurer. Clarendon was chancellor ; 
but after his fall the office of lord-treasurer was generally filled by 
the leading minister, and was held as such by Danby and Godolphin. 
It had, however, been often the custom not to appoint a lord-treasurer, 
but to place the treasury under the management of a board of com- 
missioners, each of whom was entitled a lord of the treasury, and their 
chairman was called the first lord. In a similar way we now have a 
board of admiralty, which takes the place of the lord high admiral. 
There was then no fixed rule as to precedence, and under George i. both 
Townshend and Stanhope, when really leading minister, had held the 
office of secretary of state. 

Circumstances, however, had arisen which of necessity made the 
position of leading minister more definite than heretofore. Of these, the 
most important was the absence of the sovereign from meet- The 
ings of the cabinet. Hitherto it had been the practice for Premiership, 
the sovereign always to be present whenever he was in England, and to 
take the chair. George i., however, found the task irksome and useless, 
from his ignorance of the English language, and soon gave up the habit. 
Henceforward, therefore, the leading minister was recognised as the chair- 
man of the cabinet council, and to him was invariably given the title of 
prime minister, and a little later of premier. Walpole's long tenure of office 
associated the position with that of first lord of the treasury ; but there is 
no fixed rule on the matter, and in both the ministry of 1885 and that of 
1886 Lord Salisbury reverted to the older practice, and held the position 
of prime minister along with that of secretary of state for foreign affairs, 
giving that of first lord of the treasury to the leader of the House of 
Commons. The position of prime minister, however, is not to be found 
in English law ; it is merely a title of courtesy, and is given to the 
person who is asked by the sovereign to form a cabinet. The change 
thus initiated was of great importance in the history of party govern- 
ment ; and, combined with George's practice of choosing his ministers 
from one political party, did a great deal to make the The 
ministers a united and disciplined body, a change which 
was recognised by the new practice of speaking of the whole body of 
ministers as the ministry. Henceforward the ministry includes all the 
political officers of the crown who are changed in accordance with the 
fluctuations of political opinion ; the cabinet includes those members of 
the ministry who sit as a secret committee under the chairmanship of 
the prime minister. Cabinet ministers, if they are not so before, are 
always made members of the privy council, and as such have the title of 
Riffht Honourable. 



748 George I. 1721 

Waljiole's chief colleagues were Townshend and Carteret, the two 
secretaries of state, and Pulteney, cofferer, or treasurer, of the king's 
Walpole's household. Fortunately for Walpole, he assumed office at 
Colleagues. ^ moment when accident or death was removing from the 
political stage all the men who might have been his successful rivals. All 
the members of the old Junto were dead. Godolphin had died in 1714, 
Marlborough in 1722 ; Stanhope, too, was gone. Sunderland, whose 
insinuating tongue was busy to the last in undermining Walpole, as it 
had undermined Townshend, died in 1722 ; Harley died in 1726 ; Boling- 
broke was discredited ; Craggs was dead ; Aislabie had been expelled. 

The first prime minister of England was a typical Englishman of 
his own time. Born in 1676, the third among the nineteen children of a 
Character country squire, he was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and 
of Walpole. acquired a knowledge of business and of his fellow-men on 
the magistrates' bench and in the hunting field. He entered parliament 
in 1700, and as he controlled the elections at Lynn and Castle Rising, 
and was a strong Whig, he soon attracted attention. In 1704 Marl- 
borough gave him a seat on the admiralty board ; in 1708 he became 
secretary of war, and his imprisonment in 1712 raised him to the front 
rank among Whig statesmen, and henceforth his personal history becomes 
part of that of his country. In appearance he was the country squire, 
with an open and genial countenance, well-knit frame, and habits of 
steady endurance, either in the field or at the desk. Of easy morals, and 
intelligent enough to lead, but not too far ahead of his contemporaries 
to be out of sympathy with their ideas and prejudices ; plain-spoken and 
good-natured ; a hard worker but a lover of sport, with a capital knowledge 
of human nature and of the art of managing men ; he knew what he 
wanted to get and how to get it, and if he found that insuperable 
difficulties lay in his way, he was willing either to turn back and wait for 
a more convenient season, or to devise some less ostentatious method of 
compassing his ends. Thoroughly impressed with the necessity of a 
period of repose after the long series of agitations through which England 
had passed during the preceding eighty years, he avoided anything that 
might revive either political or religious rancour. In foreign politics he 
recognised the maintenance of peace as the best security against Jacobite 
intrigue ; and while never truckling to foreign powers, and keeping a 
steady eye on the ^^reservation of British interests, he steadily avoided 
complications that might lead to war, and when forced to fight did his 
best to confine hostilities within the smallest practicable limits. Either 
at home or abroad he had no liking for heroic measures, and always acted 
on the principle of letting well alone. 



1722 Walpole 749 

The need of this caution was very soon demonstrated by the revelation 
of a Jacobite conspiracy. In 1720 the friends of the Pretender had been 
much elated by the birth of a grandson of James ii., jacobite 
named Charles Edward Lewis Casimir Stuart, who was ^^°*^- 
afterwards the unfortunate leader of the risino- of 1745. They also had 
conceived the singular idea that George was tired of his new power ; and 
the Pretender actually wrote to him and offered to secure him the title of 
king of Hanover if he would retire in his fiivour. It was also believed 
that the country was exasperated by the failure of the South Sea scheme, 
for, with the credulity of exiles, the Stuarts and their friends interpreted 
every event in their own favour. At this time the affairs of the Jacobites 
were managed by a committee of five persons, of whom Atterbury, 
bishop of Eochester, was the ablest and most energetic ; and, though the 
correspondence of the conspirators had been most artfully concealed, 
a chance incident enabled the government to identify the work of 
Atterbury. He was accordingly arrested, and in spite of an eloquent 
defence before the House of Lords, a Bill of Pains and Penalties against 
him passed through both Houses, and in accordance with its provisions he 
was deprived of his bishopric and banished in 1722. There is no doubt of 
his guilt ; but among the high church party great scandal was caused by 
such an attack on a bishop, and during his imprisonment in the Tower 
prayers were offered for him in many London churches on the plea that 
he had the gout. The detection of Atterbury was a great blow to the 
Jacobites, and Walpole followed it up by imposing a tax on all Catholic 
recusants, and this was afterwards extended so as to apply to Nonjurors. 
This intolerant measure admits of no defence ; but as the Roman Catholics 
and Nonjurors furnished the Jacobite conspirators, Walpole seems to 
have thought that their sins should be visited on all alike. 

So powerful did Walpole feel after Atterbury 's trial that he ventured 
at this date to permit Bolingbroke to return to England. Since his 
flight that statesman had met with a singular experience, g^jj^^. 
Within twelve months he had been dismissed from the broke 's 
service both of the king and the Pretender ; attainted by 
the parliament of one ; denounced as a traitor by the adherents of 
the other. His dismissal by James, which seems to have been due to 
the jealousy of Ormond and Mar, made him the bitter enemy of the 
Stuarts, and he was delighted to enter into any bargain which should 
restore him to England. Walpole, however, was careful. The sincerity 
of his repentance was tested by six years of delay ; and when, as the 
result of a bribe of ^11,000 to the duchess of Kendal, the king's mis- 
tress, a pardon under the great seal Avas granted, his estates were restored 



750 Gem-ge I. 1722 

by Act of Parliament, nothing was done to reverse the attainder, and 

Bolingbroke was therefore exchided from parliament. 

In 1724, the first of a long series of internal dissensions broke out in 

the cabinet. The causes of these were both general and special. In the 

first place, the tendency of party government had been to 
Quarrel , , ^ • • • % . , ,. 

with compel the admmistration to adopt a united policy, and 

to stand or fall together, and it was obvious that if this were 
to be the rule, it would be impossible for any man to retain his place in 
the cabinet who was, on vital questions, opposed to the views of his 
colleagues and especially to those of the prime minister. In the second, 
several of Walpole's original colleagues were men of so much character 
and ambition that it was difficult for them to acquiesce in a principle 
which involved so much sacrifice of individual opinion. Of these the 
first to go was Lord Carteret. This nobleman, who was born in 1690, 
was recognised by his contemporaries as one of the most notable and 
accomplished men of his time, and when he died Lord Chesterfield 
asserted that, ' take it for all in all, the ablest head in England dies with 
him.' Having become a peer as a boy, he never sat in the House of 
Commons, but soon after taking his seat in the Lords he had attached 
himself to Lord Sunderland, and distinguished himself for his address in 
debate and for his devotion to Whig principles. In private life he was 
a most amiable and upright man, extremely well-read, both in ancient 
and modern literature, and possessed of the rare accomj^lishment of speak- 
ing German, a power which gave him gi-eat influence over the king. In 
politics he had distinguished himself as ambassador to Sweden, and, young 
as he was, Walpole intrusted him with the post of secretary of state. 
Unfortunately, between Carteret and his chief there were marked diff'er- 
ences of character and temperament. The secretary's ambition lay mainly 
in the direction of foreign affairs, and he cared very little either for the 
details of administration or for the arts necessary in the management of 
men. ' What does it matter to me,' he would say, ' who is a judge or who 
is a bishop ? It is my business to make kings and emperors, and to main- 
tain the balance of Europe.' Carteret, in fact, had ideas of his own ; and 
Walpole's jealousy, once aroused, was aggravated by Carteret's personal 
friendliness with the king, and, as in the case of Stanhope and Townshend, 
by Carteret's prolonged absences with George in Hanover. Eventually, 
an obscure intrigue at the French court, in which Walpole's brother, 
Horatio, outwitted Carteret's friend, Sir Luke Schaub, the regular English 
ambassador, brought matters to a crisis, and Carteret's fall followed. 
Though he ceased to be a secretary of state, Carteret did not leave the 
cabinet. As Townshend had been in 1717, he was nominally promoted 



1724 JValpole 751 

to the post of lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and as it chanced arrived 
there at a moment when an opportunity for distinction presented itself. 

Since the capitulation of Limerick, Ireland had been in a condition of 
complete stagnation. Power had been eflfectuaUy concentrated in the 
hands of the Protestant minority, and had been exercised so 
much under the direct superintendence of English ministers ^^^^^"'*- 
that a series of commercial measures, designed to prevent the growth in 
Ireland of any manufactures likely to compete successfully with English 
industries, had been passed by the Irish parliament. So thoroughly, 
indeed, was the independence even of the 'English interest' subdued 
and so little danger did there appear to be of trouble from an Irish parlia- 
ment, that in 1708, when, after the legislative union with Scotland, the 
Irish parliament petitioned for a similar measure, the ministry did not 
consider the request worthy of attention ; and an Act passed in 1719, by 
which the Irish parliament was declared to be a subordinate body and the 
English parliament empowered to make laws binding in Ireland, was 
hardly regarded in England as doing more than register a patent fact. 
In Ireland, however, the taking away of the last semblance of independent 
legislation was naturally regarded with jealousy. 

Of this feeling the English ministers became aware when, in 1 722, Wal- 
pole, finding that Ireland was in need of a new copper coinage, granted 
a patent for coining copper to an ironmaster named Wood, wood's 
The need of a new coinage was unquestioned, for wages had Halfpence, 
lately been paid in tokens, or even with cards stamped with a promise to 
pay. Wood was one of the first great English ironmasters and held 
mining rights in no less than thirty-nine counties. Specimens of the 
new coins had been tested at the mint by Sir Isaac Newton and pro- 
nounced to be of excellent quality. On the other hand, the amount, 
£108,000, was in excess of what was wanted ; and there had been the 
usual amount of jobbery over the issue of the contract. In Ireland, how- 
ever, the true cause of the unpopularity of the scheme lay in the fact 
that Ireland had not been consulted at all, but that the whole scheme was 
English or German from beginning to end. In this Swift, who was then 
residing in Ireland as Dean of St. Patrick's, and who had long been nurs- 
ing his anger at the neglect with which he had been treated by the 
English ministers, saw his opportunity, and poured out the whole vials 
of his wrath in an attack upon the scheme, which he published under 
the assumed signature of the ' Drapier.' In these no slander ^^^ 
or exaggeration was omitted that might serve his purpose. Drapier's 
Wood was a 'tinker'; the money was 'base.' It was to 
be forced upon the reluctant Irish by an army of English soldiers. 



752 George I. 1724 

Wood, he declared, was like the giant Goliath, and himself like little 
David come out to do battle for his people. These lies, enforced with the 
whole power of the homely rhetoric of which Swift was a master, stirred 
all Ireland to indignation, and at the time when Carteret assumed the post 
of lord-lieutenant it seemed highly probable that persistence in the scheme 
would array against the government the united force of Irish opinion 
both Protestant and Catholic. In these circumstances Carteret perceived 
the necessity of concession, and his views were adopted by the govern- 
ment. The patent was withdrawn, a compensation was paid to Wood, 
and Ireland again settled down into gloomy quiescence. 

The magnitude of the agitation, however, convinced government that the 

political power of the Roman Catholics must be still further curtailed ; and 

in 1727 an act passed by the Irish parliament took away the 

Ascend- franchise from the Roman Catholics. This law continued in 
^' force till 1793, so that for more than sixty years the govern- 

ment of Ireland was wholly in the hands of the Protestants, who did not 
form more than one-sixth of the whole population of the country. Of the 
general condition of Ireland at this date it is exceedingly difficult to form 
any trustworthy estimate. There is, however, no doubt that this depri- 
vation of political power had the effect of closing the eyes of the Irish 
parliament to the wants of all Irishmen who were neither government 
officials, manufacturers, nor landlords, and consequently that the condition 
of the mass of the agricultural population, if it did not go from bad to 
worse, made little or no progress. The stagnation of trade, the want of 
a free market for produce in England, and the reliance of the mass of the 
rural population on the precarious subsistence afforded by the potato, re- 
sulted in the recurrence of frequent periods of distress, amounting, in some 
cases, to actual famine, to which Dean Swift drew attention by a satirical 
pamphlet entitled a Modest Proposal, in which he advocated the rear- 
ing of Irish children as an article of diet. In these terrible times, the 
chief, almost the only friends, of the Irish peasants were the Roman 
Catholic priests, who set the law at defiance to secure for their flocks the 
ministrations of religion and an opportunity of securing some tincture of 
education, without which a relapse into comparative barbarism would 
seem to have been probable. 

In 1725, Walpole quarrelled with Pulteney, another of his colleagues. 
William Pulteney was born in 1682. He was a man of great wealth, and 

^ , was reckoned by some 'the greatest House of Commons orator 

Quarrel "^ ® 

with Pul- that had ever appeared' ; but, on the other hand, he was of 

very uncertain temper, apt to change his mind, and. ' full 

of little enmities.' Pulteney had won a great name ir!j.t.he d,ebates of th^ 



1725 IFalpole 753 

last reign, and on George's accession he became secretary at war. In the 
cabinet quarrels he had attached himself to Walpole and Townshend, and 
retired with them in 1717. However, when Walpole became premier 
Pulteney was only offered a peerage. This he refused, though he took 
the post of cofferer of the household, but in 1725, when he found that 
this did not lead to promotion, he threw it up in disgust. 

The retirement of Pulteney marks an epoch, not only in the history of 
Walpole, but in that of parliament ; for the ' vindictiveness,' which was 
noted as one of Pulteney's characteristics, caused him not 
only to oppose his late colleagues but to attempt the task 'Opposi-" 
of creating a systematic opposition, the object of which was **°"" 
to expel the existing government from office and to take its place. 
Henceforward, an Opposition was recognised as an institution insepar- 
able from party government, and it has been shown by experience that 
the existence of a coherent and well-led opposition is almost as important 
a factor in securing the well- working of parliamentary government as a 
coherent and well-led ministerial party. Since the accession of George i. 
there had been no systematic opposition to the Whig administration, 
just as after the Kestoration the royalists, for a few years, had almost 
unquestioned power ; and a comparison might be instituted between the 
growth of the so-called ' country party ' under Charles ii. and of Pulteney's 
party of opposition under George i. 

In attempting to create a compact opposition by combining the regular 

Tories with the discontented Whigs, Pulteney received most valuable 

assistance from Bolingbroke. Since his return to England 

^ _ '^ Bolmg- 

that discredited but versatile politician had been posing as a broke 's 

1 • • 1 ,^ 1 TT • • Intrigues. 

smcere convert to the principles oi the Hanoverian succession, 
and had even been permitted to explain his views to George i., without, 
however, producing on the king an impression of his sincerity. He was 
now little better than a political adventurer, and as he recognised that 
he had no chance of regaining influence so long as Walpole was at the 
helm, he was ready to join with any party or to advocate any principles 
which Avere likely to lead to a change of government. 

Accordingly these two able and vindictive men set themselves to form 
an organised opposition to the ministry, both in parliament and in the 
country. In parliament Pulteney gathered round himself The 
a band of discontented Whigs, induced them to act as much ''^ tsman. 
as possible in concert with the Tories, and exerted all his powers to attach to 
his standard aU the young men of ability who from time to time found their 
way into parliament. Outside parliament, Bolingbroke strove to excite 
the country by attacking ministers in the Craftsman. This paper, which 

3b 



754 George I. 1726 

appeared daily, was the first regular opposition newspaper, and the 
frequency of its publication and the extent of .its sale prove that an 
increase in the reading public had followed the abolition of the censorship 
of the press. Its principles were those of every thoroughgoing opposition 
paper — i.e. it attacked the government of the day impartially, whatever it 
did. If Walpole advocated peace, it said he was bent on sacrificing the 
best interests of his country ; if he remonstrated with foreign powers, it 
declared that he was dragging the country into war. Such methods 
seem to be inevitable in party warfare. As David Hume wrote in 1741, 
the enemies of a minister ' are sure to charge him with the greatest 
enormities, both in domestic and foreign management ; and there is no 
meanness or crime, of which, in their judgment, he is not capable ' ; on the 
other hand, his partisans ' celebrate his wise, steady and moderate conduct 
of his administration.' Indeed the Craftsman was only the forerunner 
of a long band of successors. To win favour with the multitude the 
opposition assumed what Dryden called the ' all-atoning name ' of Patriot. 
The headquarters of the new party was Leicester House, the residence 
of the Prince of Wales. It was one of the peculiarities of the early 
The Prince Hanoverian sovereigns that they always quarrelled with their 
of Wales. }^q[j^^^ George the First was jealous of his son, who, being 
able to speak English, had better opportunities than his father of making 
himself popular, and the amount of his allowance was a constant source 
of dispute. The discredit of this must be divided equally between the 
king and the prince, but as matters then stood the opf>osition between 
them must be regarded as a good thing for the country. Had father and 
son been united, any one who was discontented with the court or the 
minister would have been sorely tempted to ally himself with the 
Pretender. As it was, he merely allied himself with the Prince of 
Wales ; and even the Tories, though for the most part Jacobites at heart, 
found themselves drawn towards what thus became the natural centre of 
opposition. Moreover, in those days the influence of the king in choosing 
between rival members of the same party was still unimpaired, and 
Pulteney hoped that by making himself agreeable to the prince he was 
making his own selection secure when his patron became king. 

At home these intrigues occupied the chief attention ; but abroad, in 
spite of all his care, Walpole was unable to avoid takiug part in a war 
Foreign which arose from the annoyance felt by the Spaniards when 
Affairs. Louis XV. was married to Maria Leczinska of Poland, and 
a little Spanish princess who was being educated in Paris as the future 
queen of France was unceremoniously^ sent home. The result was the 
First Treaty of Vienna, an alliance against France between the emperor 



1727 Walpole 755 

and the king of Spain,. As Great Britain was now friendly to France, she 
was inchided in their enmity, and a scheme was formed for the recapture 
of Gibraltar, and for the restoration of the Stuarts. This movement was 
met in 1726 by a counter-alliance between England, France, and Prussia, 
known as the treaty of Hanover. Happily the war was kept within 
narrow limits, and, so far as Great Britain was concerned, was confined 
to the defence of Gibraltar, and to the sending of an English fleet to the 
West Indies, under Captain Hozier, with orders to remain strictly on the 
defensive. Nevertheless, the excitement caused among the Jacobites and 
their ill-concealed hopes of a foreign invasion, showed conclusively how 
easily war abroad might be followed by insurrection at home. Seeing 
this, Walpole did all he could to bring hostilities to a conclusion, and, in 
1729, peace was restored by the treaty of Seville. 

During the progress of the war George i. died suddenly tit Hanover on 
June 10, 1727, leaving behind him the name of a cautious and well- 
meaning sovereign, who, without any shining qualities. Death of 
had contrived during his thirteen years' reign to steer ^^o'"^^- 
safely through the difficulties of party and parliamentary warfare, and to 
leave his family in safe possession of the British throne. 



CHIEF DATES. 

A.D. 

The Riot Act, 1715 

Jacobite Rebellion, 

Septennial Act, 

Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts re 

pealed, 

South Sea Bubble, 

Walpole becomes Prime Minister, 
Drapier's Letters, 



1715 
1716 

1718 
1720 
1721 
1724 



CHAPTEE II 

GEORGE II.: 1727-1760 
Born 1683; married 1705, Caroline of Anspach. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 

France. Eviperor, Prussia. 

Louis XV,, d. 1774. Charles v., d. 1740. Frederick the Great, 

1740-1786. 

Walpole in Power — Tlie Wesleyans — The Opi^osition — Spanish War and Fall of 
Walpole — Carteret in Power — Foreign Affairs — Henry Pelhani — The '45 — Rise 
of Pitt and Fox — Domestic Affairs — The Seven Years' War — Triumphs of Pitt. 

It was expected that the accession of the new king would be followed by 
a change of ministry, and his first act was to dismiss Walpole, and to 
offer his post to Sir Spencer Compton, speaker of the House 
retains of Commons. Compton, however, who is described as 'a 
powe . ^xiW^ heavy man,' had little ajotitude for business, and so 

little readiness that he actually asked Walpole to assist him in composing 
the short address which the new king was to deliver to the privy council. 
Of course Walj)ole complied, but took care to let the new queen know 
what he had done ; and Caroline, who knew Walpole's worth, soon 
pointed out to her husband the absurdity of Compton's position. 
Walpole also let it be known that, if he had been continued in power, it 
had been his intention to propose a large increase in the civil list ; and 
George soon perceived that he had little to gain and much to lose by dis- 
missing the old minister. Accordingly, before forty-eight hours had 
elapsed, Walpole was reinstated ; Compton's house, which since his eleva- 
tion had been crowded by politicians, eager to jjlace their services at his 
disposal, was again deserted ; and Walpole repaid the king by an extra 
grant of £130,000 a year, and by carrying a declaration through the House 
of Commons that the death of the late sovereign was ' a loss to the nation, 
which your majesty alone could possibly repair.' 

The new king was now in his forty-fourth year. In all respects he 
Character of was a smaller man than his father, and had less general 
George. capacity for afiairs. At the same time he had something of 

his father's capacity for distinguishing ability in others, and when he 
Tie 



1730 Walpole ^jP)^ 

had selected his friends was not easily tnrned against them. In foreign 
polities his first care was for the interests of Hanover ; in home aftairs 
he took little interest, his most active enthusiasm being for the army. 
He had fought bravely under Marlborough at Oudenarde, and believed 
that he had talents for command. 

Queen Caroline, on the other hand, was a much more remarkable 
personage. As a girl she had shown her independence of character by 
stoutly refusing to marry a Eoman Catholic ; and on arrivino- 
in England she rapidly made herself mistress of English Queen 
politics, and of the true character of the chief public men. ^^'■°^^"^* 
She interested herself also in literature and learning ; offered a place in 
the household to Gay, who had written his Fables for the diversion of 
her little son William, afterwards duke of Cumberland ; made the 
acquaintance of Swift ; delighted in metaphysical discussions ; and was 
an appreciative patron of the nuisician Handel. Over the king she 
exercised, though at the expense of much trouble, an almost unbounded 
influence. Indeed, so long as she lived, it was she and not her husband 
who really directed the politics of the court ; and as she had a perfect 
understanding with Walpole, his position during her life was impregnable. 

At the accession, Walpole's chief attention was engrossed by foreign 
affairs ; and at home he confined himself, as before, to carrying on the 
routine business of the country. The one question pressing waipoie's 
for immediate attention was the position of the Noncon- policy, 
formists in reference to the Test and Corporation Acts. These Stanhope 
would have ventured to repeal ; but Walpole was far too nuich alive to 
the danger of raising the old cry of ' the church in danger ' to run so 
much risk, and he contented himself with the less heroic policy of 
reducing them to a dead letter by passing an annual Act of Indemnity 
for all who had been guilty of violating their provisions. This was not a 
satisfactory way of dealing with the matter, but it was eminently 
characteristic of its inventor. 

In 1730 Carteret resigned the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, and openly 
joined the ranks of the opposition ; and in the same year Lord Townshend 
also left the ministry. Townshend and Walpole had been on Quarrel with 
the most intimate terms for thirty years, but of late various Townshend. 
circumstances had arisen to cause an estrangement. Lady Townshend, 
Walpole's sister, was dead. A partnership, in which Townshend, as the 
elder man, had taken the lead, became less agreeable to him, when its 
title in Walpole's words was changed from 'Townshend and Walpole' to 
' Walpole and Townshend.' The old grievance that Townshend, who 
accompanied George to Hanover, used his opportunities to increase his 



758 George II. 1730 

own influence, was a constant source of friction ; and Townshend was 
exasperated at Walpole's persistent habit of allowing obnoxious bills, 
which though popular were awkward for ministers to pass unopposed 
through the Commons, and leaving them to be rejected in the House of 
Lords. All these things helped to loosen the tie between them ; and, 
finally, a coarse joke of Walpole's roused to anger the irascible Townshend, 
and they were with difficulty prevented from coming to blows in a 
lady's drawing-room. After this, further concord was out of the 
question ; so Townshend with dignity resigned his office, and left 
Walpole supreme. Unlike Carteret and Pulteney, Townshend refrained 
from opposition to his old colleague, and retired to Norfolk, where he 
devoted himself to agriculture, and did a gTeat service to the whole 
country by encouraging the growth of turnips. 

The first success of the opposition was gained in 1733, when Walpole 
brought forward his celebrated excise scheme. At this date the chief 
The Excise soi^'ces of the crown revenue were the land tax, the customs 
Scheme. duties, and the excise. Of these, the land tax was levied at 
the rate of four shillings in war time, and from one shilling to three 
shillings in time of peace, according to a valuation made in the year 
1692 ; and at four shillings produced about J2,000,000 per year. The 
customs duties — customary payments — were the modern substitutes for 
the old taxes of tonnage and poundage, but were levied only on articles 
imported into the country. In Walpole's time they produced ;£ 1,500, 000 
per year. The excise duties — excisum, a part cut off — were levied on 
articles produced or manufactured in the country itself. They had first 
been imposed by the Long Parliament, were levied chiefly on salt, 
malt, and distilleries, and in 1733 amounted to ^3,200,000. Of these 
taxes the customs duties were decidedly the most expensive in collection, 
and were the most liable to be evaded ; indeed the gross customs 
duty on tobacco being ^750,000, the nett revenue was only ^160,000. 
Moreover, customs duties raised the price to the consumer to the 
highest amount, because, the tax being levied on the raw material, 
interest on the sum paid was charged by the dealer at every stage 
of the manufacture, and the gross sum added to the cost of the 
finished article ; whereas, in the case of the excise, the duty was levied 
once for all on the completed article. This was a great advantage to the 
consumer. For these reasons Walpole proposed to transfer tobacco and 
wine from the customs list to the excise, pointing out that the effect of 
doing so would be to enable him to repeal the land tax ; and he also 
pr oposed to levy no taxes on goods merely imported for re-exportation, 
which would, he said, tend ' to make London a free port, and the market 



1735 Walpole 759 

of the world.' This reasoning was perfectly sound ; but, unfortunately, 
the excise, which had been levied first by the parliamentarians during 
the civil war, had always been unpopular from an idea that it was 
arbitrary and inquisitional — a view summed up by Dr. Johnson in his 
celebrated definition of the excise as 'a hateful tax levied upon com- 
modities, and adjudged, not by common judges of property, but by 
wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.' Of this feelino- the 
opposition took full advantage ; roused popular indignation Agitation 
before it was even known what Walpole's bill was to be ; against it. 
declared that, if passed, an Englishman's house, which had hitherto been 
his castle, would be open at all hours to the inspection of the ganger. 
They declared, too, that Walpole's real object was to flood the country with 
excisemen, who would turn the scale at every contested election — and 
this in spite of Walpole's statement that the number of new officers 
required would only amount to one hundred and twenty-six. The 
Craftsman professed itself at a loss for words to describe the infamy of 
the proposals ; and Walpole ill-advisedly made matters worse by 
speaking of some riotous petitioners against it as 'sturdy beggars.' 
Before such an outburst of popular clamour, Walpole's majority sank to 
sixteen on the second reading ; and recognising the hopeless- ^j^g scheme 
ness of continuing the struggle, and declaring that 'he withdrawn, 
would never be the minister to levy taxes at the price of blood,' he withdrew 
the bill. The changes, however, were afterwards introduced one by one 
without conmient ; and the fact that, fifty years later, it was found that 
no less than seventy elections depended on the votes of excisemen, shows 
that, in those days of rotten boroughs and minute constituencies, the 
second argument of the opposition had not been without weight. After 
the failure of the excise scheme, Walpole's wrath fell heavily on the 
colleagues whom he considered to have betrayed him. Two days after 
the withdrawal of the bill. Lord Chesterfield was dismissed from his post 
at court ; the duke of Montrose and the earls of Marchmont and Stair 
were deprived of their offices in Scotland ; and the duke of Bolton and 
Lord Cobham were ousted from their colonelcies in the army. These 
dismissals, however— of which the two last were wholly indefensible- 
served further to augment the ranks of the malcontents ; and in the 
general election of 1735 the majority for ministers was somewhat reduced. 
With the exception of Jacobite intrigues, the internal afiairs of Scot- 
land had of late given little trouble to the British ministers. Since the 
legislative union the progress of that country had been not gj,jjtig^j 
only steady but rapid. In 1708 Edinburgh had possessed 
thirty thousand inhabitants ; Glasgow— where the River Clyde had not yet 



760 • Gemge 11. 1735 

been made navigable for sea-going ships — had nearly fifteen thousand ; 
while Dundee and Perth had ten thousand and seven thousand respec- 
tively. The revenue of the whole country was only £160,000, as against 
nearly £6,000,000 in England ; even in the Lowlands the standard of 
domestic comfort was extraordinarily low ; while, even in good seasons, 
a horde of beggars infested the country : while, in the Highlands, roads 
were unknown, horses were rare, and coaches non-existent ; the plough 
was still fastened to the horse's tail, spades were made of wood ; and 
the law, such as it was, was administered by Highland chiefs, each of 
whom ruled his clansmen like a petty king, waged war on his neigh- 
bours, and lifted a Lowlander's cattle almost within sight of the queen's 
garrisons. Thirty years, however, had witnessed an enormous improve- 
ment. The establishment of the Presbyterian Church, coupled with an 
Act of the British Parliament in 1712, by which toleration was secured 
to Episcopalians, had removed the curse of religious persecution. 
The Parochial Schools Act of 1696, aided by the efforts of the Scottish 
' Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge,' had diffused 
among the people a higher standard of elementary education than 
probably existed in any other country in Europe, and was being followed 
by a further development of secondary and higher education. The grant 
of the right of free trading had caused the industrial enterprise of Scotland 
to advance by leaps and bounds, and raised the whole standard of com- 
fort ; while even in the Highlands, the exclusive knowledge of Gaelic — a 
great obstacle to migration and advancement — was beginning to give way 
before the systematic use of English in the schools ; and Marshal Wade's 
creation of a system of Highland roads, carried out between 1726 and 
1737, had opened the way for the trader, the soldier, and the preacher, 
into districts hitherto practically inaccessible. 

At the same time it is incontestable that the Union was regarded with 
feelings of hatred by most patriotic Scotsmen, and that nothing but 
The Beer conciliatory action on the part of the government could 
Riots. secure a fair trial for the new system. One of the most 

unpopular items in the Union was the extension of the malt tax to Scot- 
land. The imposition had been systematically evaded, and in 1724 it 
was exchanged for an excise duty of sixpence on each barrel of ale — 
then the common drink of the Lowlanders. This change led to riots ; 
but the firmness of Walpole, aided by the tact of his agent, the earl of 
Isla, brother of the duke of Argyll, overcame the difficulty. An agree- 
ment by the brewers not to brew broke down, and henceforward the 
excise was paid without difficulty. So seriously, however, did Walpole 
regard the matter, that he abolished the office of secretary of state for 



1735 Walpole 761 

Scotland, and took the general management of Scottish afifairs into hi« 
own hands. 

In 1735 an even more serious disturbance broke out at Edinburgh. 
Two smugglers, Wilson and Eobertson, were condemned to death for 
robbery. With the aid of a file they had divested them- 
selves of their shackles, and removed the bar of the window Porteous 
of the cell, when Wilson, the stouter of the two, making the ^^°*^- 
attempt first, stuck fast and so prevented his comrade's escape as well as 
his own. However, the next Sunday, when taken to church under 
a guard of soldiers, he, by the exercise of herculean strength, overcame 
the guard and permitted Eobertson to escape. This heroic deed excited 
the pity of all, and though his execution passed ofl" quietly, some stone- 
throwing followed it. Exasperated by the missiles. Captain Porteous, 
who commanded the city guard — a body in the pay of the corporation, 
and recruited chiefly from the Highlands — seized a musket and discharged 
it at the crowd. His example was followed by his men, and some loss of 
life followed. Accordingly, Porteous was tried for murder, and con- 
demned to death ; but the sentence Avas commuted by the British 
government. Exasperated at this, a well-organised mob, composed 
to some extent, certainly, of the better classes of Edinburgh citizens, 
stormed the Tolbooth, took Porteous out and hanged him on a dyer's 
pole. This outbreak of violence raised the utmost indignation in 
England, and as no evidence against individual rioters was forthcoming, 
an act was introduced by which Edinburgh was to lose its charter ; the 
city gates were to be demolished, and the guard disbanded. In Scotland, 
however, this was regarded as grossly unfair. The Scottish members, 
both Lords and Commoners, were almost to a man against it ; and 
Walpole, seeing how foolish it was to set the national feeling of Scotland 
against him, reduced the act to a fine of .£2000 to Porteous' widow, and 
a sentence of disability from holding office against the lord provost of the 
city. In this way a storm which might, if badly dealt with, have had 
far-reaching consequences, was judiciously allayed. 

The most important event of the earlier years of George ii. was the 
rise of the Methodists, which not only completely altered the position of 
Dissent, but also had a most remarkable influence on the state of 
condition of the established church. Since the Revolution, ^^ '^*°"' 
circumstances had been tending towards the obliteration of the rigid line 
of demarcation which had long separated the Protestant world. The 
Toleration Act removed the most obvious hardship under which the 
Dissenters laboured, and though their political disabilities still found a 
place in the statute book, the tolerant policy of Walpole deprived them 



762 George II. 1735 

of tlieir practical hardship. Moreover, now that a modus vivendi had 
been discovered, the importance of the speculative differences on matters 
of church government between Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Inde- 
pendents, had much diminished ; while the age, wearied with the 
incessant doctrinal strife of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was 
inclined to set little value on dogmatic teaching. On the other hand, 
many causes were acting to reduce the efficiency of the church. Since 
the succession of Whig ministers had confined the promotion of bishops 
to the small band of Whig clergy who were to be found in London and 
the universities, and as the mass of the country clergymen were Tory 
or even Jacobite in views, all sympathy between them and the osten- 
sible leaders of the church was at an end. In 1718 the sittings of 

convocation, which, since the days of Edward i., had met 
Convocation ' . "^ , ' 

discon- at the same time as parliament, were discontinued. This 

was due to two causes. First, since the Restoration, the 
clergy had paid their taxes on the scale voted by parliament, so that 
there was no need of a special grant from the clergy. Secondly, the 
difference of opinion between the Whig bishops in the upper House of 
Convocation and the Tory representatives of the rural clergy in the 
lower House, had given much trouble to politicians, and in 1718 this 
culminated in an attack made by the lower House upon Hoadly, bishop 
of Bangor, for his views on the apostolic succession. After that year 
convocation was not permitted to transact business again till the year 
1853. This deprived the church of its only existing assembly for dis- 
cussion, and while it undoubtedly promoted the peace of the government, 
it struck a serious blow at the vitality of the church. The lethargy, too, 
into which Oxford and Cambridge had fallen reacted upon the clergy 
trained there. The identification of the fortunes of the church with 
those of the Tory party — not altogether the fault of the clergy — had 
seriously diminished the influence of the clergy as ministers of religion. 
On the other hand, the foundation, in 1696, of the ' Society for the 
Promotion of Christian Knowledge,' and in 1701 of that for the 'Propa- 
gation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,' coupled with the steady demand 
for religious books, showed that there existed the materials for a revival 
of enthusiasm if a leader appeared to show the way. 

A leader was found in John Wesley. This remarkable man, who com- 
bined the earnestness of a religious enthusiast with the talents for organisa- 
john tion and management that distinguish a statesman, was born 

Wesley. ^^^ Epworth in Lincolnshire, in 1703. His father was an 
earnest and hard-working clergyman of the Church of England, and his 
mother, a lady of Nonconformist extraction, was a person of great piety 



1735 IValpole 753 

;md force of character. He was educated at Charterhouse and Oxford. 
At twenty-three, having distinguished himself for his ability in logic, he 
Avas chosen fellow of Lincoln College, and, with the exception of a short 
interval, he remained at Oxford till 1735. Meanwhile, his younger 
l)rother Charles, destined to be the poet of the new movement had 
formed a friendship with a fellow-undergraduate, George Whitefield, who 
afterwards became the greatest preacher of his time. These three with 
a few others, formed among themselves a little society bent on attainino- 
a deeper religious life, and the members— perhaps because the word 
'Method,' a favourite of their mother's, was often on the lips of the 
Wesleys — were called in derision Methodists. In 1735 the two Wesleys 
went out to Georgia, and the society was for a time broken up. In 1738 
John returned, and, falling under the influence of some members of the 
Moravian body, adopted their views as to ' Justification by Faith.' The 
society was then reconstituted, on the basis of being a church within a 
church ; a strict rule of life was adopted by the leaders ; weekly 
confession of sins to one another, and weekly communion being amono- 
their practices. The leaders of the society, all of whom were ordained 
ministers of the Church of England, adopted the profession of itinerant 
preachers, whose duty it was to preach repentance to the unconverted. 

By degrees, circumstances compelled them to adopt the character of an in- 
dependent organisation. Their extemporary preaching, passionate gestures 
and stern denunciation of the idleness of the clergy, caused the 
church pulpits to be generally denied them. In 1739, White- sepamtion 
field, touched with the condition of the miners of Kingswood, ^?"^ ^^^ 

' _ . Church, 

near Bristol, thousands of whom were living without any 

visible form of religion, began the practice of preaching in the open fields. 
The same year John Wesley authorised the building of special chapels for 
Methodist services. The want of ordained preachers being felt, the 
services of lay -preachers were enlisted, while the rapid accession of con- 
verts compelled the society to organise itself on an extended basis. Had 
the church of that day possessed any elasticity of organisation, she might, 
without difficulty, have found a place for the ministration of men so 
reluctant to quit her fold as the Wesleys and Whitefield ; but her 
authorities failed to seize the opportunity, and the Methodists, even 
against their will, steadily drifted out of her pale. Baffled by the refusal 
of the bishops to ordain his lay-preachers, Wesley persuaded himself that 
he was justified in bestowing orders ; and in 1784 he consecrated Coke 
superintendent or bishop of the American Methodists. Even then, 
Wesley never acknowledged himself a Nonconformist. In the last year 
of his life he wrote : ' I live and die a member of the Church of England, 



764 Geoi-ge 11. 1735 

and no one who regards my judgment will ever separate from it,' Facts, 

however, were too strong for him. A body which numbered 71,000 souls 

in England, 48,000 in America, had 500 travelling preachers, and had 

an organisation planned by one of the greatest organisers of the time, 

could not long remain neutral ; and four years after his death, which 

occurred in 1791, the Methodist preachers began to administer the 

Sacraments, and from that time the position of the Methodists as a 

separate religious body became more and more defined. 

The separation, however, did not take place before there had grown up 

within the Church of England a considerable body, the members of which, 

while holding aloof from Wesley's organisation, adopted in 
The Evan- , ,. i- • • , \ . L K 

geiical general outlme his principles and practices. They formed 

^^ ^' the Evangelical Party, with which are associated the names 

of John Newton, the poet Cowper, Hannah More, and a host of others, 
who took the lead in reviving the religious fervour of the Church of 
England, and honourably identified themselves with, if they did not 
originate, almost every one of the philanthropic and religious movements 
which distinguished the close of the eighteenth century. It succeeded in 
attaching to itself most of those members of the upper and more cultivated 
classes which had originally been attracted by the preaching of Whitefield 
and Wesley, but who had held back from dissent. 

The beginnings of Wesley's work, however, attracted little notice, for 
all eyes were turned upon the great contest betAveen Walpole and his 
w 1 1 ' opponents. It was not easy to shake Walpole's position, 
party man- The great number of decayed boroughs, many of which had 
always been directly under the influence of the crown, 
especially those in Cornwall and the sea-ports, opened a field for corrup- 
tion which, if cleverly tilled, would return a rich crop of ministerial 
representatives, and Walpole was admittedly the greatest parliamentary 
and electioneering manager that had yet made his appearance in England. 
No stone was left unturned to secure the return of his candidates, and 
when returned Walpole was equally careful to keep them true to their 
allegiance by every call of self-interest. In 1 725, finding that the institution 
of the Garter did not supply as many vacancies as he required for the 
decoration of his political partisans, he had astutely revived the order of 
the Bath, and set the example by becoming one of its first knights. All 
the sinecures at court, all posts in the army and the civil service, were 
given away with a single eye to the preservation of the government 
majority, even the ecclesiastical patronage of the crown was administered 
with the same intent. Corruption had long been known, but by no 
one had it been reduced to such a system ; and as no division lists 



1737 Walpole 765 

were published, and even the printing of Parliamentary debates had 
recently been declared illegal, a cloak of convenient secrecy shrouded 
the proceedings of the members from the critical eyes of inquisitive 
constituents. 

Still the opposition made way, and derived some advantage from an 
alliance with Frederick, Prince of Wales, who was following the example 
of his father by quarrelling with the reigning sovereign. 
Frederick was an extremely foolish man, so entirely given up of the 
to frivolity that when the rebels of 1745 were at Derby, he °pp°^^*^°"- 
A\ as found playing blind man's buff with his pages. He formed, however, 
a convenient figurehead for the oj)position, and when on his marriage in 
1736 difficulties arose about his allowance, Walpole's enemies took up his 
cause as a ready way of striking at the minister. The numbers of the 
opposition were also increased by the adhesion of most of the young men 
of talent who were entering upon a political career — men such as William 
Pitt and George Grenville, whom Walpole contemptuously styled ' the 
boys.' Kound them, too, rallied most of the literary men of the time, 
repelled by Walpole's indifference to their support ; so that whether 
considered as to number or talent, the opposition which Walpole had to 
face, both in parliament and out of it, was becoming daily more formid- 
able. About equal in numbers to the discontented Whigs were the 
Tories under Sir W. Windham, Sir John Barnard —next to Walpole the 
best financier of his time — and Skippen the Jacobite. The whole party 
acted, as a rule, under the lead of Pulteney, who was reckoned the best 
man for debate in the House of Commons. Walpole's fall, however, still 
seemed far off ; and after the election of 1735, Bolingbroke, despairing of 
the cause, left England for some years. 

The first serious blow to Walpole's power was the death of Queen 
Caroline in 1737. On her deathbed she recommended her husband to the 
care of the minister, and tlirough good and ill report George ^^ 

never lost faith in Walpole so long as the latter lived. Queen 
Walpole, however, soon experienced another shock. Under 
George ii. he had steadily adhered to his policy of keeping clear of con- 
tinental intrigues, and in 1734 had been able to make his proud boast 
to Queen Caroline, ' Madam, there are 50,000 men slain in 
Europe this year, and not one Englishman.' Events, how- to°SpaiZ 
ever, were becoming too strong for him. For many years 
there had been growing up a hostile feeling between Great Britain and 
Spain. This arose out of the existing colonial policy of all European nations, 
which forbade the colonies of one nation to trade either with the colonies of 
another, or with other European countries. However, at the Treaty of 



766 George II. 1737 

Utrecht, Spain had miide a concession to England of the assiento or slave- 
trade, and had also given permission to the South Sea Company to send 
one ship a year to trade with the Spanish colonies. This permission was 
grossly abused by the British, who, besides the single ship, sent out a 
number of other ships, who, keeping themselves out of sight of land, re- 
plenished the trading- vessel with fresh goods. Moreover, our colonists 
made such a practice of smuggling goods into the Spanish ports that a 
regular contraband trade grew up and tiourished exceedingly. Naturally 
the Spaniards took the precaution of organising a system of coastguards 
whose business it was to search vessels they suspected of illicit traffic, 
and to detain such as were detected. Ever since the days of Drake and 
Hawkins no love had been lost between British and Spanish sailors, and, 
consequently, frequent quarrels ensued, in which sometimes the one, some- 
times the other, was the more flagrantly in the wrong. In addition to 
this, the Spaniards denied the right which the British claimed of cutting 
logwood in the Bay of Campeachy, and demanded compensation from 
Great Britain for the losses sustained at the battle of Cape Passaro 
which the British regarded as a glorious victory. Here were ample 
materials for a quarrel ; and as the Spaniards had secretly secured the 
aid of France in case war broke out, they were not prepared to give 
way, and, when Walpole tried to arrange matters by negotiation, fresh 
difficulties were raised. 

Of this state of afiairs the opposition took full advantage, and the 
whole country soon rang with stories of cruelties sufiered by inoflensive 
Jenkins' traders at the hands of savage Guarda-costas, and of mar- 
Ear, tyred sailors lingering out a life-long agony in the dungeons 
of the Inquisition. Among these, that of Jenkins' ear was pre-eminent 
and typical. According to his own account, Jenkins had been to Jamaica 
in 1731 with a cargo of sugar, when he was boarded, on his way home, 
by a Spanish coast-guardship, and accused of cutting logwood in Cam- 
peachy Bay. None, however, was found ; the Spaniards in their rage cut 
oflF his ear, took away his nautical instruments, and left him to get home 
as best he might. As a proof of the truth of his story he was accus- 
tomed to show something wrapped up in cotton wool, which he declared 
to be the severed ear. According, however, to others, his ear had been 
lost in the pillory ; and according to a third version, Jenkins had never 
lost his ear at all. Burke subsequently spoke of the afi'air as the ' fable 
of Jenkins' ear ' ; and Alderman Beckford, who arranged for his appear- 
ance before the House of Commons, told Shelburne, ' if any members had 
had the fancy to have lifted up his wig, they would have found his ears 
as whole as their OAvn,' as indeed was said to have been proved after his 



1739 Waljpole 7Q7 

death. Jenkins, however, was brought before the House of Commons, 
and when asked what his feelings were when in the hands of the 
Spaniards, replied : ' I commended my soul to God and my cause to my 
country.' ' This phrase itself,' said Pulteney, ' will raise volunteers ' ; 
and the opposition made the most of the incident, as a proof of their 
constant assertion that Walpole was neglecting the best interests of his 
country. 

Walpole, however, had no mind to go to war. He instinctively felt 
that war with Spain would inevitably develop into war with France, and 
that, he was well aware, would moan the renewal of Jacobite 
' intrigue. However, the war policy was supported by the forced into 
king, by Newcastle one of the secretaries of state, and by ^^' 
the general voice of the country ; and, before the close of 1739, Walpole 
found that he nmst either go to war or resign. He chose the former. 
Had he resigned, it is easy to see now that in all probability he would 
within a very short time, have been recalled to office, and to do so would, 
according to modern ideas, have been the more constitutional course. On 
the other hand, he may easily have hoped to keep the war within 
moderate proportions, as he had done in 1726, and have considered himself 
more likely than the 02)j)osition leaders to seize the earliest opportunity of 
making peace. Though he changed his policy, however, he did not 
change his mind, and said, when he heard the bells ringing to celebrate 
the declaration of war, ' They are ringing their bells now, but they will 
soon be wringing their hands.' 

At first the operations of war were confined to an attack upon the 

Spanish colonies, conducted by Admiral Vernon, who sailed to the West 

Indies, and Commodore Anson, who was despatched round ^, „, 

' ' , , ^ . The War. 

Caj^e Horn to attack the Spanish territories on the Pacific. 
Neither expedition was a large one. Admiral Vernon, a member of the 
oj^position, and a violent supporter of the war, succeeded in capturing Porto 
Bello with the loss of only seven men ; and the country, encouraged by 
this success, contrasted his exploits with those of Hozier in the late war, 
and demanded that further reinforcements should be sent out. An attack 
was then made upon the important town of Carthagena, which com- 
manded the isthmus of Panama. The undertaking, however, proved more 
difficult than was expected, and a want of co-operation between Vernon 
and the military leaders brought it to an ignominious conclusion. Mean- 
while, Anson was engaged in adventures which have made his name 
memorable ; but as no news was heard of him for nearly four years, his 
expedition also seemed a complete failure, and the country soon became 
disenchanted with the war. 



768 George II. 1740 

The whole responsibility for every mischance was of course thrown on 
the government, and Carteret and Chesterfield in the Lords, and Pulteney, 
_ . ^ Samuel Sandys, and ' the boys ' in the Commons, were in- 

Tactics of . . . . . 

the Opposi- cessant in their attacks on the ministers, against whom 
they attempted to rouse the country in view of the general 
election which would take place in 1741. Against this array of talent 
Walpole could only bring forward the duke of Newcastle in the Lords, 
and in the Commons had to rely mainly upon himself, with such assistance 
as could be obtained from Henry Pelham, Newcastle's younger brother ; 
but in February, 1741, he defeated a general attack on his administration 
by 290 to 106 in the Commons, and 108 to 59 in the Lords. However, 
in 1741 a general election took place, and no stone was left unturned to 
defeat Walpole's candidates. Money flowed like water ; and to provide 
the means of bribery a subscription list was set on foot, headed by the 
Prince of Wales, the old duchess of Marlborough, and Pulteney. These 
eSbrts proved so far successful that Walpole's majority in the Commons 
was reduced to sixteen ; and when the new parliament met in December, 
Walpole's fall was reckoned to be merely a question of time. This 
proved to be the case. A motion of Pulteney's, equivalent to a vote of 
want of confidence, was defeated by seven votes only in a house of 508. 
A few days later, on a motion on the Chippenham election petition, 
Walpole ^^16 government were in a minority of one. On this, 
resigns. Walpole determined to resign, and before the arrangements 
were complete, he was again beaten on the same question by a majority 
of sixteen. This last blow was decisive, the great minister resigned 
all his offices, and retired to the House of Lords as earl of Orford. 

The fall of Walpole was not followed by a complete change of ministry, 
and it soon apj)eared that the man and not his measures had been the 
The New ^^^ cause of the hostility of the opposition. Pulteney — 
Ministry, actuated apparently by a quixotic theory that he was bound 
in honour not to accept a post for himself — declined the ofl&ce of first lord 
of the treasury, so by Walpole's advice that post, and with it the nominal 
premiership, were given to Sir Spencer Compton, who now held the title 
of earl of Wilmington. Carteret became secretary for foreign afiairs, and 
Sandys chancellor of the exchequer. Newcastle continued secretary of 
state, and Hardwicke lord-chanceUor. Two friends of the Prince of 
Wales were made lords of the admiralty ; but Pitt and the other ' boys ' 
received nothing. For himself, Pulteney asked for a seat in the cabinet, 
and was raised to the peerage as Lord Bath ; an elevation which so 
obviously destroyed his power, that Walpole, on meeting him in the 
House of Lords, remarked, ' Here we are, my lord, the two most 



1743 JVilmington 769 

insignificant fellows in England.' For about a year a possible impeach- 
ment of the fallen minister was the chief object of interest in domestic 
affairs ; but in spite of the volumes of abuse and accusation to which he 
had been subjected, the attempt to support specific charges by evidence 
failed completely. 

In its first form, the new government did not last long. In 1743 
Wilmington died, and his place was taken, at Walpole's suggestion, by 
his friend and supporter Henry Pelhani, who, if he was not Henry 
a man of first-rate genius, was recommended by his kindly Peiham. 
temper, ready wit, and perfect honesty. This arrangement naturally did 
not suit Carteret, who had hoped for the post himself, and in 1744, 
shortly after succeeding to the title of Earl Granville, he retired from 
office. Peiham then, true to his policy of conciliation, endeavoured to 
widen the basis of his power, and formed what in the cant phrase of 
the time was called the ' Broad-Bottomed Ministry.' This included 
Chesterfield, the duke of Bedford, Lord Sandwich, George Grenville, 
Bubb Doddington, and Sir John Hynde Cotton, a Tory ; and the friends 
of Pulteney and Carteret were turned out to make room for them. 

At home, Walpole's retirement made little change ; but, abroad, the 
attention of the ministry was soon absorbed by a struggle far more 
important than that with Spain. This was the war of the „, 

. (. 1 • 1 • War of the 

Austrian succession, which arose out of the jealousies caused Austrian 
by the accession of Maria Theresa to the hereditary do- 
minions of her father Charles vi. This sovereign, having no sons, had 
executed in her favour a formal document called a pragmatic sanction, 
by which he declared the unity and indivisibility of the Austrian 
dominions, and the right of Maria Theresa to succeed to all of them. 
To this he secured the guarantees of most of the European sovereigns. 
On his death, however, the duchies of Silesia were claimed by Frederick ii. 
of Prussia, afterwards known as Frederick the Great. This prince, 
who was a nephew of George ii., had succeeded in 1740 to a well- 
drilled army and full treasury, which had been provided by his father, 
Frederick William i., a prince who had spent his life in trying to make 
up for the military deficiencies of Prussia's geogi-aphical position by 
the excellence of her military equipments, and the careful organisation 
of her administration. Frederick was eager to turn his advantages to 
account, and almost immediately on the emperor's death he marched his 
armies into the duchies, and defeated the Austrian troops at the battle of 
Mollwitz. This invasion encouraged others ; the Elector of Bavaria also set 
up claims, and pushed his pretensions to be elected emperor ; and the 
French, seeing in these events a favourable opportunity for interfering in 

3c 



770 



George II. 



1743 



Germany, entered into an alliance with Prussia and Bavaria, and planned 
a general attack upon the Austrian dominions. Fortunately, however, 
for Maria Theresa, she was able to buy oif Frederick by surrendering the 
duchies ; and her appeal to the valour and attachment of the Hungarian 
nobility was received with such enthusiasm that she was able to make 
head against her other enemies. In this state of affairs Hanover could 
hardly be neutral, even had George wished it. On the other hand, he 
regarded Bavaria with jealousy ; and Carteret, who practically had a free 
hand in foreign politics, was always of opinion that it was a matter of 
paramount importance to check all French interference in German affairs. 
Accordingly, George entered into an alliance with Maria Theresa : took 
sixteen thousand Hanoverians and six thousand Hessians into British pay, 
and appeared in Germany as her ally while yet technically at peace with 
France. The arrival of the British troops was very opportune, for, in 
1743, two large armies of French and Bavarians were advancing, by the 
valleys of the Main and the Danube, against Austria. Their appear- 
ance at once drew oft' one of these, and so enabled the queen to bring all 
her force to bear upon the other. 






Battle of DETTINGEN. 

June 27. 1743. 



Aschaffeuberg 




The French army of the Main, numbering sixty thousand men, was 

commanded by Marshal Noailles, who had under him his nephew, the 

«,, T, .., duke of Grammont ; while the allies, numbering; thirty- seven 
The Battle ' t> ./ 

of thousand, were under the nominal command of the earl of 

inge . g^^jy^ rpj-^g armies came within sight of one another on the 
banks of the Main ; and so badly did Stair manage, that the allies were 
forced by want of provisions to make a flank march along the river bank 
from Aschaffenburg towards Hanau, while the whole French army was 
posted on the south of the river, opposite to their line of march. At this 
crisis they were joined by George himself, his son — the duke of Cumber- 



1743 Pelham 7 71 

land — and Lord Carteret. Between Ascliaffenburg and Hanau lies the 
defile of Dettingen, where the road passes through a narrow space 
hemmed in between the river and the hills. On June 27, Noailles, who 
had plenty of time to make his dispositions, sent his nephew Grammont 
across the river to hold this pass, with twenty-three thousand men, and 
planted his batteries in such a way as to take the English in flank if 
they attempted to force a passage ; and as soon as the allies began their 
march, sent twelve thousand men to occupy Aschaffenburg, so that the 
allies were completely caught in a trap. When their danger was 
perceived, George dismounted, and, telling his men that ' the French 
would soon run,' put himself at the head of the right wing, while 
Cumberland took post on the left, and prepared for a desperate attack 
on Grammont's position. At this moment Grammont, eager to secure 
the glory for himself, pushed his men forward to attack the allied line, 
and by so doing placed his troops exactly between the allies and the 
French batteries on the other side of the river. His attack, therefore, 
was easily repulsed ; the allies in their turn became the assailants ; and, 
before Noailles could repair the mistake, Grammont and his men had 
been driven out of Dettingen at the point of the bayonet, and hundreds 
had been drowned in their struggles to regain the bridges. The French, 
therefore, lost the battle by impatience ; but the chief credit for 
averting panic among the allies, when thus taken in front and rear, must 
be given to George himself ; and both he and his son gained a reputation 
for valour which did them much good in England. The military results 
of Dettingen were very considerable ; Noailles' army immediately 
withdrew beyond the Ehine, whither it was followed by Broglie's 
division ; and henceforward the fighting was carried on in the Austrian 
Netherlands. Dettingen was the last battle at which an English king 
was present. 

The victory of Dettingen gave considerable credit to the government, 
which was increased next year, 1744, by the fortunate return of 
Commodore Anson. This officer, who was a man of solid Anson's 
capacity and devotion to his profession, rather than of Voyage, 
brilliant ability, had left England in 1740, with two men-of-war— the 
Centurion and the Gloucester— d.ndi four smaller vessels. After en- 
countering fearful storms in rounding Cape Horn, the Centurion and the 
Gloucester and the Trial sloop reached the island of San Juan Fernandez, 
oflf the coast of Chili. There they refitted ; captured some prizes ; and, 
landing a body of sailors on the coast, attacked Paita, where the 
Spaniards had stored their treasures, stormed it with a party of seventy 
men under Lieutenant Brett, and seized plate worth £30,000. From 



772 George II. 1743 

Paita they sailed along the coast to Mexico, and then went in search of 
the Manilla galleon. After terrible privations, the Centurion alone 
reached Macao, on the coast of China. Having refitted there, Anson 
returned to the Philippine Islands, and finally captured the long-sought- 
for plate ship, worth £300,000 ; and then, sailing home by the Cape of 
Good Hope, returned to England, bringing with him treasure worth 
£1,250,000, which was conveyed from Portsmouth to the Tower in 
thirty- two waggons, escorted by the sailors. 

The year 1744, however, was an extremely critical one for the country. 

The French minister, Cardinal Tencin, planned an invasion of England 

in favour of the Stuarts ; collected a force of fifteen thousand 

Projected 

Invasion of men at Dunkirk, and secured the co-operation of Prince 
England. Charles Edward, the eldest son of the Old Pretender. Against 
this force England had not more than eight thousand effective men at 
her disposal, and the Channel was badly guarded. A landing was daily 
expected in Essex or Sussex, which Horace Walpole, among others, 
thought would be supported by a general rising. Fortunately, however, 
for England, the winds — ' those ancient and unsubsidised allies of Eng- 
land,' as Pitt called them — were first contrary and then tempestuous ; 
and when the troops were on board, and everything in readiness for the 
invasion, a terrible storm shattered the French fleet. Meanwhile the 
spirit of the nation rose ; the suggestion of a French invasion was as 
injurious to the Jacobite cause as it had been after the battle of Beachy 
Head. The very publicans refused payment for the soldiers' quarters, 
saying, ' You are going to defend us against the French ' ; and so rapidly 
was resistance organised that Tencin gave up the attempt, much to the 
disappointment of the young prince ; and the remainder of the year was 
occupied by marches and countermarches in Flanders, under Wade and 
Baxe. 

The next year (1745), however, was not so fortunate. The French, 
under Marshal Saxe, one of the best generals of the time, advanced to 
Battle of attack Tournay, which, in accordance with Townshend's 
Fontenoy. barrier treaty, was garrisoned with Dutch troops. A 
mixed army of British, Hanoverians, Hessians, and Dutch advanced to 
relieve it. The allies were commanded by the duke of Cumberland, who, 
though he had shown plenty of personal bravery at Dettingen, and was 
devoted to his profession, had no real generalship. He was advised, how- 
ever, by Marshal Ligonier. Louis xv. in person was present in the French 
army. The armies met at Fontenoy ; the French occupied a strong 
position at right angles to the river Scheldt, their right and centre being 
covered by the villages of Antoin and Fontenoy, and their left by the wood 



1745 Pelham 773 

of Barre — a position not unlike the English at Waterloo. A simultaneous 
attack was ordered along the whole line. The Dutch were to attack 
Antoin and Fontenoy ; the British and Hanoverians the space between 
Fontenoy and the wood itself. Unfortunately the Dutch made no 
serious attempt to carry out their orders, and many of them ran away. 
On the right, General Ingoldsby recoiled from his attack on the wood. 
The whole brunt of the action, therefore, fell upon the duke of Cumber- 
land, who, with a column of British and Hanoverians — long remembered 
as ' the terrible English column ' — made their way between the village 
and the wood, and actually cut the French line in two. Victory seemed 
to be theirs ; when the French marshal, observing the inaction of the 
Dutch, brought up reinforcements from the^right and centre, including 
the famous Irish Brigade. Attacked thus by overwhelming numbers, 
and cut down by a battery of guns which had been placed in their very 
front, the British and Hanoverians sullenly withdrew, and ultimately 
yielded the field. The victory, therefore, lay with the French ; but the 
magnificent advance of the British and Hanoverians was long remem- 
bered with pride. Tournay soon afterwards surrendered. 

This success encouraged the French to make the Low Countries the 
chief seat of their military operations, and all thought of an invasion of 
Endand was abandoned. To Prince Charles Edward this _, . 

" _ Prince 

was a bitter disappointment ; and he determined, with or Charles 
without French aid, to make his way to Scotland, and 
attempt something against the Hanoverian government. For such an 
enterprise, in which loyalty to an individual must be set against all 
considerations of prudence, and no account must be taken of the resources 
of the government in power, of the scanty numbers of the Highlanders, 
and of the obstacles to be surmounted in a march to London, the young 
prince was admirably fitted. He was twenty- four years of age, of a noble 
presence and well-knit frame, full of fire and enthusiasm. Though ill 
educated, he was by no means deficient in natural ability, and with 
manners so graceful and winning as to banish criticism. 

With great secrecy he engaged a passage to Scotland in the brig of one 
Walsh, a merchant-privateer of Nantes, who also secured the convoy for 
his ship of a French man-of-war, the Elizabeth, in which were placed 
1500 muskets, 1800 broadswords, twenty small cannon, and a supply of 
amn^mition, all of which Charles had purchased with his own resources. 
In disguise, and with only seven friends, Charles then entered the brig, 
and the two vessels left the mouth of the Loire on July 2, 1745. Four 
days later they fell in with the Lion, a British man-of-war, commanded 
by Anson's old officer, Brett, which attacked the Elizabeth with such 



774 George 11. 1745 

determination that both vessels were ahnost completely disabled. They 
separated from sheer inability to continue the struggle, and each returned 
home with difficulty. Though deprived by this untoward accident of 
his little store of arms, Charles nevertheless decided to continue his 
voyage, and reached the outer Hebrides in safety. 

There, however, he found among the chiefs the utmost unwillingness to 

risk themselves upon so hazardous an enterprise. Indeed, John Murray 

of Broughton, who had been in France with Charles, 

Charles ^^^d been despatched to the west coast to adjure him to 

HieWands d^^i^*'? ^"^ had only just gone home under the impression 

that nothing was intended for that year. Still Charles' 

winning address, and his frank appeal to the loyalty of the clansmen, 

triumphed over all other considerations. The earliest to join him were 

the Macdonalds of Kinloch Moidart ; the first chief of influence was 

Cameron of Lochiel. Accordingly, with his seven followers, of whom 

the most notable was the marquis of Tullibardine, who had been ' out ' 

in 1715, Charles landed on July 25 on the beach at Moidart, and on 

August 19 raised the royal standard at Glenfinnan. His whole force 

now amounted to 1600 men. He had also been joined by Murray of 

Broughton, who acted henceforward as his secretary of state. 

Nature has divided Scotland into three distinct parts : first, the 

northern Highlands ; second, the central Highlands ; and third, the 

Lowlands. Of these, the second and third are separated bv 

Geography . ' i. j 

of the the lines of the Forth and Clyde, defended by the fortresses 

ig an s. ^^ Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton ; the first and 
second by a line of lakes and rivers, now united by the Caledonian 
Canal, and defended by the three fortified posts of Inverness, Fort 
Augustus, and Fort William. These formed, therefore, the first line of 
defence against Charles' advance. From Glenfinnan, Fort William, 
which lies close to the rugged mass of Ben Nevis, is distant about 
fifteen miles. Even before the standard had been raised, however, the 
line of defence had been broken, and a small reinforcement sent from 
Fort Augustus to Fort William had been forced to lay down its arms. 

On the very day that the standard was raised at Glenfinnan, Sir John 
Cope, the commander-in-chief of the Hanoverian troops, marched from 
General Edinburgh for Fort Augustus. Contrary to the tactics 
Cope. adopted with success in 1715, the plan of the government 

was to destroy the rebellion by attacking the movement at its root. 
From Perth Cope followed one of Marshal Wade's military roads toward 
Fort Augustus ; but on reaching the central chain of the Grampians he 
found that the Devil's Staircase, where the road in seventeen zig-zags 



1745 Pelham 775 

winds painfully up the brow of the Corrie Vairack, was already in the 
possession of the Highlanders, to whose bitter disappointment he turned 
aside and made his way to Inverness. There he hoped to join the well- 
aflfected clans — such as the Mackays — whom Duncan Forbes of CuUoden 
House, then the ablest and most honourable statesman in Scotland, was 
endeavouring to rally to the Hanoverian cause. Cope's movement, how- 
ever, had the effect of leaving the road to the Lowlands open ; and Charles, 
hurrying along it, and receiving at the entrance of every glen reinforce- 
ments for his victorious army, entered Perth without Charles 
opposition on September 3. Here he was joined by Lord ^^ Perth. 
George Murray, a younger brother of Lord TuUibardine, a man of great 
talent, bravery, and military experience, whom Charles wisely made his 
commander-in-chief. His subsequent conduct of the expedition elicited 
much praise from all military authorities ; but, unluckily for Charles, 
his overbearing temper and impatience of contradiction excited much 
jealousy among the other leaders. 

On hearing of Charles' southward march, Cope again altered his plans 
and made for Aberdeen, to which vessels were sent from Leith to 
convey him and his soldiers to Dunbar, where he disem- cope sails 
barked on September 18, and was welcomed by the news *° Dunbar, 
that the town of Edinburgh had been occupied by the rebels the very 
day before his landing. Nothing daunted, however, by the intelligence, 
he at once marched to the aid of the castle, which was still holding out ; 
and as Charles was as eager as Cope to fight a battle, he too hurried on 
towards Dunbar, and the two armies, neither of which exceeded 3000 
men, came within sight of one another at Prestonpans. At that moment 
Cope's men were on the main road which runs along the low ground 
by the shores of the Firth of Forth ; the prince's followers were on high 
ground further inland, and when the two armies drew up facing one 
another they found themselves separated by a marsh which was prac- 
tically impassable. In this situation night fell. 

During the night Prince Charles learnt the existence of a path by which 
he could skirt the marsh and come out on the level ground between Cope 
and Dunbar. Accordingly, before daylight the Highlanders Battle of 
began their march, and when day broke Cope found restonpans. 
his enemies drawn up in two lines, and ready to charge him from a 
wholly unexpected direction. In haste he re-formed his men at right 
angles to the road, and stretching from the marsh on their right to the 
park wall of Colonel Gardiner, who was present in command of Cope's 
cavalry, on their left. His artillery was on the right ; his cavalry, under 
Gardiner and Hamilton, on each flank. His efi"orts, however, were of no 



776 George II. 1745 

avail. The Highlanders, charging sword in hand, proved a match for 
infantry, cavalry, and artillery alike. It is said that five minutes 
sufficed for the combat ; and the Highlanders gleefully asserted that they 
had a prince who could ' eat a dry crust, sleep on pease-straw, eat his 
dinner in four minutes, and win a battle in five.' Gardiner perished on 
the field ; Cope reached Berwick with the survivors of the cavalry, and 
was scornfully congratulated by the governor on being 'the first general 
who ever brought the news of his own defeat.' The battle of Prestonpans, 
as this engagement was called from a village which lay in the rear of 
Cope's position, made an immense sensation both in England and Scotland. 
With the exception of the fortresses and the districts held by the loyal 
clans, all Scotland fell into the possession of the rebels, and they were 
immediately joined by Lords Balmerino, Pitsligo, and Kilmarnock. 

The prince's next step, however, was a matter of grave debate. 
Charles himself was desirous of an immediate advance into England, 
Invasion of ^^^ many of his followers advised him to declare Scotland 
England. independent, and to rest on the defensive until reinforce- 
ments had arrived from France and the whole force of the Highlands had 
been completely organised. In the end the prince's views carried the 
day, and on October 31 he set out from Edinburgh with a force of about 
5000 good infantry and 500 cavalry. His first object was to elude 
Marshal Wade, who was at Newcastle with a considerable force, and for 
this purpose, while making a show of moving on Newcastle, he secretly 
made for Carlisle, crossed the border on November 8, and so put the 
hilly country that divides Cumberland and Northumberland where the 
Highlanders would fight with advantage, between him and Wade. On 
the 14th, Carlisle Castle surrendered. Hurrying forward, the rebels 
reached Preston on the 27th, and on the 28th they entered Manchester. 
By this time their force was reduced by desertion between Edinburgh 
and Carlisle to about 4500 men. No news had been received of a 
French invasion in the south, and the English Jacobites, headed by 
the duke of Beaufort, the earl of Westmorland, and Sir Watkin Wynn, 
absolutely refused to rise without one. Even Lancashire, probably the 
most Jacobite county in England, had only produced some two hundred 
recruits. The peace and plenty which under Walpole's long rule had 
come to be associated with the Hanoverian government, had completely 
dissipated the sentiment of personal grievance under the existing state 
of affairs on which successful rebellion in a civilised country so much 
depends for success. 

From a military point of view, the situation was almost more hopeless. 
Wade was advancing through Yorkshire to take them in the rear. 



1745 Pelham 777 

Caoiberland, with an army of 8000 men, was in Staffordshire. George him- 
self was collecting a new army at Finchley, and the men whom Cumberland 
had with him were not the raw recruits who had fled at 
Prestonpans, but seasoned soldiers who had been under fire of the 
at Dettingen and Fontenoy. Still the rebels decided to ^'■"^'^^• 
push forward, and Lord George Murray, by a masterly movement on 
Congleton, caused Cumberland to rendezvous at Stone, about seven 
miles north of Stafford, while Charles and the main body, keeping to 
the east, made his way through Stockport and Ashbourne. The Rebels 
On December 1 the rebels entered Derby, and found them- ^^ Derby, 
selves within one hundred and thirty miles of the capital, on a good 
road, and with only one army between them and it. 

Meanwhile the approach of the rebel army was exciting great appre- 
hension in London. When first heard of, the rising was regarded as a 
mere flash in the pan ; but when the prince, so far from Feeling of 
being checked at once, was reported to have reached Perth, °" °"' 
then Edinburgh, and then to be advancing from Carlisle to Manchester, 
people's fears grew ; and when it was known that he was at Derby, and 
the Highlanders were reported to be sharpening their broadswords at 
the blacksmiths' shops, apprehension gave way to panic, and the day was 
long remembered as ' Black Friday.' So great was the run on the bank 
that the directors were forced to pay in sixpences in order to gain time. 
The king had placed most of his valuables on a yacht in case it became 
necessary to take refuge in Hanover, and it is said that the duke of 
Newcastle shut himself up for twenty-four hours to consider whether 
or not the readiest way to make his fortune would be by being the 
first English minister to declare for the Pretender. The situation, 
undoubtedly, was very serious. Had Charles advanced to Finchley and 
defeated George ii., as was probable enough, in a pitched battle fought 
on English soil, no one can say what would have followed, for the 
indifference of the mass of the people to the whole affair is one of the 
most curious signs of the time. 

In general, however, the best chance for a rebel army is to advance ; 
and Charles was eager to try his luck in another battle, and so, un- 
doubtedly, were the rank and file of his men ; but the The Rebels 
officers could not conceal from themselves the terrible risk 
they were running, for Cumberland was already in pursuit and Wade was 
closing in. Moreover, the news that Lord John Drummond had arrived 
in Scotland with some Scottish and Irish troops in the French service, 
and that considerable bodies of Highlanders were ready on the other side 
of the border, seemed to promise a more successful campaign next year. 



778 George II. 1745 

For these reasons, therefore, the council of officers was clear for retreat, 
and Charles, much against his will, was compelled, to yield. Once on the 
march back, in spite of the dejection due to failure, the retreat was 
admirably conducted by Lord George Murray. Two days' march was 
gained on Cumberland at the start, and before Wade could be over the 
hills into Lancashire, the rebel army had passed him. Thus baffled, 
Cumberland hurried on with some mounted infantry and his regular 
cavalry ; but even these horsemen did not overtake the rebel rearguard 
till they were close to Penrith. There, at the village of Clifton, on the 
Skirmish right bank of the river Low^ther, Lord George Murray turned 
at Clifton. ^Q i^^y. ^^^ -^^ ^ cleverly managed skirmish beat off Cumber- 
land's attack, and so proved victor in the last serious fighting that has 
taken place on English soil. This stand at Clifton secured the prince from 
further molestation, and the rebels, leaving a weak garrison in Carlisle, 
recrossed the border on December 20. 

Cumberland, however, was in no hurry to follow them. The fear of a 
French invasion was too serious to allow of England being denuded of 
Battle of troops ; SO the best regiments were remarched to the southern 
a kirk. coast, and Wade's army only was placed under the command 
of General Hawley, and despatched across the border. Hawley found the 
rebels engaged in the siege of Stirling, where, with extremely inadequate 
artillery, they were endeavouring to frighten General Blakeney, the 
governor, into surrender. Their main force of 8000 men, under Lord 
George Murray and Lord John Drummond, was drawn up near Bannock- 
burn to cover the siege, and when, on January 17, Hawley advanced with 
a force of about the same size from Falkirk, they advanced against him. 
The two armies met on Falkirk Muir, a ridge of upland which hid them 
from each other. The Highlanders gained the summit first, and saw the 
royalist force toiling up the hill, a violent wind blowing the rain and 
sleet full in their faces. In these circumstances, every advantage was 
with the Highlanders. Hawley's force, with the exception of a small body 
on the right who were protected by a ravine, were utterly routed, and 
Falkirk with the baggage fell into the hands of the prince. The victory, 
however, did little good to his cause. Quarrels between Lord George 
Murray and Lord John Drummond were incessant. Numbers of 
Highlanders hurried off to their homes to secure their share of the booty, 
and Hawley's place was immediately taken by the duke of Cumberland, 
who was determined that in the next battle nothing should be left to 
chance. 

Prince William, duke of Cumberland, was almost exactly the same age 
as Prince Charles. Hitherto his character was unsullied by the stain 



1746 Pelham 779 

which subsequently blackened it. He was known as an eager soldier, 
who had fought well at Dettingen and had been beaten at Fontenoy 
through no fault of his own, and who bore in civil life the The Duke of 
reputation of trustworthiness and honesty. He reached Cumberland. 
Edinburgh on January 30, and set out next day to bring the rebels to 
battle ; but on reaching Falkirk he found that they were in full retreat 
and had already crossed the Forth. In this, as at Derby, Prince Charles 
had been overruled by his officers, who thought it madness to fight when 
many of their men had gone home to secure their plunder, and who 
wished to fall back on Inverness where considerable reinforcements were 
believed to await them. Inverness itself was held by Lord Loudon with 
some 2000 men ; but on the prince's approach he withdrew into Suther- 
landshire. Inverness then fell into the prince's hands, and soon afterwards 
Fort Augustus surrendered ; but Fort William still held out, and Lord 
George Murray failed in an attempt to capture Blair Castle. While 
these operations were going on, Cumberland was organising his forces at 
Perth. The opportune arrival of 6000 Hessians in English pay, who 
could be used for garrison duty, enabled him to take the field with a force 
exclusively British, and with it he advanced to Aberdeen. There it 
was expected that he would await the arrival of summer ; but in April 
he was ready to start, and on the 8th the army marched for Inverness. 
Cumberland's force consisted of 8000 foot and 900 horse. Great pains 
had been taken in drilling the men to meet the first rush of the Highlanders, 
even to the detail of telling each man not to use his bayonet against the 
Highlander in front of him who was covered by his target, but to thrust 
at the man on his own right whose side would be unprotected. Pro- 
visions in plenty were carried in a fleet which accompanied the advance, 
and the men wanted for nothing. The soldiers had the greatest con- 
fidence in their leader, and were eager to wipe out the disgrace of 
Prestonpans and Falkirk. 

When it was known that Cumberland was advancing, Charles concen- 
trated his force at Culloden, a few miles short of Inverness. He had 
5000 men still with him ; but these were more than he could a Night 
well feed. His money was exhausted ; provisions were so March, 
scarce that when a day's march alone separated the armies, a single 
biscuit per man was all the rations served out, and night and morning 
the troops were dispersed seeking for something to keep body and soul 
together. In these circumstances, it was determined to try a night 
surprise ; but the plan was ruined by the delay in starting caused by the 
difficulty of collecting the stragglers, who were searching for food in 
Inverness and the neighbouring villages. When day was within an 



780 George II. i746 

hour of breaking, the advanced guard with Lord George Murray were 
still four miles from Cumberland's camp. There was nothing for it but 
to retrace their steps. Even then Murray and the best officers wished 
to make for some more inaccessible ground ; but his opinion was over- 
ruled, and Charles decided to wait Cumberland on the open space of 
Culloden Moor. He himself commanded the centre ; Murray was on 
the right ; Lord John Drummond on the left ; and the army, as usual, 
was drawn up in two lines. 

Cumberland also drew up his men in two lines, each four deep. The 
front ranks were instructed to kneel, the second to stoop, and the third 

Battle of '^^d fourth to fire over the heads of their fellows. The 

Culloden. artillery was placed in the gaps between the regiments 
of the front line, and the cavalry on each wing were directed to work 
round and take the Highlanders in flank. These careful precautions 
reduced victory almost to a certainty ; but the bravery of the High- 
landers, cold, weary, and hungry as they were, with a storm of sleet in 
their faces, never showed to more conspicuous advantage than on that 
fatal day. In spite of the deluge of shot that met their charge, no less 
than two regiments of Cumberland's front line were broken ; but against 
his second line all valour was unavailing, and the clansmen of the right 
and centre, driven into hopeless confusion and charged by cavalry on the 
flank, retreated sullenly from the field. On the left the charge had been 
less vigorous, for the Macdonalds, furious at being deprived of their 
usual post of honour on the right, refused for the most part to follow 
their leaders, and retreated unbroken out of the fray. An attempt was 
made by Lord George Murray to rally the rebel force at Ruthven in 
Badenoch ; but the want of money and supplies was fatal to any success- 
ful attempt to carry on the war, and, orders being given by Charles that 
each man should shift for himself, the army broke up. 

In the days immediately succeeding the battle, Prince Charles made 

his way across country and took refuge in the western isles, where he 

hoped to wait safely for the arrival of a French ship. His 

Prince retreat, however, being discovered, and a body- of two 

thousand men having landed to search the island of South 
Uist, where he then was, his capture seemed inevitable, when he was 
rescued from his perilous position by the devotion of Flora Macdonald, 
who took him with her in the disguise of a woman. He thus passed in 
safety through the line of eager sentinels, whose vigilance had been 
stimulated by the offer of ^'30,000 as a reward for his capture. But even 
then his dangers were by no means over. Again and again he had to 
trust himself to the honour of poor fellows, to whom the government 



1746 Pelliam 



781 



reward must have seemed untold wealth, but whose noble generosity 
invariably forbade them to speak the word which would have won it. 
At length, after five months' wandering about western Scotland, he 
reached a French vessel, and landed safely in France. 

For many years the chance of renewing his attempt seemed by no 
means hopeless. During the remainder of the war now going on, and 
again during the Seven Years' War, proposals to make use ^he last of 
of his services were frequently made ; but as time went on the Stuarts, 
with less and less chance of success. In 1747 a great blow was struck 
at the reputation of the Stuarts, when Henry Stuart, Charles' younger 
brother, became a cardinal. Charles' own marriage in 1762 proved 
childless ; and finally Pitt's decisive victories over the French destroyed 
all hopes of aid from them. The Old Pretender died in 1766 ; the 
Young in 1788 ; and his brother Henry, the last of the legitimate 
descendants of James ii., in 1805. 

Many leaders of the rebellion were singularly fortunate in escaping. 
Lord George Murray, Lord John Drummond, the duke of Perth, and 
Cameron of Lochiel all made their way to friendly shijDs. Punishment 
Old Lord Tullibardine died in the Tower. Of the others, °^the Rebels. 
Lord Kilmarnock, Lord Balmerino, and Charles Eatclifi*, brother of the 
late earl of Derwentwater, who had been captured in a French vessel on 
his way to Scotland, were beheaded in 1746. In 1747 they were 
followed by Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, a wily old chief of abominable 
character, who, while assuring Duncan Forbes of his fidelity to the 
government, had despatched his son, the master of Lovat, to fight for 
the prince. Very nearly indeed did he save his head ; but, unluckily 
for him, Murray of Broughton, the prince's secretary, was captured, and 
having turned king's evidence, completed the chain of proof necessary for 
Lovat's conviction. The last who suffered in England was Dr. Cameron, 
brother of Cameron of Lochiel, who was arrested while visiting England 
in 1753. He was convicted and hanged, not so much for the old 
rebellion, as because the government thought it needful to check by a 
severe example the revival of Jacobite intrigue ; and as it is known that 
the Young Pretender himself had recently visited London to consult with 
the English Jacobites, the severity is not altogether without justification. 

These executions took place under the due forms of English law, and 
so did some eighty others at Lancaster, Carlisle, and other places where 
prisoners were reserved for trial ; but a more barbarous and Barbarous 
brutal retribution was meted out to the wretched men and o7t1ie"H^gh- 
women whom Cumberland and his soldiers chose to regard landers, 
as guilty of rebellion. Many poor fellows were slaughtered on the field 



782 George II. 1746 

itself, and so indiscriminate was the massacre perpetrated in the Highland 
glens during the three months that followed Culloden, that all Cumber- 
land's excellent qualities and his real services have been forgotten in 
the hated name of the ' Butcher.' 

Fortunately statesmen were not wanting who realised that, as Lord 
Carteret ably put it on another occasion, ' in the body politic as in the 

body natural, while the cause remains it is impossible to 
Precau- ./ ^ i 

tionary remove the distemper ' ; and they were determined to make 
easures. ^-^^ suppression of the rebellion a fresh starting-point in 
Highland history. It was obvious that the real cause which made 
rebellion so easy was the clan system, by which the chief had the first 
claim upon the loyalty of his followers, lived on their contributions, was 
the fountain of justice and honour in his own district, and could 
command the obedience of his men for any service, however lawless, for 
which he might choose to require them. To break down this system, an 
act was passed by which the chiefs were deprived of their hereditary 
jurisdictions, and received instead a financial compensation. The clans 
were rigorously disarmed, and to break the distinction between a Low- 
lander and a Highlander, the latter were forbidden by law to wear the 
Highland dress. By this means it ceased to be the interest of the chiefs 
to surround themselves with a body of fighting men. For the first time 
they began to look to the cultivation of their lands as a source of profit, 
and this change in the life of the chiefs led to the migration and dis- 
persion of the most energetic and lawless of their followers. These 
coercive measures, however, though they might have broken the power 
of the chiefs, would have done little to secure their loyalty had not Pitt, 
a few years later, raised the Highland regiments, and put 
land Regi- them under the Command of leading chief tains, one of whom 
"^^"*^* was a son of the executed Lord Lovat. By this means he 
secured for the country the services of the magnificent fighting capacity 
of the Highlanders, thus changing a source of danger into a means of 
defence. 

While the rebels were still unconquered, the country had been 
passing through a ministerial crisis. Of the younger members of parlia- 
Wiiiiam nient none had distinguished themselves more than William 
P^"- Pitt and Henry Fox. Pitt was the grandson of a governor 

of Madras, who made himself a name by bringing home from India the 
celebrated Pitt diamond, and nephew, by marriage, of the first earl of 
Stanhope. He was born in 1708, educated at Eton and Trinity College, 
Oxford, obtained a cornetcy in the Blues, entered parliament for the 
pocket borough of Old Sarum in 1735, and immediately threw himself 



1746 Pelham 733 

into violent opposition to Walpole. From his schooldays he had made a 
study of oratory ; and his figure, 'tall, and perfectly erect, with the eyes 
of a hawk, little head, thin face, and long aquiline nose,' coupled with a 
voice of extraordinary range and power, undaunted courage, and immense 
belief in himself, combined with real ability and a capacity for dealing 
with any subject he touched upon in a broad and statesmanlike manner, 
at once marked him out for a distinguished parliamentary career. His 
first speeches attracted the notice of Walpole, gained for him the charac- 
teristic compliment, ' we must muzzle this cornet of horse,' and the loss 
of his commission in the Blues. Weak in prepared speeches, he soon 
showed himself to be one of the very best extempore debaters that the 
world has ever seen, and became conspicuous among a crowd of worthy 
rivals by his mastery over the arts of oratory and sarcasm. In spite of 
the fact that he was a new man, almost unconnected with any of the o-reat 
Whig families which at that time monopolised office, he soon attained 
a commanding position in the eyes of the country ; for his absolute 
freedom from mercenary motives gained him much respect in parliament, 
while his enthusiastic support of British interests gained him the good- 
will of the people at large. With George 11., however, he was by no means 
a favourite, partly because he had been made groom of the chamber to 
the Prince of Wales to make up for the loss of his commission, and 
partly because much of his popularity outside the House had been 
won by his vehement opposition to Carteret's Hanoverian policy. In 
particular, he had always opposed the taking of Hanoverians and 
Hessians into British pay, and had spoken of Carteret in parliament as 
' the Hanover troop minister.' 

' Nothing could be more dissimilar than the characters, talents, habits, 
and education' of his rival Henry Fox ; who, while described to us as 
' infinitely able in business, clear, penetrating, confident, and 

, . . . „ ,. -, ,. ., ,. 1 t I. \ Henry Fox. 

decisive in all his dealings with mankind, and 01 extra- 
ordinary activity,' was wanting in those loftier qualities of statesmanship 
which distinguished Pitt. His talents were always strictly subservient 
to his own advancement, and, from a long training under Walpole, he had 
acquired the official tone of mind which tends to regard all political 
questions from the point of view of their influence upon votes. Indeed, 
Lord Chesterfield wrote of him ' that he had not the least notion of or 
regard for the public good or the constitution, but despised these cares as 
the objects of little minds.' Fox was born in 1705, and his long official 
training had given him a mastery of detail, and a facility in the art of 
defence that made him a most valuable man, and the post of a junior 
lord of the treasury, which he held under Pelham, appeared to him quite 



784 George II. 1756 

inadequate to his deserts. The open hostility of Pitt, and the discon- 
tented support of Fox, were therefore serious matters for the ministry. 

In February 1746, Pelham determined to strengthen himself by the 
admission of Pitt to office. George sternly refused his consent, upon 

Ministerial which the Pelhams and most of their followers resigned. 

Crisis. Their resignations were accepted, and Granville and Bath , 

(formerly Pulteney) were commissioned with the formation of a ministry. 

The attempt, however, completely failed, because they had forgotten 

' one little point,' which was, says Horace Walpole, ' to secure a majority 

in both Houses.' In these circumstances, George, sorely against his will, 

was compelled to reinstate the Pelhams, and to give Pitt the post of 

vice-treasurer for Ireland, which he soon afterwards vacated for that of 

paymaster of the forces. This post was then reckoned the most valuable 

in the administration, from the immense sums that could be made 

indirectly out of percentages on the money which passed through the 

hands of its occupant, and even by investing public money under his 

charge. Pitt, however, refused to make a penny by such devices, and 

so made good in office the character for disinterestedness that he had 

acquired in opposition. So completely were his qualities recognised, 

that Pelham described him as ' the most able and useful man we have 

among us, truly honourable and strictly honest.' At the same time 

Fox was conciliated by promotion to the distinguished post of secretary- 

at-war ; and a little later Chesterfield became secretary of state, and 

entered the cabinet. 

While Great Britain had been occupied in suppressing rebellion at 

home, France had been advancing with rapid strides. Almost every 

fortress in the Austrian Netherlands had fallen into her 
The War. 

hands ; and in 1746 Holland had been invaded. Ever 

since the death of William iii. the Burgher party had been in the 
ascendant, and the house of Orange had been out of power ; but, as in 
1672, fear of France impelled the Dutch to invite the services of their old 
leaders ; and Frederick William of Orange, generally called William iv., 
son-in-law of George ii., was nominated stadtholder, and intrusted with 
the command of the troops. On the defeat of the Pretender, however, 
Cumberland was able to return to the continent ; but, though an ex- 
cellent officer, he was no match in generalship for the French leaders ; 
and matters were made worse by a want of harmonious co-operation 
between him and his brother-in-law. Accordingly, in July 1747, at 
Lauffeld near Maestricht, the allied army was defeated by Marsha 
Saxe, after a hard-fought engagement, and compelled to retire behind 
the Meuse. The French then advanced to the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, 



1749 Pelham 785 

an excellent fortress constructed by Coehorn, but so badly defended by 
its Dutch garrison that it fell in September. There was every pro- 
bability that Maestricht would share its fate ; and, meanwhile, the 
ministry seem to have had no better idea of using English resources 
than that of applying to every little court in Europe to supply us 
with mercenary troops. At sea, however, our position was not quite 
so contemptible ; for Anson and Hawke had each beaten a French 
fleet, and each captured six ships of the line off Finisterre and Belleisle 
respectively. Our American colonists, too, had shown their mettle in 
an expedition against Cape Breton Island in 1745, and the capture of 
Louisbourg, its capital. On the whole, however, both we and the French 
were glad to bring the war to a close. A congress was summoned, at 
which British, French, and Dutch representatives met ; and on April 
30, 1748, preliminaries of peace were signed, and a treaty was con- 
cluded at Aix-la-Chapelle in the course of the same year. 

By the articles of peace, all conquests were to be restored on both 
sides ; the Pretender was to be expelled from France ; Silesia was 
guaranteed to Frederick : and Maria Theresa's husband _ 

mi 1 r, • 1 Treaty of 

Francis was recognised as emperor. Though Spam also Aix-la-Cha- 
was included in the general pacification, the right of search ^^ 
was unmentioned. On the conclusion of peace, the army was at once 
reduced to eighteen thousand men ; but land in Nova Scotia was given 
to the disbanded soldiers, and, after the secretary of state, the name of 
Halifax was given to a new town. 

When the peace was concluded, Pelham gave his attention to domestic 
affairs. As a follower of Walpole he took great interest in finance, and 
devised measures to reduce the national debt. Since the Rate of 
initiation by Montagu of the practice of perpetual funding, De*brrU°" 
the debt had been steadily increasing. At the treaty of d^ced. 
Eyswick it amounted to ^21,000,000 ; at that of Utrecht to £53,000,000 ; 
at that of Aix-la-Chapelle to £78,000,000. Generally speaking, it could 
be divided into four heads : loans contracted in perpetuity ; loans 
raised in anticipation of special taxes ; loans advanced in return for 
annuities for life or a term of years ; and exchequer bills. William iii. 
had been obliged to guarantee an interest on the funded debt of eight 
per cent., and Anne of six per cent. ; but in 1716 the interest was 
reduced by Walpole to five per cent., and again, in 1727, to four 
per cent. However, in spite of the growth of the debt, the defeat of the 
Pretender had still further improved the credit of the government, and 
the widespread financial prosperity of the country made money cheap. 
Accordingly, in 1749, Pelham was able to efi'ect a still further reduction 

3d 



786 George II. 1749 

by offering the government creditors either to be paid off in full or to 
accept three per cent, interest. The majority accepted his terms ; the 
rest were paid off in full ; and shortly afterwards the fourteen different 
kinds of stock were consolidated into five. By these transactions Pelham 
effected an annual saving of above .£500,000. 

In 1751, Frederick, Prince of Wales, died of congestion of the lungs, 
possibly complicated by a wound caused some time before by a blow 
from a trap-ball. At one time he had been most unpopular ; 
Prince of and the cry of the London mob — ' Oh, that it had been the 
es. Butcher ! ' — showed how completely Cumberland had for- 

feited the esteem of the nation. He left a widow, Augusta of Saxe- 
Coburg, and nine children, the eldest of whom, born in 1738, was after- 
wards created Prince of Wales. The princess was a clever woman of good 
character, who saw clearly how important it was for her children that 
Death of ^^® should keep on good terms with the old king. A few 

Bolingbroke. months later, at the age of seventy-three, died Henry 
St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, a man who had hoped to be the evil 
genius of the Hanoverians, but had lived to see them fixed on the throne 
more firmly than ever. 

In 1752, through the influence of Lord Chesterfield, the calend|ir was 
reformed. Philip Dormer Stanhope, earl of Chesterfield, filled a large 
Lord place in the eyes of his contemporaries, but is now chiefly 

Chesterfield, remembered for some witty sayings and his celebrated 
letters to his son. He was born in 1694, and had early shown himself a 
consummate courtier, a good negotiator and an excellent debater. He 
never took a first place ; but, nevertheless, ought to be remembered 
as one of the very best lord-lieutenants of Ireland, to whose mingled 
tact and firmness it was probably due that Ireland was undisturbed by 
rebellion during the rising of 1745 ; and for having thrown up his post 
of secretary of state, in 1747, because his advocacy of peace was dis- 
regarded. He was now giving a general support to the ministry without 
holding office. At that date England followed the Julian calendar, 
which had been arranged by Julius Caesar. Its reckoning was incorrect, 
owing to the number of leap-years introduced being too many ; and, 
accordingly, the calendar was now eleven days behind the correct date. 
Attention had been called to this by the astronomers of the sixteenth 
century ; and in 1582, Pope Gregory xiii. had published the Gregorian 
calendar, in which the error was corrected. This had at once been 
Calendar adopted in all Koman Catholic countries, and eventually in 
reformed. ^11 European 'states except Great Britain, Sweden, and 
Russia. By Chesterfield's act, the 3rd of September was to be reckoned 



1754 Pelham 787 

as the 14th, and the year 1753 was to begin on January 1st, instead of 
on Lady Day, March 25, as heretofore. The quarter days, however, 
reckoning for the ' eleven days,' were to be April 5, July 5, October 10, 
and January 5. This change, which did away with much confusion and 
difficulty, was strongly resented by insuUxr prejudice. An election cry 
of ' Give us back our eleven days,' and 

' In 1753, 
The year was changed to popery ' — 

the refrain of a popular song — preserved the memory of the mixture of 
ignorance and prejudice by which it was in some quarters received. 

Another piece of useful legislation was the Marriage Act, brought in 
by Lord-Chancellor Hardwicke in 1753, by which it was arranged that 
persons about to be married must either have their banns 

The 

published on three successive Sundays in the church of the Marriage 

• • Act 

parish where each was residing, or must have a licence ; and 
that in any case the marriage must be celebrated in church between 
6 A.M. and noon. In any other place or hour a costly special licence 
must be obtained from the archbishop of Canterbury. This Act was 
designed to check clandestine and inconsiderate marriages, and was 
stoutly opposed by Henry Fox, who, haviug himself run away with the 
daughter of the duke of Richmond, regarded the bill as a personal insult. 
Charles Townshend, also, who was recognised as one of the wittiest 
speakers in the House of Commons, also opposed it in what he called the 
interest of younger sons, who, if the bill passed, would be deprived of 
all chance of securing an heiress ; and society laughed immoderately when, 
within a year of its becoming law, he consoled himself with an elderly but 
well-endowed dowager. 

Pelham died in 1754. He was not an old man, but had allowed 
himself to indulge too freely in the pleasures of the table, and had thus 
undermined his constitution before he was fifty-eight. Death of 
Though in no sense a brilliant minister, he had plenty of P^^^am, 
common sense, and inspired confidence by his probity, industry, and 
punctuality. Though no orator, he was able to make a clear statement 
on matters of business, and his conciliatory manner helped to disarm 
opposition. On hearing of his death George exclaimed—' Now I shall 
have no more peace ' ; a prophecy which proved true. Pelham's place as 
head of the ministry was taken by his elder brother, Thomas ^^^^^^^-^^^ 
Pelham, duke of Newcastle, born in 1694, one of the most 
singular men who have ever taken a high part in political life. He had 
been secretary of state for the last thirty years, and in experience of 



788 Gem-ge It. 1754 

business and of parliamentary management he had no rival, yet on the 
subject of his eccentricities the testimony of contemporaries is unani- 
mous. He was invariably in a hurry, and gave the impression of ' having 
lost an hour in the morning and being all the day looking for it.' In 
walking he saved time by adopting a half run half shuffle, and in talking 
by asking questions, but not waiting for the answers. He was extra- 
ordinarily ignorant of geography and of the general principles of 
statesmanship, but took his ideas from others, and occupied himself 
wholly with details. Like his brother, however, he was personally 
honest and disinterested. 

As the prime minister was now in the House of Lords, it was of the 
lirst importance to secure an efficient leader for the House of Commons. 

This presented great difficulties. Eventually the choice 
Leadership . . 

of the seemed to lie between Pitt and Fox ; but Newcastle was 

afraid of both of them, and preferred in their stead Sir 
Thomas Robinson, a dull, heavy man, who had been so long ambassador 
at Vienna that he hardly remembered the forms of the House of 
Commons. ' The duke,' said Pitt, ' might as well have sent his jack- 
boot to lead us,' and he and Fox, for the first and last time working in 
concert, joined to make Robinson's position unbearable. Their plan of 
campaign was for one to attack Robinson for his mistakes, and for the 
other to defend him on the ground of his inexperience, and it was a 
matter of speculation whether Robinson disliked most the attack or the 
defence. Before long this state of things became intolerable, and, 
choosing the lesser of two evils, Newcastle gave the leadership to Fox. 
A few months later, Pitt refused to give his consent to the payment of 
subsidies to Hesse and Russia, and was dismissed from the paymaster- 
ship, and then Fox obtained the coveted post of secretary of state. 

Meanwhile, causes arising out of the affairs of America and India, and 
almost wholly unconnected with home politics, had been making inevit- 
able a renewal of the war between England and France. 
Colonies Since the foundation of the colony of Massachusetts in the 
in North Hyhq of Charles i., the English colonies in America had been 

America. ' ^ 

making steady progress. In 1663 Carolina was founded, 
probably as a refuge for distressed royalists. Connecticut had been 
founded in 1635. In 1664 the capture of New Amsterdam had opened 
the way for the foundation of a new series of colonies lying between the 
old New England colonies and Maryland and Virginia. That of New 
York had been founded in 1664, New Jersey in 1665, and in 1681 
William Penn the Quaker founded his colony of Pennsylvania, and 
colonised it chiefly with members of the Society of Friends. In 1703 



1756 



Newcastle 



789 



Delaware was separated from Pennsylvania. A pause ensued till 1732, 
when Georgia was occupied by a colony of poor men under General 
Oglethorpe. By 1750, therefore, the colonies stretched north and south 
in an unbroken line for miles, and extended inland from the coast a dis- 




tance of, on the average, about two hundred miles. The white popula- 
tion, however, was only about two and a half millions, or about the same 
as that of Wales at the present day, and between the different colonies 
there was no political concert, and not a great deal of intercourse. 



790 Ge(yrge II. 1756 

North, south and west of the long line of English colonies lay the 
settlements of the French and Spaniards. Florida was the possession of 
The French Spain ; and the French not only held Louisiana and the basin 
Settlements. ^^ ^^le lower Mississippi, but also Canada, with its chain of 
lakes, and joining hands along the river Ohio, at the back of the English 
settlements, denied access to the west. Nor was their claim to this 
territory merely nominal. The French absolutely denied the right of 
the English to trade with the Indians, and in 1749 began a system of 
exploration and fort-building, the object of which was to surround the 
English colonies with an iron barrier. The chief of these forts were those 
of Niagara, on the river St. Lawrence, Crown Point on Lake Champlain, 
and, most important of all, Fort Duquesne, built at the point where the 
Alleghany river from the north and the Mononhangela from the south 
unite to form the Ohio river, which flows thence in a westerly direction 
to join the Mississippi. These proceedings of the French naturally 
excited the alarm of the colonists, particularly of the Virginians, and 
George Washington, a young Virginian planter, was sent out to examine 
Fort Duquesne, and upon his report a force of Virginian militia, with 
Washington as major, was sent to annoy the new-comers. It was, 
however, attacked by an overwhelming force at Great Meadow, and 
forced to surrender. After this outbreak of hostilities between the 
colonies, both France and England, though nominally at peace, sent out 
additional forces to America ; and though the main fleets passed each 
other in a fog, two French men-of-war were attacked and captured off 
the American coast by Captain Howe. The general sent out by the 
British was Braddock, a veteran of forty-four years' standing, and 
'intrepid and brave,' but who knew nothing of bush fighting, and 
despised irregular troops. The French commander was a German 
named Dieskau. In 1755 Braddock organised a second expedition 
against Fort Duquesne, led by himself and Washington, but within a 
few miles of the fort it was attacked in the forest by a force of Canadians 
and Indians, against whom Braddock's regular troops and parade tactics 
were utterly useless. Braddock fell, and only the skill of Washington 
and his provincials prevented a complete massacre. This disaster threw 
open a road to the southern colonies, of which the Indians were not slow 
to avail themselves, and Washington had as much as he could do to keep 
their raids in check, and to prevent them from penetrating even into tlie 
settled districts. Meanwhile, Dieskau, making a similar advance with 
French regular troops against Fort William Henry, at the head of Lake 
George, which discharges its waters into Lake Champlain, was defeated 
and killed by Johnson with a body of colonial militia from Massachusetts 



1757 Newcastle — Devonshire 791 

and New York, assisted by some friendly Indians. Such obvious viola- 
tions of peace made open war inevitable. The resumption of hostilities 
against France was loudly advocated by Fox and his patron the duke of 
Cumberland, and in May, 1756, war was formally declared against her. 

The outbreak of a colonial war between Great Britain and France 
coincided with a resumption of hostilities on the continent. Maria 
Theresa had never acquiesced in the surrender of Silesia 
to Frederick, and for years had been working to form a Sie*Seven°^ 
coalition against him. For this purpose her minister ^^^^^' "^^'■■ 
Kaunitz flattered Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis xv. 
and Augustus, Elector of Saxony and king of Poland, and induced them 
form an alliance against Prussia, in which she also hoped to have the 
assistance of Elizabeth of Kussia. Against such a formidable coalition 
Frederick turned for assistance to his uncle, George ii., whose Hanoverian 
instincts led him to view with apprehension the weakening of a Protest- 
ant German power, and in January, 1756, a defensive alliance between 
Great Britain and Prussia was signed. Having thus secured himself 
from an attack in the rear, Frederick determined to anticipate the pro- 
ceedings of his enemies by a forward movement, and in August, 1756, 
declaring ' that he meant to lay the cloth as far from home as possible,' 
he invaded Saxony, and having seized at Dresden the proofs of the 
alliance for his destruction, published them to the world as a justification 
for his conduct. He was then openly attacked not only by the French, 
Austrians, and Saxons, but also by Elizabeth of Eussia, whom Maria 
Theresa had won over to her alliance. Had Louis xv. been wise, he 
would probably have devoted his attention to the colonial war ; but, as 
it was, he treated the war in Germany as of the first importance, and 
that in the colonies as a secondary matter. 

The French began the war by an expedition against Minorca, which 
was defended by General Blakeney, who had been governor of Stirling 
in 1745. To relieve it a force was despatched under Admiral Minorca 
John Byng. He was the son of the victor of Cape Passaro, ^°^** 
and, without having seen much service, he had been promoted by his 
father's influence over the heads of better men. On arriving at Minorca 
he found that the French fleet outnumbered his own, and, after a partial 
engagement, he withdrew his squadron, more from half-heartedness and 
fear of responsibility than from cowardice. In consequence, the island, 
which had been in English hands close upon half a century, was com- 
pelled to surrender. The country was furious at the disaster, ^ ^^^^ 
and on his return home, Byng was at once tried by court 
martial and shot. His case was a hard one ; but only eight years before. 



792 George II. 1757 

the articles of war had been deliberately made more severe against faults 

of this kind, and even if they had not, popular feeling ran so high that it 

is doubtful whether the strongest government would have ventured to 

acquit him. Voltaire remarked of his execution, ' in England they kill 

one admiral to encourage the rest.' It is not improbable that a stern 

example was needed ; and the execution of the unfortunate Byng marked, 

once for all, the sense of the nation that odds must be most unusual to 

justify a British admiral in retreating before the enemy. 

The ministry which failed to save Byng was not that which had sent 

him out. Newcastle had been forced into the war by Cumberland and 

Fox, and was well aware that he had little aptitude or in- 
Devon- 
Bhire's clination for directing its operations. He wished to limit 

Ministry. ^^ ^^ much as possible, and nothing but old Granville's 
advice, ' If you hit, hit hard,' prevented him from giving an extra- 
ordinary order to attack men-of-war only and allow merchantmen to go 
free. The loss of Minorca completely staggered him, and before Byng's 
trial he resigned. His place was taken by the duke of Devonshire as 
representative of one of the great Revolution families, while 
Secretary Pitt became secretary of state and virtual head of the 
of state. government, supported by his brothers-in-law, Lord Temple 
and George Grenville. In pursuance of his policy of relying as much as 
possible on the national resources, one of Pitt's first acts was to bring 
forward and pass a bill for the organisation of a national militia, which 
Pitt hoped would act as a reserve for the regular army in time of war, 
and also as a nursery of efficient soldiers ; and he took this opportunity 
of raising the Highland regiments, who have ever since played so con- 
spicuous a part in every quarter of the globe. A nearer acquaintance 
with Pitt, however, did nothing to soften George's dislike of him. He 
regarded him as too much the friend of the Princess of Wales, and he 
conceived a violent dislike for Temple, who irritated him by his rudeness 
and want of tact — going so far, on one occasion, as to try and illustrate 
the case of Byng by comparison with George's own experience at 
Oudenarde. His feelings were shared by the duke of Cumberland, who 
positively declined to take command of the Hanoverian army so long 
as Pitt was in power. Accordingly, in April 1757, George suddenly 
dismissed Pitt from his post, and the resignation of Devonshire, of 
coarse, followed. 

George wished to form a government without having recourse either 
to Pitt or to Newcastle ; but found it impossible to do so, for Newcastle 
was supported by all the great Whig fiimilies and by the Princess of 
Wales, and Pitt by the citizens of London and the general voice of the 



1758 Neivcastle 793 

people. For eleven weeks he held out, and all sorts of combinations 
were attempted, but capitulation was inevitable, and ultimately the 
famous Newcastle-Pitt ministry was formed on the basis of 
Newcastle holding the post of prime minister, with the busi- Se^c'SJnd^*^^ ^ 
ness of manipulating the parliamentary majority ; Pitt that ^'"^^^'"y- 
of secretary of state, with a free hand in politics ; and Fox that of pay- 
master of the forces, with the opportunity of unlimited money-making — a 
division of labour much to the satisfaction of the parties concerned. 

The new ministry found the country in the lowest depths of despair. 
The long employment of foreign mercenaries had had its usual effect of 
making the native soldiery distrustful of their military Pitt in 
capacity, while the failure of Byng was interpreted as a Power, 
proof of the loss of our naval supremacy. Even Lord Chesterfield wrote 
that, ' whoever is in, or whoever is out, I am sure we are undone, both 
at home and abroad. We are no longer a nation.' From this depression 
Pitt set himself to rouse his countrymen. He had great belief in him- 
self. ' I can save the country,' he said, ' and I know that no one else 
can ' ; and he lived to verify his boast. His own energy was soon difi'used 
into every department : ' No one, it was said, ever entered Pitt's room 
who did not come out of it a braver man.' For the first time since the 
days of Oliver Cromwell, soldiers and sailors were chosen, not for rank 
or court influence, but for professional merit. Pitt himself showed his 
own moral courage by a remarkable change in policy. Hitherto he had 
been the vigorous opponent of any interference in Germany, but he now 
saw that success in India and America could best be secured by aiding 
Frederick to keep the French employed in Europe, so he boldly threw 
over his own professions, saying : ' I will conquer America for you in 
Cermany,' and advocated the assistance of Frederick in every possible 
way. 

Pitt was only just in time ; during the change of government the 
duke of Cumberland had gone out to Hanover and taken command of 
the Hessian and Hanoverian troops. The duke had never _ 

'- Cumber- 

been a great general, and he was now corpulent and short- land's 

sighted. Foolishly attempting to defend the line of the 
Weser, a river which could be forded at many points, he allowed himself 
to be out-manoeuvred and drawn into a battle at Hastenbeck. After a 
confused fight, both sides thought themselves beaten, but the French are 
said ' to have recovered their senses first.' In some negotiations which 
followed, Cumberland was completely outwitted by the French com- 
mander, and induced to sign a convention at Klosterseven, by which 
he agreed to allow the French to occupy Hanover till a general peace, 



794 George II. 1758 

and that his soldiers should not fight again during the war. George felt 
bitterly the failure of the duke : ' Here is my son,' said he, ' who has 
ruined me and disgraced himself.' Pitt's energy, however, soon put a 
different face upon aflFairs ; the convention of Klosterseven, like that of 
the Caudine forks in Koman history, was repudiated on the ground that 
generals in the field have no business to conclude agreements dealing 
with anything but the conduct of war. He then persuaded parliament 
not only to grant Frederick a subsidy of ^670,000 a year, but also to 
send British troops to Germany, and begged from Frederick the services 
of Ferdinand of Brunswick, one of his best generals, to lead the allied 
forces in Hanover. For Frederick the Great the capitulation of Kloster- 
seven was a very serious matter, as it enabled the French to attack him 
on the right, while the Austrians advancedagainst his left ; but fortunately 
he defeated the French at Eossbach in November, and the Austrians at 
Leuthen in December ; and, henceforth, Ferdinand of Brunswick took 
the French off his hands, without which assistance, it is difficult to see 
how the Prussians could have held their own. Pitt also sent a number 
of small expeditions against Eochefort, Havre, Cherbourg, and other 
places on the French coast, which, though not important in themselves, 
were not without value in keeping on the coast troops that might other- 
wise have been sent to Germany or America. Well might Frederick 
exclaim : * England's great travail has at length brought forth a man.' 

In America, the year 1757 was not marked by any important events. 

Loudon, who was sent out by Newcastle to succeed Braddock, was a 

War in mere letter-writing commander ; while Montcalm, the French 

America, leader, was an excellent officer, whose energy was seen in 

the general success of the French all along the line. Loudon's chief 

efibrt was an attempt to recapture Louisbourg, the capital of CajDe Breton 

Island, and the Gibraltar of the river St. Lawrence. It failed, however, 

for the French had twenty-two ships of the line in the river, and were 

too powerful to be attacked and too wary to fight. In 1758, Pitt 

organised a general attack on Louisbourg, Ticonderoga, and finally on 

Fort Duquesne. The expedition against Louisbourg was intrusted to 

Jefiry Amherst, a young officer of no great rank, but of solid abilities 

and great power of self-restraint, who had seen service at Dettingen, 

Fontenoy, and Hastenbeck, and with him he associated the impetuous 

Wolfe, thinking that the fiery nature of the one, and the self-restraint of 

the other would balance each other. They landed on the island in June, 

Capture of ^^^, in spite of the great strength of Louisbourg, contrived 

Louisbourg. ^Q capture it and destroy all the French shipping there. 

Wolfe then went home. In the Ticonderoga expedition, Pitt had associ- 



1759 



Newcastle 



795 



ated the veteran Abercromby and young Lord Howe, an excellent officer. 
Unluckily, Howe was killed, and Abercromby completely failed in an 
attack on Montcalm. That officer had entrenched himself behind a 
formidable outwork composed of felled trees, with the branches sharp- 
ened and turned outwards, and before this formidable obstacle Aber- 
cromby was compelled to retreat to the head of Lake George, after a 
terrible loss of life. The third expedition was more successful ; for the 
French, discouraged by the action of some Indians who were won over 
to the English side, evacuated Fort Duquesne, and Forbes, the com- 
mander of the expedition, changed its name to Pittsburg. These 
successes, however, Pitt designed to be merely a prelude to the utter 
expulsion of the French from Canada. Accordingly it was arranged 
that, in 1759, Amherst was to advance against Montreal by way of Lakes 
George and Champlain, and that Wolfe was to make his way up the St. 
Lawrence and attack Quebec. 




HEIGHTS OfBabRAH»UI— vTL 



G 




WOLFE'S OPERATIONS AT QUEBEC 



Wolfe was now thirty-three years of age. He had entered the army 
at fourteen, and by the time he was twenty-two had fought at Dettingen, 
Fontenoy, Culloden, and Lauffeld, and was lieutenant-colonel General 
of his regiment. In person he was thin and singularly ^oif^- 
frail, but his eyes were bright and piercing. As a young officer he had 
neglected no means to improve himself by reading and study ; he was 
actuated by lofty principle and elevation of mind, and had the art of 
calling out the best qualities of those with whom he came in contact. 

Quebec stands on the north bank of the river St. Lawrence,at its juncture 
with the Charles river. Behind it the ground rises abruptly to a plateau 
called the Heights of Abraham, along which the river St. Lawrence flows 



796 George 11. 1759 

at the foot of a line of precipices. Across the Charles river the clifl's 
are less abrupt, and between it and the gorge of the Montmorency, about 
Position of four miles lower down, Montcalm had placed an entrenched 
Quebec. camp. At Quebec the river is nearly a mile across, 
and opposite the mouth of the Montmorency it is divided into two 
channels by the island of Orleans. On arriving at Quebec, Wolfe landed 
his army on the island of Orleans, and after reconnoitring Montcalm's 
camp, attempted to storm it. The plan failed, however ; so the troops 
were transported to the south bank of the river, and Quebec was bom- 
barded from that side. Still no impression was made ; and after a weary 
wait of nearly three months, during much of which Wolfe was extremely 
ill, he determined as a last resource to land above Quebec and attempt 
to scale the precipices which led to the Heights of Abraham. On the 
night of the 12th of September the fleet escorted the boats up the river, 
French ^nd a series of lucky accidents combining to deceive the 
defeated. French sentinels, Wolfe and his men effected their landing 
unopposed, and made their way up the steep ascent almost without 
fighting, and drew up in battle array on the plain above. ' This is a 
serious business,' said Montcalm, when at break of day he saw from his 
entrenchments the red line of British soldiers. With all speed he broke 
up his camp, and marched across the Charles river and through Quebec 
to attack the intruders. Each army contained about 4000 men. Wolfe 
had no cavalry with him, and only one piece of artillery, but his men bore 
the assault well, and when the steadiness of their fire had thrown the 
assailants into confusion, a charge from the whole line completed the 
victory. Hitherto Wolfe had been everywhere, encouraging his men, 
but in the final charge he was struck by no less than three balls ; but he 
had still strength to order measures for cutting off the French retreat, 
Death of then, turning on his side, he said : ' Now, God be praised, 
Wolfe. J ^jjj ^^g ^jj peace,' and passed quietly away. His rival, 

Montcalm, was shot through the body in the retreat, and died in the 
evening of the next day. On the 18th Quebec surrendered ; but the 
conquest of Canada was by no means complete, for Amherst had got no 
farther than Ticonderoga, and winter compelled Saunders, with the fleet, 
to leave the St. Lawrence, leaving Murray in command of Quebec, with 
the anxious task of holding it through the winter against Levis, the 
worthy successor of Montcalm. Fortunately the British ships were back 
again in the spring before the French could bring their vessels down 
from Montreal to support Levis, and as soon as the weather permitted 
Murray advanced against Montreal, while Haviland joined him from 
Ticonderoga, and Amherst from Lake Ontario. Thus surrounded, the 



1759 Newcastle 797 

French had no course but capitulation ; and on September 8th the 
governor surrendered Canada and all its dependencies to the British 
crown, stipulating for the Canadians free exercise of their religion, and 
the possession of all their rights and privileges. 

Nor was America the only place where French and English settlers 
regarded each other with hostility. In India they had long been com- 
mercial rivals, and had recently entered into a political 
contest of the most important character. Trading settle- SetUenfents 
ments upon the coast of India had originally been made by *" ^"dia. 
the Portuguese ; but in 1600 an English East India Company had been 
formed, which had founded its own factories or trading stations — Madras, 
founded in 1629 ; Bombay, acquired from the Portuguese in 1662 ; and 
Calcutta, on a branch of the Ganges, founded in 1690, and then named 
Fort William. The Dutch, Danes, and French had also their factories ; 
the chief French factories being Pondicherry, not far from Madras, 
and Chandernagore, near Calcutta. The ground on which these factories 
were built was bought or hired from the native owners. They were 
fortified as all Indian houses were, and beside them there usually grew 
up a considerable town, inhabited by natives attracted to the place 
either for trade or to supply the various wants of the Europeans. For 
two centuries after European settlements were made, the merchants 
confined themselves strictly to trade and made no effort to extend their 
territories by conquest, or to interfere in the aflairs of the native states. 
Nevertheless, there was much jealousy among themselves ; and, in 1746, 
during the war of the Austrian succession, Labourdonnais, governor of 
Mauritius, had organised an expedition against Madras and captured the 
British settlement. It was, however, restored at the peace of 1748. 

Nevertheless there was a constant temptation to interfere in native 
politics, and many observant persons had remarked with what ease a 
strong military power might make itself master of India. ^^^ 
This was due to the peculiar conditions of Indian govern- Condition 
ment and society. The population of India is made up of 
the descendants of a succession of conquerors, who have crossed the 
mountains from Central Asia, and have, one after the other, conquered 
the descendants of the earlier invaders, who had become more or less 
enervated by life in the hot plains below. Such a succession of conquer- 
ing immigrations, however, is by no means peculiar to India. England 
has experienced the same fortune ; but whereas with us the various races 
have amalgamated and become indistinguishable by blood, language or 
religion, in India they have remained apart, and though living side by side, 
exhibit in all these respects the characteristics of different nationalities. 



798 Gem-ge 11. 1759 

with at least the ordinary amount of distrust and prejudice between them. 
Ill such circumstances patriotism, in the common sense of the word, is out 
of the question. A man's allegiance is due to his race, his religion, his 
employer, but not necessarily to his country ; and it is this absence of 
unity which for ages has made India an easy one to conquer and to hold. 
Politically, the north-east of India was under the rule of the 
Great Mogul, often called the Padishah, the representative 
of the Mohammedan Moguls or Mongols chiefs, among whom Akbar and 
Aurungzebe are famous, who crossed into India during the sixteenth 
century, and during that and the seventeenth made themselves masters 
of the upper waters of the Indus and the whole of the Ganges valley. 
By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, they had ceased to be 
conquerors, and regarded with apprehension the arrival of fresh Afghan 
hordes. The system of government which circumstances had forced on 
the Mogul sovereigns was analagous to feudalism. Each outlying district 
was in the hands of a nabob or viceroy, who was originally nothing more 
than an officer of the Mogul, but had rapidly developed into an hereditary 
ruler, owing little but a nominal allegiance to the central authority. Poly- 
gamy being universal, there were endless disputes about succession in 
every ruling house, which offered a tempting field for intrigue. Under the 
rule of the Mogul princes and their representatives, supported by their 
Mohammedan adherents, were the Hindus, who constituted the mass of 
the people. Their religion was Brahminism, and they cordially detested 
their Mohammedan rulers. They had not, however, the fighting ability 
of the Mahommedans ; and, moreover, they were themselves divided by 
their system of hereditary castes into classes which had little more in 
common than the Mohammedans and Hindus themselves. In southern 
and western India the chief power was in the hands of the Hindoo 
Mahrattas, whose chiefs were the Peishwa at Poonah, the Gaikwar 
of Baroda, Scindhia of Gwalior, Holkar of Indore, and Bhonsla of 
Nagpore — all of which are hereditary titles. These had never been 
conquered by the Moguls. Besides these great divisions there were 
an immense number of smaller ones, and many isolated chiefs, who 
owed allegiance to no authority, and maintained their position solely 
by the sword — such as the Eajpoots of the north-west. Personally, 
many of the natives were exceedingly brave ; but they had never 
adopted European discipline — that wonderful power which makes a 
mob into a machine, gives skill to the most awkward, and endows the 
whole with a courage far superior to that possessed by the individuals 
who compose it. 

The possibility afi^orded by this state of things for a European 



1759 Newcastle 799 

conquest of India had already been perceived by many, but it was first 
acted upon by Dupleix, governor of Pondicherry, at the time of the 
capture of Madras. His plan was to hire and drill an army 
of natives— or Sepoys, as they were called— and to offer ^"P^^^^- 
their services to any of the neighbouring princes or pretenders who were 
willing to make friends with the French. His success was so great that 
he acquired a preponderating influence in southern India, while the 
British were looked upon by the natives as mere traders, whose town of 
Madras had been captured by the French warriors. In self-defence, 
therefore, the British were compelled to adopt Dupleix's plan of hiring 
Sepoys, and to counteract his influence by taking sides against him in 
the native quarrels. In the course of 1751, a dispute arose between two 
rival Nabobs of Arcot, a town about equi-distant from Madras and 
Pondicherry ; and Chunda Sahib, the French candidate, was engaged in 
besieging Mohamed Ali, his rival, at Trichinopoly. To effect a diver- 
sion, the British sent an expedition to seize Arcot itself, and intrusted 
it to the command of Robert Clive. 

This remarkable man was born at Market Drayton, in Shropshire, in 
1729 ; and, after a stormy boyhood, was sent out to act as a clerk in the 
Company's factory at Madras. Utterly unsuited for desk 
work, Clive had welcomed the outbreak of war. He gladly 
exchanged the pen for the sword, and soon showed that he possessed 
all the qualities of a great commander, and also a genius for diplomacy, 
which made him more than a match for the natives. With five 
hundred men — two hundred of whom were Europeans — siege of 
he advanced upon Arcot. When the garrison saw him ^.rcot. 
approaching, undeterred by a terrible storm of thunder and rain, they 
fled with precipitation ; and Clive occupied the fort without the loss of 
a man. There he was shortly besieged by an overwhelming force which 
Dupleix had collected ; but for fifty days Clive and his little band held 
out against all the efforts of the besiegers. So devoted were the Sepoys, 
that they actually offered to subsist on the water drained off from the 
boiled rice, so that the grains might be kept for the European soldiers. 
At length, having been joined by a French force, the besiegers delivered 
a tremendous assault, but Clive again beat them off ; and, discouraged 
by their repeated failures, the besiegers marched away of their own 
accord. The defence of Arcot was recognised all over the world as a 
military achievement fit to rank with the great exploits of the world. 
Pitt described Clive in parliament as a ' heaven-born general ' ; ^nd when 
shortly after, the state of his health compelled him to visit England, 
he was received with distinction both by statesmen and soldiers. 



800 George II. 1759 

In 1756 fresh trouble broke out in Bengal. There the British held 
their factory at Calcutta as tenants of the Nabob of Bengal, who lived 
Surajah ^t Moorshedabad, farther up the river Ganges. The reign - 
Dowlah. -j^g Nabob was Surajah Dowlah, a stupid and effeminate 
young man, who was incited by French agents to think he could make 
more by quarrelling with the British company than by encouraging 
their trade. Accordingly he advanced with an army upon Calcutta, and 
seized all the British who had not escaped. The prisoners, apparently 
without his orders, were thrown into the small room since well known as 
the Black Hole of Calcutta. Only fourteen out of one hundred and forty- 
six came out alive. About this time Clive returned to Madras, and was at 
once put at the head of an expeditionary force, including the 39th regi- 
ment of the British army (now the 1st Battalion West Dorset), which bears 
on its colours, 'Primus in Indis.' The force sailed for Bengal under the 
convoy of Admiral Watson, and on reaching Calcutta Clive entered 
into a series of intrigues for the dethronement of the Nabob, and the 
substitution of Mir Jaffier. When all was ready Clive advanced towards 
Battle of the capital, and defeated the Nabob in the pitched battle of 
Piassey. piassey, fought on the 27th June, 1 757, in which 2000 British 
and 5000 Sepoys defeated about 40,000 native soldiers. The result of 
the battle was the dethronement of Surajah Dowlah ; Mir Jaffier was 
made Nabob in his stead, and the Company placed on its old footing in 
Bengal. Again Clive was compelled by the climate to return home, but 
his place was taken by Colonel Eyre Coote, who had fought at Piassey, 
and had a wonderful ascendancy over the Sepoys. Between him and his 
French antagonist. Count Lally, a descendant of an Irish exile, a long 
Battle of series of manoeuvring culminated in December 1760, in the 
Wandewash. \^^xaXq ^f Wandewash, near Madras, fought almost exclu- 
sively between Europeans. The result was a decisive victory for the 
British ; and after the action Coote's Sepoys are said to have thanked 
him for showing them what a battle between Europeans was like. 
Henceforward the natives regarded the British as better soldiers than 
the French. 

At sea Pitt had been . equally successful. Though no great naval 
action was fought, in the course of 1758 we took and destroyed in small 
encounters no less than sixteen French men-of-war, and a 
War. ^^^ great number of merchantmen, and captured Guadeloupe 
in the West Indies, and the island of Goree on the coast of 
West Africa. In 1759, however, a series of great victories recalled the 
memory of Blake and Eussell. It was the scheme to carry out an 
invasion of England, for which purpose a fleet of transports were 



1759 



Newcastle 



801 



collected at Havre at the mouth of the Seine, and the Toulon fleet was 
ordered to sail through the Straits of Gibraltar, join with that at Brest, 
and cover the passage of the invading force. Pitt intrusted the Medi- 
terranean fleet to Boscawen, and the Channel fleet to Sir Edward Hawke, 
and when De la Clue from Toulon was stealing along the Battle off 
Portuguese coast, Boscawen caught him off Lagos, took four ^^gos. 
ships, and dispersed the rest ; and Sir Edward Hawke, supported by 




Commodore Howe, braving the storms of a wild November night, 
dashed in among the Brest fleet, which Conflans had drawn ^^^^^^ ^^ 
up among the rocks and shallows of Quiberon Bay. 'Lay Quiberon 
me alongside the Soldi RoyaW were Howe's orders to his 
terrified pilot ; and, led bf their commander, the British ships with a loss 
of only forty men, captured, burnt, or drove on shore the greater nmnber 
of the French vessels. Rodney was chosen to bombard Havre, which he 

3 E 



802 George 11. 1759 

did most eflfectually, so that the French scheme of invasion was com- 
pletely ruined. Hundreds of French merchantmen were brought in as 
prizes, and ko completely were communications between France and her 
dependencies interrupted that Montcalm passed eighteen months without 
receiving a single letter. 

On the continent the years 1758, 1759 tried Frederick's powers to the 

uttermost. In the summer of 1758, Ferdinand gave him material aid 

by beating the French at Crefeld, and he himself defeated a 

tinental great Russian army in the terrible battle of Zorndorf. But 

^^' in November Frederick's overweening confidence led him to 

suffer a disastrous defeat in the night battle of Hochkirch, where his best 

soldiers perished, and nothing but his great skill in manoeuvring saved 

him from overwhelming ruin. However, by the aid of Pitt's subsidy, he 

reorganised his forces during the spring and took the offensive against 

the Austrians and Russians, whilst Ferdinand and the allies attacked 

the French. Foolishly separating himself from the English detachment, 

Ferdinand was defeated by De Broglie at Bergen ; but rejoining them. 

Battle of 1^6 drew the whole French army into an ambuscade near 

Minden. Minden. Here the French fought with their infantry on 

the flanks, and their cavalry in the centre, and the battle, as at Waterloo, 

consisted largely of cavalry charges against the British and Hanoverian 

squares. These were nobly repulsed ; but when a general advance was 

made, and the cavalry ordered to charge, Lord George SackviUe, the 

British commander — an admirable parliamentary speaker, but already 

suspected of cowardice— pretended not to understand. Ferdinand, in 

disgust, sent fresh orders to the marquess of Granby, the second in 

command, but the moment for decisive success had been lost. For this 

conduct Lord George was tried by court-martial, and his disgrace 

published to every regiment in the army. Unfortunately, a fortnight 

later, Frederick lost the battle of Kunersdorf, and for a time, Berlin 

itself was in the hands of his enemies ; but he was again saved by the 

dissensions of his "antagonists, each of whom waited for the other to 

inflict the final blow. Nevertheless, in 1760, Frederick's affairs seemed 

Battle of desperate, but again Ferdinand helped him by the victory 

Warburg, ^f Warburg, where Granby, charging without hat or wig, 

retrieved the honours of the English cavalry ; and Frederick's own 

victories of Liegnitz and Torgau just averted destruction. This was 

Frederick's critical year ; for, the next spring, Elizabeth of Russia died, 

and her successor, Peter iii., was his friend, Austria and France, however, 

still continued the war ; but no more important battles were fought, and, 

on the whole, Frederick's position improved. 



1760 



Neivcastle 



803 



It was in the midst of these exciting events that George ii. passed 
suddenly away at the age of seventy-seven. Though not a great king, 
he was by no means without his merits. He was true to his friends 
and steady in his policy, and in the troublous times of his successor, 
his days were remembered not without regret. Several good sayings 
of his are recorded. When some one told him that Wolfe was mad, he 
replied : ' I wish he would bite some of the other generals.' 



CHIEF DATES. 



Methodist Society founded, 








A.D. 
1730 


Excise Bill, 








1733 


Porteous Riots, 








1736 


Death of Queen Caroline, 








1737 


Fall of Walpole, 








1742 


Battle of Dettingen, 








1743 


Battle of Fontenoy, . 








1745 


Jacotoite Rebellion, . 








. 1745-46 


Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, . 








1748 


Siege of Arcot, . 








1751 


Death of Pelkam, 








1754 


Seven Years' War begins, 








1756 


Battle of Plassey, 








1757 


Capture of Quebec, . 








1759 


Battle of Wandewash, 








1760 



CHAPTEE III 

GEORGE III.: 1760-1820 
Born 1738 ; married Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, 1761. 

CHIEF CONTEMPOIIARY PRINCES TO 1789 

France. Prussia. 

Louis XV., d. 1774, Frederick the Great. 

Louis XVI. 

Fall of Pitt — The Wilkes Case — Estrangement of the American Colonies — Tlie 
Middlesex Election — Junius' Letters — Loss of the American Colonies- 
Parliamentary and Economical Reform— The Coalition— India— Ministry of 
the younger Pitt. 

At his accession George iii. was twenty-two years of age. He was 
strong and well formed, his personal character was excellent, and his 
Character manners pleasant, but his retreating forehead gave little 
of George, indication of ability. His speech, too, was stammering, 
and his habit of repeating his questions, and of constantly saying, ' Eh ? 
eh?' and 'What? what?' gave the impression that his capacity was less 
than it really was. As a matter of fact, though he lacked the power of 
taking a broad view of affairs, and was wholly deficient in that elasticity 
of mind which enables a man to recognise his own mistakes and to take 
up a new position, he was an excellent man of business, had a shrewd 
knowledge of character, and was thoroughly desirous of doing his duty 
to the best of his ability. He spoke English as his mother-tongue, 
regarded himself as an Englishman, declared in his first speech that he 
' gloried in the name of Britain,' and, as he was fond of field sports, and his 
likes and dislikes were those of the mass of his subjects, he bade fair to be 
a much more popular sovereign than either of his Hanoverian predecessors. 
Unfortunately, education had done little to improve George's mind, or 
remedy his natural deficiencies. By a singular oversight of the Whig 
His Educa- ministers his instruction had been allowed to fall into the 
tion . hands of men of high Tory or even Jacobite views. Books had 

been put into his hands which gave a completely wrong view of English 
history and the British Constitution, particularly of the revolution of 

804 



1760 Newcastle §05 

1688 ; and the result was that the new Hanoverian King of England held 
views which would have been much more appropriate for one of the 
Stuarts. This wa,s the more serious, as many of the old Jacobites, despair- 
ing of seeing the restoration of the Stuarts, had come over to the reigning 
family ; but as was wittily said—' While they left their king, they brought 
their principles with them ' ; and the name Tory, which under Pitt's rule 
had almost disappeared, was revived to designate the new converts. The 
rallying-place of this party was the court of the Dowager Princess of Wales. 
Educated at a petty German court, the Princess was ill acquainted with 
the British constitution, and her constant advice to her son was, ' George, 
be king.' Her chief adviser and friend was John Stuart, earl of Bute, a 
pompous and opinionated Scottish nobleman, who spoke so slowly that his 
words, said Charles Townshend, ' sounded like minute-guns,' and who was 
quite ignorant of the business of state. From the very beginning of the 
new reign, the effect of his influence was dreaded. A paper was posted on 
theEoyal Exchange, 'No Petticoat Government — No Scotch Favourite — 
No Lord George Sackville' ; and it was jestingly asked as a riddle, ' What 
coal should the king burn in his bedchamber — Newcastle, Scotch, or Pit 1 ' 
The object of the new king's dislike was the ascendency of the Whig 
revolution families, of whom Newcastle was the leader, and who had so 
completely engrossed power that even such able Whigs as jjis Political 
Fox and Pitt had been only grudgingly admitted to office. Views. 
George had read a book by Bolingbroke, called The Patriot King, in 
which it was advocated that a king should choose his ministers from the 
ablest men of all parties, and direct them to carry out a policy chosen by 
himself. Such a scheme had much in it to fascinate the imagination. 
George determined to act upon it, and as a first step to break the 
political power of the Whigs. To do this, however, was by no 
means easy ; their power rested on the memory of their past services 
and their family connections, supplemented for close on half a century 
by all the arts of political patronage. For this, the rapid increase 
in the number of government places, due to the development of the 
civil and military services, had been most valuable, and still more 
important were the facilities for parliamentary corruption afforded by 
the condition of the constituencies. Many of these were boroughs which, 
since they had received their right to send members, perhaps in the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, had utterly decayed, and others had 
been created by the Tudors and early Stuarts, with the distinct intention 
of keeping them subservient to the crown. The members The Rotten 
for such rotten boroughs— as they were called— were nom- Boroughs, 
inated by the crown or some neighbouring landowner ; and it was the 



806 George IIL 1760 

business of such a party-manager as Newcastle to enlist the patrons on 
the side of the Whigs. In 1780 it was asserted by a society called the 
' Friends of the People,' that no less than 200 members of the House of 
Commons were returned by places having less than a hundred voters 
each, and also that 357 members were practically nominated by 154 
patrons. So long as such forces remained in the hands of the Whigs, 
their position was impregnable ; and they had recently shown evidence 
of its strength by forcing Pitt upon George ir. George iii., however, 
determined to attack it, and he hoped to have the sympathy of the 
discontented Whigs, of the Tories, and of the great body of the electors, 
who had little more influence than he had himself. In the first instance, 
George had recourse to the services of Lord Bute, who held that in the 
present condition of affairs, ' the king was phantom, and the country 
under a mere oligarchy.' Two days after the accession, Bute was 
admitted into the privy council, and in March 1761 he succeeded 
Lord Holderness, Pitt's cipher-colleague, as secretary of state. With 
Bute in the cabinet, George was fully informed of the views and inten- 
tions of his ministers, and proceeded with great acuteness to use this 
knowledge for his own advantage. So long as the war lasted, however, 
it was impossible to dismiss Pitt, but he might be driven to resign ; and 
before the end of the year this was effected. 

During the earlier years of the war Spain had held aloof, but on the 
death of Ferdinand in 1759, he was succeeded by the king of Naples as 
Foreign Charles III. ; and the new king entered into a 'family com- 
Affairs. pact' with the court of France, to promote the interests of 
the Bourbon family. This treaty, however, was to be kept secret till 
the annual Plate fleet from South America had safely arrived at Cadiz ; 
but its effect was immediately seen when the French broke off some nego- 
tiations into which Pitt had entered. Of the reason of this, Pitt had ample 
information, and wished to forestall events by an instant declaration of 
war and the seizure of the Plate fleet. Bute, however, backed by the 
king, disputed Pitt's facts ; Newcastle shuffled and hesitated, and other 
members of the Cabinet, piqued by Pitt's threat of resignation if he did 

„ . . not get his own way, supported Bute. Accordingly, Pitt 
Resignation * Ji ff & jj 

of Pitt and threw up the seals, and was succeeded by George Grenville. 
However, as Pitt foretold, Spain, so soon as the Plate fleet 
was safe, declared war. Newcastle's resignation soon folloAved that of 
Pitt. Nominally, he retired because Bute refused to renew the subsidy 
to the king of Prussia ; in reality, because he found himself without a 
voice in the distribution of court patronage. For years this had been in 
the hands of the prime minister, and had been used to consolidate the 



1762 Newcastle — Bute 807 

power of the Whigs ; but George insisted, as in theory was his right, 
to distribute places and pensions himself. Newcastle, therefore, almost 
piteously complained that—' It was impossible to speak to members of the 
House of Commons when one did not know who had received a gratifica- 
tion,' and retired from office. Nothing in his official career, it was said, 
' became him so well as the leaving of it ' ; he asked no reward for him- 
self, and thirty years of place left him a poorer man by many thousand 
pounds. The road was now clear for Bute. In 1762, he Bute's 
became first Lord of the Treasury ; George Grenville was Ministry, 
one secretary of state. Lord Egremont, the Tory son of the Jacobite 
Wyndham, was the other, and Fox retained his post of paymaster of 
the forces. 

At sea, the war against France and Spain was meanwhile carried 
on with considerable vigour. Martinique, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. 

Vincent were taken, and after a vigorously conducted siege, 

TT 111 -ii- 1 1 'West Indian 

Havana was stormed, and three million pounds worth of islands 

treasure fell into the hands of the victors. Another expedi- ^'^^ ^^^ 
tion took Manila, the capital of the Philippine Islands ; and several rich 
Plate ships also fell into our hands, one of which alone was worth 
J800,000. On the continent Frederick held his own well against Austria, 
and Ferdinand and the marquess of Granby had again distinguished 
themselves on the Khine. 

Bute, however, with an eagerness for peace that left him little thought 
for the welfiire either of Great Britain or of her allies, resumed negotia- 
tions during the year ; and so anxious was he lest they should Negotiations 
fiiil, that he ofiered concessions right and left, and even pro- ^°»" Peace, 
posed to give up Havana without saying a syllable about an exchange. 
George Grenville would not stand this, and his resignation compelled 
Bute to ask for an equivalent, on which the Spaniards at once gave 
up the valuable province of Florida. As for Prussia, no word of the 
interests of our good ally escaped Bute ; and he would have allowed 
France to give up to Austria the Prussian towns she held on the Ehine, 
had not Frederick secured himself by negotiating a separate treaty at 
Hubertsburg by which he retained his dominions intact. This conduct, 
and the mean withdrawal of his subsidy, made Frederick ever after hate 
England. Eventually, by the Peace of Paris, Bute agreed to restore to 
the French Martinique, Guadeloupe, and St. Lucia ; to exchange Belle Isle 
for Minorca, and to retain Canada, and Cape Breton Island. We also 
kept Tobago, St. Vincent, Dominica, Grenada, and Florida ; but we gave 
up Havana, as the equivalent of Minorca, and Manila as a free gift. 
Pondicherry also was restored to the French. 



808 George III. 1763 

The peace of Paris, which, though it gave us great advantages, might 
have been much more favourable had Bute shown the most ordinary firm- 
ness, was very unpopular in the country, and was fiercely de- 
larity of the nounced by Pitt, who had long ago declared that 'no peace 
eace. ^£ Utrecht should again stain the annals of England.' In 

these circumstances Bute found it needful to secure the help of an 
efficient leader in the House of Commons, and for this purpose bought 
the services of Fox, at the price of an immediate seat in the cabinet and 
the promise of an eventual peerage. Fox did his work well ; the whole 
influence of the court was brought into play to neutralise the forces of 
Pitt and Newcastle ; and, to show his opponents what they had to 
expect, George himself struck the name of the duke of Devonshire off 
the privy council list. These tactics secured success ; and a vote of 
approbation of the preliminaries of the treaty was carried in the House 

of Commons by 319 to 65, The victory thus won, the 
Proscnp- -^ . 

tion of the court proceeded to the work of proscribing its opponents. 

'^^' Peers who had voted against it were deprived of their lord- 
lieutenancies, officers of their commissions in the army, and civilians of 
their pensions ; even humbler victims were not overlooked, and woe to 
the unhappy exciseman or tide-waiter who had received his place from 
Newcastle ! Happily, this wholesale dismissal of placemen, carried out 
on the principle of ' the spoils to the victors,' called down such execra- 
tions that it was never again imitated ; and the compromise has been 
accepted that all posts held by members of parliament are to be vacated 
at a change of government, but that other placemen are to be undisturbed. 
For his services Fox was raised to the peerage as Lord Holland. The 
negotiations between Bute and Fox had been carried on by Lord Shel- 
burne ; and as Fox thought he had been taken in by him, by what was 
called at the time 'the pious fraud,' the result was to gain for Lord 
Shelburne a character for double-dealing and the deadly enmity of the 
Fox family, which was ultimately a matter of great importance. 

For the moment Fox's effort had been successful ; but the dismissal of 
placemen was most unpopular, and before this storm had settled, Bute 

had raised another. The expenses of the war had been 
Fall of Bute. ,11/1. 

enormous. The national debt had mcreased to J 139, 500,000, 
and new taxes were imperative. It was therefore proposed to tax linen ; 
but this plan is said to have been rejected because Sir Francis Dashwood, 
the chancellor of the exchequer, could not be made to understand it 
The Cider sufficiently to explain it to the House ; and a tax on cider 
'^^^- took its place. It would have been hard to select an impost 

more unpopular or more unfair — the first, because it opened to the excise 



1763 Bute — Grenville 809 

officers every farmhouse where a gallon of cider was brewed ; and in the 
second, because it actually charged a uniform rate of five shillings a 
hogshead on every quality of cider, though the liquor itself varied in 
price from five to fifty shillings. At this the outcry grew worse ; and 
the burning of scores of 'jack-boots and petticoats' showed the uniwpu- 
larity of the prime minister. Even a guard of prize-fighters failed to 
restore his sense of security, and his resignation was sent in. He was, 
however, strong enough with the king to name his successor ; and, as 
Lord Chesterfield put it : ' The public still saw Lord Bute through the 
curtain, which, indeed, was very transparent.' 

The prime minister thus named was George Grenville, younger brother 
of Earl Temple, and brother-in-law of Pitt. Few other changes were 
made. The earl of Egremont continued to hold one sec- orenvilie's 
retaryship of state, and George Montagu, earl of Halifax, Ministry, 
took the other. Lord Holland remained paymaster, and Shelburne 
received the post of president of the board of trade. By this time 
George had organised a party in the Commons, who were ^he King's 
commonly spoken of as ' the king's friends.' These men, Friends, 
though rather Tory than Whig in sentiment, considered themselves as 
detached from any political party, and voted solely by the king's 
direction. As they numbered some sixty persons, a ministry which had 
not a very large majority was dependent upon their assistance ; and, 
consequently, George could turn out his ministers or maintain them just 
as he pleased. Such a system was, of course, utterly subversive of the 
fundamental notion of party government, but it was exceedingly difficult 
to defeat. George might, however, have been battled if the Whig party 
had been united ; but its long period of success had led to its division 
into sections, whose ditterences, though chiefly personal, were far too 
strongly marked to permit of their acting together. The 
first of these was that of the Eockingham Whigs, the Rockingham 
remains of Newcastle's old party. It consisted chiefly of 
the members of ' old Eevolution families,' and contained in its ranks such 
men as the dukes of Portland, Devonshire, and Richmond ; and in the 
Commons, General Conway, Lord John Cavendish, and Sir George 
Saville. The next section was that led by the duke of The Bedford 
Bedford ; their severance from the main body dated from ^^^s^- 
the time of Walpole, who always spoke contemptuously of them as the 
'Bloomsbury gang.' Besides Bedford, it included among The Chat- 
the peers Gower, Sandwich, and Weymouth ; in the Com- Grenville 
mons its best man was Rigby. The remaining two sections whigs. 
were the followers of Pitt and Temple and those of George Grenville, 



810 George IIL 1763 

afterwards known respectively as the Chatham and Grenville Whigs ; 
but as yet they were not very strictly defined. These parties refused to 
make common cause, so the king was able to defeat them in detail. 

Grenville was not a successful minister. Burke once defined him as a 
man of routine but not a statesman ; and Henry Fox said he was ' more 
George ^ hindrance than a help.' He w^as a fair parliamentary 
Grenville. speaker, but Avearisome in private conversation or cor- 
respondence. One of his ordinary letters fills seven pages of print, and 
contains one sentence of a hundred and fifty words. George, however, had 
chosen him, not to initiate a policy, but to carry out the king's ideas ; 
and so the sovereign rather than the minister must be regarded as 
responsible for mistakes. Their first error was the prosecu- 
tion of John Wilkes, member for Aylesbury, a clever but 
profligate man, who had started a magazine called the North Briton in 
opposition to Bute's paper the Briton, and was aided in writing it by 
Lord Temple and by Churchill the poet. From the commencement the 
North Briton was extremely scurrilous ; and in No. 45 it denied a claim 
made in the king's speech to credit for procuring peace for the king of 
Prussia, asserting that ' no advantage of any kind has accrued to that 
magnanimous prince from our negotiations, but he was basely deserted 
by the Scottish prime minister of England.' Everyone knows that the 
king's speech is written by the king's ministers ; but George chose to 
consider the accusation as a personal aff'ront, and insisted that Wilkes 
should be prosecuted. Accordingly Halifax, with the concurrence of 
Grenville and Egremont, issued a warrant the very next day, ordering 
the arrest of ' the authors, printers, and publishers,' but mentioning no 
names. Such an order is called a general warrant. Wilkes at once told 
the officers that it was illegal, but was arrested ; and George deprived 
him of his colonelcy of militia, and his friend, Lord Temple, of the lord- 
lieutenancy of the county of Buckingham. The arrest was also illegal on 
a second ground. Wilkes was a member of parliament, and as such 
could only be arrested for treason, felony, or breach of the peace. 
Wilkes' first action, therefore, was to claim his release under the Habeas 
Corpus Act ; and Chief-Justice Pratt, afterwards Lord Camden, at once 
granted it on the ground of privilege. Wilkes and the printers then 
sued the king's messengers for illegal imprisonment under a 'general 
warrant,' and were successful in obtaining damages. These events 
occurred in the spring of 1763. During the summer the North Briton 
was as violent as ever^ and spoke of Grenville's government as 'a 
narrow-spirited ministry, intent only on gorging their pockets with 
the plunder of the public' ; accordingly, Avhen parliament met in 



1765 Grenville 81 1 

November, tlie question was revived, and tlie House of Commons 
resolved, by 237 votes to 111, that No. 45 was a 'ftilse, scandalous, 
and seditions libel.' Shortly afterwards it declared that privilege of 
parliament did not confer immunity for libel, and ordered No. 45 
to be burnt by the common hangman. At the same time Wilkes was 
attacked in the Lords as the author of a poem called A71 Essay on 
Woman, an indecent parody of Pope's Essay on Man, which the Lords 
voted to be a breach of privilege on the ground that the notes to it were 
pretended to have been written by Bishop Warburton. Before anything 
further was done, Wilkes was wounded in a duel, and when better 
escaped to France. On this the House of Commons expelled him, on 
the ground that No. 45 had 'a manifest tendency to alienate the 
affections of the people from the king.' In the Lords, Cumberland, 
Newcastle, Kockingham, and Shelburne all voted for Wilkes, and Pitt 
and Barre defended him in the Commons. For this, Shelburne and 
Barre were expelled from all their posts, civil and military. The 
burning of the No. 45 caused a serious riot ; and the whole ajffair 
destroyed the little popularity which George's connection with Bute 
had left him. 

Grenville's next blunder was the attempt to tax the American colonies. 
It must, however, be understood that the taxes proposed were not 
designed to go into the British exchequer, but to be used 
in the colonies for the payment of expenses incurred in American 
the colonies. In not asking for a regular contribution to 
home expenses, Great Britain stood alone among the colonising nations 
of the world. Rome, Carthage, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and France 
all exacted tribute ; but our colonies had never been so burdened ; and 
Walpole, when the idea had been suggested to him, rejected it with con- 
tempt. During the Seven Years' War, however, the expenses of the colonial 
troops had been shared between the home government and the colonists — 
the king providing arms, ammunition, tents, and provisions ; the colonists, 
soldiers, clothing, and pay. For the future it would obviously be neces- 
sary to provide for a number of permanent troops both as a defence against 
the Indians and against foreign aggressions. Of our other dependencies 
the Irish parliament and the East India Company each maintained a per- 
manent army for its own defence, and Grenville and Townshend wished that 
a similar force should be supported by the American colonists. Moreover, 
the civil government of our newly acquired territories had raised the total 
cost of their civil service from £70,000 to £350,000 ; and Grenville stated 
his desire to find ' in what way, least burdensome and most palatable to 
the colonists, they might contribute towards the additional expense of 



812 George III. 1766 

their civil luid military establishments.' The question evidently raised 
the whole subject of the relations between parliament and the colonies, 
and it was complicated by the fact that at that moment the colonies, 
who had S]3ent, in proportion to their resources, immense sums on the 
war, were finding considerable difficulty in meeting their liabilities, and 
also by the trouble that had recently arisen about smuggling. According 
to the Navigation Acts, our colonists had no right to trade with any 
power except Great Britain, but in practice a large trade between them 
and the Spanish and French possessions had been tolerated. New 
England jDroducts had been largely exchanged for sugar from the French 
and Spanish islands ; and the traffic, though technically smuggling, was 
carried on by respectable firms without interference from the Custom 
House authorities. After the peace, Grenville had found it necessary to 
conciliate the Spaniards by putting a stop to it, and the attempt to do so 
had caused nmch irritation in America. 

For the purpose of carrying out the Navigation Laws, customs duties of 
a nominal value had long been imposed at the colonial ports. Grenville 
Customs iiow proposed to raise the value of these customs, and so to 
Duties. combine a more stringent enforcement of the Navigation 
Laws with the placing of an additional sum at the disposal of the colonial 
governors. Though the right of the British parliament was undisputed, 
this act caused considerable stir, and the colonists were still further dis- 
quieted when Grenville gave notice that next year he proposed to levy a 
The Stamp stamp-duty in America, estimated to bring in not more than 
^^^' J100,000 a year. Against this six out of the thirteen colonies 

formally protested, not so much on the ground afterwards taken up that 
such taxation was illegal, as on the ground that it was inexpedient ; but 
in spite of the colonial protest and the eloquent speeches of Conway and 
Barr^ in the Commons, Grenville carried his bill by a majority of two 
hundred votes. The new duty was levied on the stamped paper used for 
legal documents, and varied in amount from 3d. to 10s. according to the 
nature of the transaction recorded, and also on the paper used for news- 
papers. The proceeds were to be used exclusively for the protection and 
defence of the colonies. This was the first attempt to levy an internal tax. 
It infringed the general principle of the British Constitution that no people 
may be legitimately taxed except by themselves or by their represen- 
tatives ; and was made more alarming by a remark of Grenville's in the 
House of Commons that 'it was designed as an experiment towards 
further aid.' The fears of the colonists were now fully roused, and 
Patrick Henry, a member of the Virginia assembly, was said to have ' rung 
the alarm beU to the rest of America ' by bringing forward and passing 



1765 Grenville — Rockingham 813 

a series of five resolutions declaring that the colonies could not be taxed 
without their own consent ; and no less than nine of the colonies ap- 
pointed representatives to meet as a ' Congress ' at New York and con- 
sider the whole situation. Meanwhile, the people refused to make use 
of the stamped paper. All attempts at compulsion failed, and numerous 
riots gave proof of the violent spirit which had been engendered. At the 
same time, great efforts were made to promote colonial manufactures so as 
to render the colonies independent, as far as possible, of home manufactures. 
This resulted in widespread distress among English merchants and 
manufacturers. 

Before this state of afi'airs, however, had lasted long, a change of 
ministry in England gave a fresh turn to events. Grenville had never 
been popular with George, whom he bored by his intermin- p^u ^^ 
able and argumentative speeches ; and quite in the early Grenville. 
days of his ministry the king had vainly attempted to replace him by 
Pitt. However, during 1763, Grenville strengthened himself by an 
alliance with Bedford, who agreed with him in regard to Wilkes and 
America, and this coalition had produced a fairly stable government in 
which Bedford was so much the more powerful that it is often spoken of 
as the Bedford Ministry. However, in 1765, a new cause of offence 
arose. During an attack of illness, George showed symptoms of the 
mental disorder Avhich overclouded his later years, and it became 
necessary to provide for possible contingencies by passing a Regency 
Act. This delicate matter was managed by the ministers in the most 
tactless manner. They ofi'ended the duke of Cumberland by omitting his 
name, and then persuaded George to omit that of the Dowager Princess of 
Wales, on the ground that owing to the unpopularity of her connection 
with Bute, probably the House of Commons would not accept her name. 
On the contrary, the House of Commons inserted it, so that the king 
was made to appear as ofiering a gratuitous insult to his mother. George 
was deeply chagrined, and, with Cumberland's aid, set about finding 
another minister. 

The first application was made to Pitt, but Pitt declined because he 
thought himself unable to act without Temple ; and that fickle nobleman 
refused his aid ' for certain delicate and tender reasons,' ^^^ ^.^^^ 
which proved to be an impending reconciliation with his Rockingham 

Ministry. 

brother Grenville. Cumberland then made overtures to the 
followers of Rockingham and Newcastle, and they agreed to take office 
with Rockingham as first lord of the treasury, and Newcastle as privy 
seal. One secretaryship of state was held by the duke of Grafton, and 
the other, with the leadership of the House of Commons, by Conway. 



814 George III. 1765 

Rockingham would gladly have had the aid of Shelburne ; but Shelburne 
had now given up all connection with Bute and Fox, and through a com- 
munity of ideas on the Wilkes affair and on American taxation, was rapidly 
drifting into an alliance with Pitt. He was, moreover, also deterred 
from joining by the circumstance that Rockingham was giving the post 
of vice-treasurer of Ireland to the notorious Lord George Sackville. 
Rockingham's private secretary was a young Irishman, Edmund Burke, 
already well known as a man of immense knowledge, but as yet without 
a seat in parliament, who was destined to play a most important part in 
the history of his country. Opposed as they were by the Grenvilles 
and Bedfords, and coldly supported by Pitt, the Rockingham govern- 
ment depended from the outset on the precarious aid of 'the king's 
friends,' and it seems to have been understood from the moment they 
took office that George would rid himself of them at the earliest 
opportunity. 

The new government was formed in July 1765, and when parliament 

met in December, two great measures were passed : one repealing the 

Stamp Act, the second declaring the right of parliament to 

the Stamp legislate for America ' in all cases whatsoever.' The first 
was that on which the ministers relied for conciliation ; but 
public opinion compelled them to pass the second in order to vindicate 
the dignity of parliament. They were, however, assured by Benjamin 
Franklin, the well-known agent-general for Pennsylvania, that ' the 
resolutions of right would give the colonists very little concern, if they 
are never attempted to be carried into practice.' In passing both acts 
the Rockingham ministry had the full support of Pitt, who declared 
' that he was glad the colonists had resisted,' and pointed out that our 
trade with the American colonies was worth ^£2,000,000 a year, and that 
we were risking that sum for a miserable pittance. They were also aided 
by Shelburne, but were openly opposed by Grenville and the Bedford 
Whigs, and covertly by 'the king's friends.' Franklin's words proved 
true. The repeal of the Stamp Act was received with enthusiasm at 
both sides of the Atlantic, the reduced duties were readily paid, and for 
a time no notice was taken of the Declaratory Act. 

In spite, however, of his support of the repeal of the Stamp Act, Pitt 

held to a distinction between supporting measures and acting with men. 

He repeatedly refused to join the administration, though he 

Rocking- gave a hearty support to the passing of a resolution by 

^^"^' which 'general warrants' were condemned as absolutely 

illegal. This resolution, and the repeal of the Stamp Act, were bitterly 
resented at court ; ' the king's friends ' began to vote against the king's 



1766 Rockingham — Grafton 815 

ministers ; and, after having held office exactly a year, Rockingham was 
dismissed. 

Application was then made to Pitt. That statesman, who had forced 
himself into high office in spite of the party of which Eockingham was 
now the leader, disliked party connections ahnost as much Grafton's 
as the king did, and thinking that the way was now clear for Ministry, 
the formation of a ministry composed of men of all parties, he readily 
accepted office. The nominal head of the new ministry was the duke of 
Grafton, one of Rockingham's secretaries of state ; the other, Conway, re- 
tained his post, and the leadership of the Commons. Charles Townshend 
was chancellor of the exchequer. These all ranked as followers of Rocking- 
ham. Pitt himself was privy seal, his old friend Pratt became chancellor 
as Lord Camden, and his new ally, Shelburne, in spite of the hostility of 
the king, was made the second secretary of state. Lord North and Barre 
also had places. No post was offered to Rockingham, or to any member 
of the Bedford or Grenville party. 

This administration, which was afterwards described by Burke as ' a 
piece of diversified mosaic,' very curious to look at but most unsafe to 
touch, had an appearance of strength much greater than the 

T T •, 11/. ^ ^ n 1 -, Weakness 

reality ; but it was unlucky irom the first, and turned out of the new 
a complete failure. Pitt's office of lord privy seal necessi- *"'^ ^^' 
tated his sitting in the House of Lords, and his acceptance of the title of 
earl of Chatham was a mistake so great that it seemed to many an act 
of political suicide. Not only did he leave the House of Commons, 
which for years he had ruled with almost unquestioned authority, for the 
House of Lords, where his fiery rhetoric was completely out of place, but 
it lost him his popular title of ' the great commoner,' and greatly impaired 
his reputation for disinterested patriotism. Moreover, his efibrts to group 
together such a heterogeneous body of politicians resulted in his own 
views having no adequate support in his own administration, while his 
efibrts to strengthen himself by negotiations with all parties made him 
at least as many enemies as friends. In these circumstances it was 
suddenly announced that he w^as ill. How ill he was will never be 
known, but he first refused to see his colleagues, or even to have an 
audience with the king ; then he ceased all attendance at parliament, 
declined even to answer letters, withdrew to his country -seat, or to 
Bath ; and finally took no share in public business. 

Left thus without a head— for Grafton, though not without ability, 
had little real influence— the ministry had neither coherence charles 
nor policy. Charles Townshend, the witty but volatile chan- Townshend. 
cellor of the exchequer, driven to despair by an adverse vote of the 



816 George III. 1766 

House, which reduced the land-tax from four to three shillings in the 
pound, again bethought himself of America as a source of revenue, and 
imposed customs duties, to the estimated value of £40,000 a year, on 
glass, paper, pasteboard, white and red lead, painters' colours and tea. 
Out of the proceeds were to be paid the salaries of the colonial governors 
and judges, and any surplus was to be applied to colonial defence. 
As another source of revenue he at the same time bargained with the 
East India Company for an annual payment to government of £400,000. 
These acts took up most of the session of 1767, and in September 
Townshend died suddenly of fever. This unexpected event caused 
further confusion. Chatham made no sign ; so Grafton in despair 
effected a coalition with the Bedford Whigs, and also brought into the 
Cabinet Lord North, the eldest son of the old Jacobite, Earl of Guild- 
ford. 

In March 1768, there was a general election. Wilkes came back from 
Paris, and, after obtaining a considerable number of votes for the city 
of London, was triumphantly returned for Middlesex ; the 
election cry of his supporters being ' Wilkes and Liberty.' 
Then, before parliament met, he surrendered to the Court of King's 
Bench, and was committed to King's Bench prison to await sentence on 
his former conviction for libel. Meanwhile parliament met on May 10, 
and a violent mob, angry that Wilkes was not released, assembled at the 
prison and made such a disturbance that the military Avere called in, the 
Eiot Act read, and a score of persons were killed and wounded by the 
fire of the soldiers. Whether from ill luck or accident, a Scottish 
reo-iment was employed, and Wilkes, becoming possessed of a letter in 
which the secretary of state had ordered the magistrates to make use of 
the military in case of emergency, made a fresh attack on the Scots, and 
fiercely inveighed against Weymouth's ' bloody scroll' On his appear- 
ance in court Wilkes was then sentenced for his former libels to pay 
£1000, and to be imprisoned for twenty-two months, but the court did 
not dare to put him in the pillory. This sentence was regarded as 
simply malignant ; and Wilkes and his ' 45 ' became so popular that the 
number was scored upon every wall and vehicle within fifteen miles of 
London, and even the Austrian ambassador was dragged out of his coach 
and had the mystic number chalked on the soles of his shoes. 

When the excitement was at the highest Chatham resigned, and there 
were not wanting those who suggested that a dramatic opportunity rather 
Resignation than improved health was what he had long been waiting 
of Chatham. £qj._ j^ ^^^ g^^j^ rumoured that he would be well enough 

to appear in opposition. 



1769 Graftm 817 

Meanwhile, the Wilkes' case was giving infinite trouble to the ministers. 
Grafton would gladly have pardoned him, and allowed him to sink to his 
natural level ; but George regarded the affair as personal to wiikes and 
himself, and insisted that he should be expelled from parlia- Middlesex, 
ment. Accordingly on February 3, 1769, his expulsion was voted on the 
ground of his former libels and his recent attack upon Weymouth. On 
the 16th he was re-elected unopposed, and the very next day the House 
voted, by 235 to 89, that he was ' incapable of sitting in the present par- 
liament,' and a new election was ordered. Again Wilkes, who was still 
in prison, was returned unopposed, and the election again declared void. 
Finally, at the fourth election. Colonel Luttrell, afterwards Lord Car- 
hampton, stood against him, and though Wilkes received 1143 votes to 
296 given for his opponent, the Commons declared, by 197 votes to 143, 
that Luttrell ' ought to have been elected,' and gave him the seat. The 
decision was grossly unconstitutional ; for even if Wilkes was ineligible, 
it did not follow that Luttrell commanded a majority of the voters, and 
the conduct of the government was strongly denounced by the whole 
weight of the Eockingham and Grenville Whigs, and also by Lord 
Chatham's friends. Lords Shelburne and Temple, in the Lords, and l:)y 
Conway, Burke, Grenville, and Barre, in the Commons. Out of doorw 
the government was most unpopular. Grafton commanded no respect, 
either for character or ability. Repeated riots showed the violence and 
discontent of the masses, while the press teemed with letters and 
pamphlets which equalled the North Briton in violence and excelled it 
in ability. 

Of these, special attention was called to a series of letters which were 
published over the signature of ' Junius,' and were printed in the Public 
Advertiser. The first letter with this signature appeared in The Letters 
November, 1768 ; and in January, 1769, a series of letters of '!""»"«•' 
began which culminated in December, 1769, in a letter addressed to the 
king, and terminated in January, 1772. Several causes gave notoriety 
to these letters. Their style was excellent ; the virulence of their 
invective surpassed anything yet seen, even in that foul-mouthed age ; 
they dealt largely in private scandal, and, above all, they were written by 
some one who was evidently, to a large extent, behind the scenes. All 
these things ensured plenty of readers, and the letters were republished 
in papers and magazines all over the kingdom. Who ' Junius ' was has 
never been known ; and though many believe that the writer was Philip 
Francis, a clerk in the War Office, there is strong evidence to the contrary ; 
and even if he wrote the letters, it is quite possible that he was inspired 
and aided by some one of higher position. ' Junius ' was in favour of 

3 F 



818 ^ George III. 1769 

Wilkes, but opposed to the American colonies — an attitude which pro- 
bably reflects very fairly that of the average Englishman of the day, 
and goes far to account for the influence of his writings. 

Meanwhile, in parliament a strong opposition had been formed in both 
Houses. Rockingham, Richmond, Chatham, and Shelburne in the 

Grafton Lords, and Grenville, Barre, and Burke in the Commons, 

Resigns. though not agreed among themselves, united in attacking 
the ministers. Before such a phalanx of ability and influence Grafton 
quailed ; and on January 15, 1770, the very date fixed for a debate in the 
House of Lords on the state of the nation, Grafton resigned. Had 
the opposition been united they might now have forced their own terms 
on the king ; but there was no real bond of union between Rockingham 
and Chatham. So George, cleverly taking advantage of their diflerences, 
contrived to reorganise the government under the leadership of Lord 
North. 

The new prime minister was one of the most remarkable parliamentary 

figures of the time. Though clumsy and short-sighted, he was a 

capital debater and an excellent man of aflairs, while his 
Lord ^ ' 

North's imperturbable good temper enabled him to bear with 

inis ry. equanimity the most virulent invective of the opposition, 

and his wit to turn the laugh against his opponents. In private life 

he was a universal favourite. North's weakness, however, lay in an 

easiness of disposition which led him to carry out plans of which he did 

not approve rather than take the troulile to oppose them. It was, 

however, this quality which recommended him to George, who found in 

him exactly the prime minister for whom he had been seeking — one 

pliable enough to adopt the king's policy as his own, and sufficiently 

clever to defend it in the House of Commons. George's policy met with 

even greater success than might have been expected. Within a short 

time the opposition fell completely to pieces. Rockingham's opposition 

was lukewarm. Wilkes lost ground by his character. Grenville died in 

1770, Bedford in 1771, and in the same year Shelburne and Barre went 

abroad. The result Avas that North was all-powerful in parliament, and 

as the country thoroughly approved of his American policy, the opj)osi- 

tion had little hope of improving their position. 

Several important domestic events marked the beginning of North's 

administration. As the personality of ' Junius ' could not be discovered, 

Prosecution an attempt was made to prove his publisher Woodfall guilty 

of Woodfall. Qf publishing and printing a seditious libel, but the jury 

found Woodfall guilty, not of libel, but of publishing only. On this the 

judge, Lord Mansfield, denied the right of the jury to judge of the law 



1771 North 819 

as well as the fact, and a legal controversy arose which was not finally 
settled till 1792, when Fox's Libel Act, passed with the consent of all 
parties, declared the right of the jury to find a general verdict. 

In 1771 the vexed question of parliamentary reporting was finally 
settled. Since the decisions of the House of Commons, in 1728 and 
1738, that the publication of parliamentary debates was a 
breach of privilege, the public had had to be content with mentary 
reports of a most inferior kind. Some were published '■^p°^^'"&- 
under the title of Debates in the Parliament of LilUjmt, and others oave 
the names of the speakers in Ijlank ; but none professed to be really 
accurate. Eeporters obtained from friends the order of the speakers 
with the heads of their arguments, and trusted to imagination for the 
rest ; while Dr. Johnson once declared that one of Pitt's most celebrated 
speeches was written by himself ' in a garret in Grub Street,' and con- 
fessed that he habitually arranged the arguments so that 'the Whi_o' 
dogs should have the worst of it.' However, in 1770, all disguise was 
thrown ofi" ; and next year the Commons, alarmed for their privileges, 
arrested one Miller for a breach of privilege in publishing their debates. 
Miller, being a livery-man of London, appealed for protection to the 
lord mayor. The messenger of the House was accordingly arrested and 
brought before the lord mayor and alderman Wilkes, and held to bail. 
The House was extremely angry, and sent the lord mayor, who was a 
member of parliament, to the Tower ; but the action was so unpopular, 
and the attitude of the city so threatening, that the matter was allowed 
to drop. Since then reporting, though nominally illegal, has practically 
been undisturbed. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the 
change. The newspapers took full advantage of their liberty, and the 
result was the rapid growth of an educated opinion on public affairs, 
which soon showed its influence on the government of the country. This 
was in itself a great check on the action of members ; and in 1770 a 
change had been introduced which did something to check corruption in 
parliamentary elections. Until this date election petitions, Election 
like that of Chippenham (see p. 768), had been tried before Petitions, 
a committee of the whole House, and the members had given a strict 
party vote without regard to the merits of the question ; but in 1770 
George Grenville succeeded in persuading the House to rid itself of this 
scandal by appointing a select committee of sworn members to inquire 
into any alleged malpractices. This plan was a great improvement ; but 
even the select committee was largely influenced by party feeling, so 
that in 1868 it was decided to put the trial of election petitions into 
the hands of the ordinary judges. 



820 George III. vn\ 

In 1770 Burke published a pamphlet entitled Thoughts on the Cause 
of the Present Discontents, the object of which was to explain to the 
country the working of the system by which George really 
controlled his ministers and parliament by the votes of ' the 
king's friends,' and to show how fatal this was to the proper working of 
the constitution. Edmund Burke was an Irishman, born in 1729. His 
first connection with politics arose from his writing the political part of 
the Aniuial Register, first published in 1759 ; and he then became 
private secretary to the marquess of Kockingham. He entered parlia- 
ment in 1765, and soon became the spokesman of the Rockingham 
Whics. In views, Burke's tone of mind was essentially conservative. 
He embodied the time-honoured English idea that the constitution was 
itself perfect and required only to be freed from abuses, and he had a 
thoroughly British distrust of all abstract reasoning on political matters. 
At this time of his life he regarded George's action as a danger to 
the constitution, and as such he resisted it. In parliament Burke was 
never a great success. His Irish brogue was against him, and he 
wearied the House with set phrases and elaborate metaphors, which 
were ill appreciated after North's jokes and Fox's gay dashing onslaughts. 
With the pen, however, he was more powerful ; and many of his 
speeches, which only emptied the House of Commons, are now read as 
mines of political wisdom, and have tended to give an exaggerated 
idea of his importance and that of the Rockingham Whigs with whom 
he acted. 

In 1774 George compelled Lord North to pass the Royal Marriage 
Act. The cause of this was to be found in the unsatisfactory marriages 
made by the king's brothers, the dukes of Cumberland and 
Marriage Gloucester; and George wished to prevent such conduct for 
^^' the future by putting it into the power of the reigning king 

to veto such marriages. According to the terms of the new Act, no 
descendant of George ii., except those of British j)rincesses married 
into foreign courts, might marry without the consent of the reigning 
sovereign unless he or she was twenty-five years of age, had given a year's 
notice of the intended marriage to the privy council, and no petition 
against it had been presented by parliament. Contrary to George's 
intentions, this Act had the worst effects. Almost all his sons con- 
tracted marriages which were in everything but law binding, and then, 
by the terms of this Act, were able to repudiate them afterwards, to 
the manifest injury of morality. 

This Act was strongly opposed by Charles James Fox, second son of 
Lord Holland, who now began to play a great part on the parliamentary 



1774 North 821 

stage. Fox was bom in 1'749, and educated at Eton and Oxford. Though 
indulged by his parents, and encouraged by his ftither to plunge into 
all forms of dissipation, he contrived— being, as he said, ' a 
very painstaking man '-—to acipiire a thorough knowledge ^^^^^^^ ^°''- 
of Latin, Greek, French, and Italian, and to become an adept at every 
sport or pastime in which he indulged. In parliament Fox soon showed 
himself to be a debater of the first rank. In spite of his short, thickset 
figure, and the fierce expression given by his black hair and SAvarthy 
complexion, he gained an influence to which men of more taking 
exterior aspired in vain ; and, though he had been brought up by his 
father in the narrowest school of place-hunting, his natural good sense 
and honourable character eventually taught him to take a wider view. 
At present he still ranked as a follower of Lord North. 

While these events had occurred at home, the unremitting attention 
of the government had been required for American affairs. Townshend's 
taxes had raised a storm of resistance, English n;oods had 

^ ^ The 

been boycotted by almost unanimous consent ; and Massa- American 
chusetts had put itself at the head of an agitation which 
bade fair to develop into a repudiation of the authority of the British 
parliament either to tax or to legislate, Grafton's government had met 
this by a display of additional force. In 1768 a reinforcement of two 
thousand soldiers was sent to Boston, making the British force in the 
colony up to ten thousand men ; and, by the advice of the Bedford 
section of the ( Jabinet, it was seriously contemj^lated to l:)ring the chief 
agitators over to England, and try them for treason under a law of 
Henry viii. for dealing with treason committed 'outside his majesty's 
dominions ' — a singularly inappropriate law to quote. The presence of 
the soldiers served only to exasperate the men of Boston, who took 
every opportunity of insulting and annoying them ; and when, on 
March 2, 1770, a j^arty of seven soldiers fired in self-defence on a 
threatening mob, and five men were killed, the affair was magnified into 
a ' massacre,' and made a pretext for demanding the withdrawal of the 
whole of the British forces. 

On North's accession to office he determined to try the effect of concilia- 
tion, and repealed all the taxes except that on tea, which stood at the trifling 
figure of threepence per pound. This he maintained, at North tries 
George's request, as an example of a principle, while to allay Concihation. 
apprehension a circular was issued pledging the government to raise no 
further revenue in America. The plan of making America contribute 
directly to the expenses of her defence and government, which had been 
the object of Grenville and Townshend, was thus virtually abandoned : 



822 George III. 1774 

at the same time the soldiers were withdrawn from Boston. This change 
of policy was fairly successful, and for a time there seemed to be some 
chance that the agitation would die out. Two events, however, proved 
fatal to this. 

Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, an American by birth but 
distinctly opposed to the agitation, wrote a series of private letters to 
Hutchinson's ^^^^ friend Whately, under-secretary of state in England, 
Letters. i^ which lie spoke his views strongly, and raised the 

question whether a colony 3000 miles distant should have the same 
liberties as the mother-country. On Whately's death these letters 
came into the hands of Benjamin Franklin, who was then agent-general 
for Massachusetts in London, and he, in a wholly indefensible breach of 
confidence, sent them to America. There they were published, and aroused 
the wildest indignation. Hutchinson's recall was demanded in a petition to 
the king. This was heard before the privy council, and Franklin, as 
agent, was present. In the debate that followed, Wedderburn, the 
attorney-general, accused Franklin of being ' a man of three letters ' — in 
other words fur, a thief — and the petition was dismissed as ' groundless, 
vexatious, and scandalous.' Franklin was much annoyed at Wedder- 
burn's attack. He set aside the brown coat he was wearing that day, 
and only put it on again in order to sign the treaty which gave the 
colonies independence. 

Meantime, further disturbance had arisen from a cause which had 
certainly not been designed to irritate. In 1773 Lord North's govern- 

The Tea "lent passed an act by which the powers of the East India 

Ships. Company were limited, and as some compensation to the 

shareholders they Avere permitted to bring their tea to England and 
export it to America without paying any duty in England. They could 
thus sell it in America at a low price and yet make a profit, while the 
Americans could get the advantage of cheap tea. Contrary, however, 
to all expectation, the Americans regarded the transaction as a mere 
trick to induce them to submit to the tea-duty ; and when the ships 
were lying in Boston Harbour, they were boarded by a number of young 
men disguised as Mohawk. Indians, and the whole of the tea thrown into 
the water. 

This turbulent action was regarded by the British government as 

deserving condign punishment, and three coercive acts were presented 

to parliament. By the first, the custom-house was removed 

chusetts from Boston to New Salem, in order to ruin the former 

port. By the second, the constitution of Massachusetts 

was suspended, and the colony put under the direct authority of the 



1775 North 823 

crown. By the third, persons accused of treason in America were to be 
tried in England. These bills were opposed by Shelburne and Rocking- 
ham in the Lords, and by Barre and Burke in the Commons. Fox also 
threw in his weight with the opposition. The death of his father in 
1774 had left him free to follow his own inclinations. Henceforth he 
acted with the Rockingham Whigs. The passing of these three acts 
amounted to a virtual declaration of war, for no one who knew anything 
of the spirit of the colonies could doubt that the colonists would fight 
rather than yield. 

Unfortunately in England the densest ignorance of the colonies pre- 
vailed. Even now, with all our facilities of steam and electricity, a real 
knowledge of the wants and conditions of the colonies is British 
rare, and in those days it was far worse. The voyage to ignorance. 
America took, on the average, six weeks ; for many years there had been 
very little emigration ; visits to America— so common now — were then 
almost unknown ; and few Americans, except merchants, had ever made 
the voyage to Europe. Even professed statesmen knew very little of the 
colonies they had to govern ; and Burke, who was so conversant with 
the interests of Massachusetts, that he was at one time agent-general for 
that colony, and Shelburne, who was a personal friend of Franklin, were 
quite exceptional in their knowledge. Moreover, so angry was the 
nation at large with what appeared to most the insolence of the 
Americans, that it was hard for any one to state the colonial side of 
the question without incurring a charge of want of patriotism, while 
violent denunciation of the conduct of the colonists was everywhere 
popular. In these circumstances it is absurd to charge the disastrous 
result of the attempt to tax America upon the king only, or even upon 
the king and his ministers. The blame for losing America must rest 
upon the whole nation, who applauded energetic measures and scouted 
all conciliation. In short, prejudice, ignorance, and spurious patriotism 
were at the bottom of the whole series of mistakes. 

In view of possible fighting. Governor Hutchinson had been replaced at 
Boston by General Gage, a well-intentioned and brave man, but not 
energetic enough for such a crisis. Immediately on the Hostilities 
arrival of the news of the suspension of the Massachusetts ^^S'"' 
Charter, Gage of course dissolved the legislative assembly. The mem- 
bers, however, set the government at defiance by reassembling at Concord, 
a few miles inland. There they organised the militia, arranged a system 
of minute men, who could be called out for active service at a moment's 
notice, and collected military stores. As it was impossible for Gage to 
look on quietly while this was being done, he sent a detachment to seize 



824 George III. 1775 

the stores. On their way the troops were attacked at Lexington village 
by a body of militiamen, and though they reached Concord and captured 
or destroyed the stores, they had to fight the whole of their way back, 
and lost no less than two hundred and seventy men. The skirmish at 
Lexington, though of no great military importance in itself, showed the 
colonists that though they might not be able to stand up in the open 
against trained troops, they would have the superiority in irregular 
skirmishing, and in taking advantage of cover. It also made a peaceful 
settlement more difficult, and though many good men both at home and 
in the colony still hoped for peace, a trial of strength between the colonies 
and the mother-country became inevitable. 

As Gage, instead of vigorously retaliating, remained quiet at Boston, 
the colonial troops boldly took the offensive, and established themselves 
Bunker's on Breed's Hill, a piece of rising ground which overlooks 
^'^'" Boston from the opposite side of the harbour, and behind 

which the ground still rising is called Bunker's Hill, a name used by the 
English for both heights. This bold step roused Gage from his inaction, 
and the position was stormed, but so badly was the whole aflair mis- 
managed that the British lost nearly one-third of their force, whereas a 
slight exhibition of strategy might have compelled its evacuation without 
the loss of a man. After this General Gage was recalled, and General 
Howe took his place. 

Hitherto the main stress of the struggle had fallen upon Massachusetts, 
but in the spring of 1775 a Congress was called at Philadelphia, which 
state of the was attended by members from all the states except Georgia, 
Colonies. ^hich had only been founded in 1730, and these deter- 
mined that the whole of the colonies should act together under the title 
of the United Colonies. The importance of this was very great, for the 
colonies were so different in history and character that it was quite j)Os- 
sible for them to have taken different lines in a contest with the mother- 
country. It was also of vital importance which side the Canadians 
would take. Having been so recently taken from France, they might be 
expected to be disaflected ; but Lord North had wisely passed an act 
called the Quebec Act, by. which the Canadians were secured their own 
laws and the free exercise of the Eoman Catholic religion. This measure 
completely conciliated the Canadians, who dreaded nothing so much as 
to come under the rule of the New England Puritans, who inveighed 
against the act as establishing pof>ery. Canada therefore remained 
loyal. 

Having determined to act together, the members of Congress appointed 
Washington commander-in-chief. George Washington was a Virginia 



1776 North 825 

planter, and a thorough gentleman, whose simple and fearless character 
and transparent honesty of purpose gave dignity to the cause which he 
espoused, and inspired respect among the democratic officers 

GcorsTG 

and men with whom he had to deal. His acceptance of Washing- 
the post was a proof that the southern colonies meant to *°"* 
take their share in the war, and when the struggle was once begun the 
southerners produced more than their fair share of officers and statesmen. 
Washington, who in 1775 was forty-two years of age, had fought 
under Braddock in the Seven Years' War ; and well understood both 
the strong and weak points of the citizen soldiers whom he would have 
to command. A better choice could not have been made. At the 
same time Congress organised an expedition against Canada, under 
Arnold and Montgomery. It proved, however, a complete failure, and 
Montgomery was killed in front of Quebec. On the arrival of Washing- 
ton in Massachusetts, it taxed all his ingenuity to introduce some sort of 
order and military discipline into his motley army ; but he was given time 
to do so by the supineness of Howe, who remained through the winter at 
Boston. As soon as his army could move, Washington again took the 
offensive and seized Dorchester heights, which commanded Boston itself. 
For some inexplicable reason, Howe made no attempt to recover them 
by a battle, but withdrew his troops altogether and conveyed them to 
Long Island, which lies at the mouth of the Hudson, and on which 
Brooklyn, now a populous suburb of New York, stands. There he 
nuistered about 30,000 men of different nations, for the British govern- 
ment, as if they wished to exasperate the Americans, had hired Hessians 
to fight against them, and had even incited the Indians to renew 
their raids. 

Encouraged by the evacuation of Boston, Congress boldly declared 
the colonies independent, speaking of them as the ' free and independent 
States of America.' Still keeping the offensive. Wash- i^depen- 
ington in 1776 endeavoured to drive the British out of dence 

, declared. 

Long Island ; but in a pitched battle at Brooklyn the 
colonial troops were beaten by the regulars ; and Washington, with 
great difficulty, withdrew his men to New York, and thence to Phila- 
delphia. Next year the British formed the plan of a great attack. 
General Howe was to continue the operations against Phila- surrender 
delphia, while Sir John Burgoyne was to march from at Saratoga. 
Canada along Lake Champlain and Lake George down the Hudson 
river, and was to be met half-way by General Clinton from New York. 
Had these operations been successful Washington would have been 
driven into the south, while the New England States would have been 



1780 North 827 

completely separated from the rest of the colonies. The plan, however, had 
been formed without sufficient regard to the obstacles caused by distance 
and the difficulties of the country. The blame for it is said to rest on 
Lord George Germaine, notorious under his former title of Lord George 
Sackville, whom Lord North had most unwisely made secretary of state 
for the colonies. Howe's part of the plan was successful, but Sir John 
Burgoyne, on reaching Saratoga, found himself with less than 5000 soldiers 
surrounded by Gates with 15,000, and was consequently compelled to 
surrender. 

The nnlitary effect of Burgoyne's surrender was sufficiently disastrous, 
but the political results made it the turning-point in the war. Hitherto 
France, though sympathising with the colonists, had thought France, 
their cause so hopeless as to be unwilling to give them u^^l^"' ^"'^■ 

^ to fc) Holland join 

open assistance ; but now, believing that they would be sue- the Colonists 
cessful, she openly acknowledged their independence, concluded a 
treaty, sent a young and ardent French nobleman, the marquess of 
Lafayette, with a body of French troops, to aid Washington, and 
despatched a fleet to the West Indies, under Admiral d'Estaing, to 
threaten the British sugar islands and to intercept our communication 
with America. In 1779 Spain also joined the Americans. France and 
Spain had many injuries to revenge ; the former was still smarting 
under the loss of Canada, and Spain under that of Gibraltar and 
Minorca. But our old allies, the Dutch, were driven to join the 
Americans in 1781 by a different cause. This was the very important 
question of the ' Law of Neutrals.' The Dutch held that if Dutch ships 
were carrying French goods during a war between England and France, 
the goods were not liable to be seized by British cruisers ; while the 
British held that ' neutral ships do not cover hostile goods.' In practice 
the British principle has brought us into difficulties with neutrals during 
every great war in which we have been engaged, and in this case it 
actually brought about war with Holland ; and, had the war been pro- 
longed much lono-er, would have involved us in war also with Russia, 
Sweden, and Denmark, who had formed themselves into what was 
called an armed neutrality. When France joined the colonists there 
was much difference of opinion in England as to the best course to take. 
The duke of Richmond would have been willing to acknowledge the 
independence of the United States ; George was in favour of fighting it 
out, and wrote : ' I can never suppose this country so lost to all ideas of 
self-bnportance as to be willing to grant American independence' ; while 
Chatham and Shelburne, who still clung to the hope that disrup- 
tion might be avoided, were in favour of granting everything that the 



828 George III. 1779 

Americans asked, except independence, and then trying to go on as before 
the war. So strong was Chatham's feeling on the subject that in 1778, 
when the duke of Richmond brought forward his motion in the House of 
Lords for granting independence to America, he came down for the purpose 
of ' lifting up his voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and 
most noble monarchy.' He spoke under great excitement, and, falling 
down in a fit on the floor of the House, was carried home only to die. His 
protest, however, proved successful, and the war was continued. 

Meanwhile, the disasters into which the king's government was plung- 
ing the country had strengthened the spirit of opposition, and resulted 
Economical in a better understanding between the Chatham and Rock- 
Reform, ingham Whigs. Each party, however, had its own special 
scheme for reform. The Rockingham Whigs, urged by Burke, thought that 
the remedy lay in diminishing the king's command of money, and the ex- 
tensive patronage, especially in sinecure offices, by which he was able to 
secure adherence in both Houses. Burke also wished to have the division 
lists published, and, though he was strongly against any organic change in 
the constitution, wished constituents to look more closely into the votes 
of their representatives. The Chatham Whigs, on the other hand, who 

were now led by Lord Shelburne, thought the true remedy 
Parlia- . "^ i • i i 

mentary was to be fouud lu parliamentary reform, and wished to 

take away meml^ers from the rotten boroughs and give them 

to populous towns and counties. Those views were, to some extent, 

based on the interests of the parties concerned, fur the king and 

Lord North had most influence in the small boroughs, Rockingham in 

the counties, and the Chatham Whigs in the large towns, particularly in 

London. Fox seems to have been in fixvour of both schemes, and also of 

shortening the duration of parliament. In 1 780 the advocates of reform 

received a new form of support in the shape of general petitions in favour 

of their policy now for the first time presented to the House of Commons. 

Of these the most important were the Westminster petition. 
Petitions. , . , , 11- ,. n .•^• 

which advocated parliamentary reform, and a great petition 

from the freeholders of Yorkshire, which demanded a reduction in the 
salaries of officials and the abolition of sinecure offices. No less than twenty- 
three counties supported the Yorkshiremen, and Burke was encouraged to 
bring in a bill for economical reform. This passed the second reading 
easily, as it Avas difficult to dispute the principle ; but in committee all 
holders or expectant holders of government offices naturally opposed the 
abolition of any one in particular, and the bill was lost. The same fate 
befell Burke's contractors bill, intended to prevent the government giving 
contracts to members of parliament, a most fruitful source of bribery. 



1780 North 829 

It Avas asserted, for instance, that a member had cleared £70,000 by a 
contract to supply beads, tomahawks, and scalping knives to the American 
Indians. Thwarted in this way. Dunning, on behalf of the Rockingham 
Whigs, brought forward a motion that 'the power of the crown has 
increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.' Being brought 
forward without notice, the proposal took the ministers by surprise, and 
it was carried by 233 to 215. Next year Burke brought forward another 
bill for economical reform, but was defeated as before. 

Meanwhile the party who favoured parliamentary reform were not 
idle. The first motion on the subject had been made by Sir Francis Dash- 
wood, a Tory, in 1745, in the midst of the Jacobite rebellion. History of 
Of course nothing came of it, and after George iii. came to ^^^^'l^- 

_ ° mentary 

the throne the Tories were not likely to propose any diminu- Reform, 
tion of the rotten boroughs on which George relied for the return of the 
king's friends. The Whigs, on the other hand, particularly the followers 
of Lord Chatham, who were strongest in the large towns, now felt 
aggrieved, and in 1770 Lord Chatham, after denouncing the existing 
system of returning members as the ' rotten part of the constitution,' 
suggested giving an additional third member to every county. In 1776 
Wilkes, who had been allowed to take his seat after the general election 
of 1774, proposed to disfranchise the rotten boroughs and to give their 
members to counties and to large and populous towns. His proposal, 
however, was negatived without a division. Shelburne and Fox both 
supported parliamentary reform on the ground that the county constitu- 
encies and the large towns returned the most independent members ; but 
were opposed by Rockingham and Burke, who viewed with distrust any 
attempt to tamper with the constitution on abstract principles. Never- 
theless Fox's uncle, the duke of Richmond, though a follower of Rocking- 
ham, proposed in 1780 to establish manhood suffrage, annual elections, 
and equal electoral districts. His proposal, however, met with nothing 
but ridicule ; for it happened to be made the very night when the 
Lord George Gordon riots broke out, and the members of the House 
of Commons were fighting their way to their own houses almost sword 
in hand. 

These celebrated riots arose out of a measure carried in 1778 by Sir 
George Savile, a Rockingham Whig, for the repeal of some of the more 

onerous of the disabilities under which the Roman Catholics . 

Ungin oi 

had groaned since 1689, and especially for the repeal of the the Gordon 
statutes by which their priests were forbidden to say mass and 
their laymen to acquire land by purchase. The very meagreness of these 
concessions served to show how strong was the anti-Catholic feeling both 



830 George III. 1780 

in England and Scotland. The tronlile began in Scotland in an agitation 
against the extension of Savile's act to that country, during which much 
damage was done to Roman Catholic chapels and property. In 1780 it 
spread to England, and a vast league was formed under the presidency of 
Lord George Gordon, the half-insane brother of the duke of Gordon, and 
under the name of the Protestant Association. On June 2 Lord George, 
who was a member of the House of Commons, presented a petition for 
the repeal of Savile's act. This he brought to the House accompanied by 
a body of his followers, numbering some 100,000 men, who marched in 
procession through the streets and besieged the doors of the House of 
Commons, while those who could not get admittance to Westminster 
Hall diverted themselves with maltreating unpopular members of both 
Houses, who were struggling to make their way in. 

The mob remained about the House till late at night, and on its way 
home sacked and burnt two chapels belonging to Roman Catholic 
ambassadors. As no serious steps were taken to check this 
licence, the mob became daily bolder, and the more respect- 
able of Lord George's followers having by this time retired from the 
scene, the rabble broke open and burnt Newgate prison, fired distilleries, 
breweries, and private houses, amongst others that of the unpopular 
Chief-Justice Mansfield, and for three days held all London in terror. 
In those days there was no regular police force, and the ordinary city 
and parish constables were quite unequal to deal with the mol), and yet, 
for some reason, the military were not employed at first, and when they 
were ordered out were directed not to fire. This only made the mob 
bolder, and at last George, taking upon himself a responsibility which 
his ministers shirked, issued a proclamation, ordering the troops to use 
their weapons. This firmness which, had it come earlier, might have 
checked the riots altogether, was at length successful, though at least 
five hundred persons were killed and wounded by the soldiers before 
order was restored. The Gordon riots were important in three ways. 
In the first place they distinctly showed that members of parliament 
were more tolerant than the nation as a whole ; secondly, the circum- 
stance that Fox and Shelburne had unadvisedly continued their opposi- 
tion to the government during the riots, gained them, unjustly, a 
reputation for sympathy with disorder which was cleverly used against 
them by the king at the next general election ; and thirdly, the riots 
formed an object lesson in mob violence, which distinctly increased the 
dislike with which the atrocities of the Parisian mob were viewed in 
this country.^ 

1 The description of these riots should be read in Dickens' Barnahy Rudge. 



1781 North 831 

The military effect of the entrance of France and Spain into the war 
was to make the command of the sea the key of the situation, and pro- 
bably the best course for the British would have been to 
hold a few ports in America, and concentrate their attention '^^^ ^^^' 
upon defeating the French and Spanish fleets. Instead of this they still 
continued their land operations, but with less prospect of success than 
ever ; for, as Chatham put it, we have spent three years ' in teaching the 
Americans how to fight,' and their armies were stronger than ever, while 
the presence of the French fleet on the coast made communications 
between the armies difficult. 

In 1778 we were obliged to evacuate Philadelphia, and made New York 
our headquarters ; and during the next year the British troops remained 
almost wholly on the defensive. In 1780 Benedict Arnold, Major 
the commander of the American troops on the Hudson Andr^. 
river, dissatisfied with his position under Washington, offered to desert 
and hand over the forts on the Hudson river to the British ; the necfotia- 
tions between him and Sir Henry Clinton at New York were carried on 
by Major Andr^, a young officer of great promise and considerable 
literary ability, Andrt^ landed in the American lines under a flag of 
truce, but having been detained longer than he expected, foolishly 
permitted himself to be persuaded to change his uniform for a civilian's 
dress, and in this he was arrested while endeavouring to pass the 
American sentries. On being searched Arnold's letters were found in 
his boots. He was, of course, tried as a sj)y, convicted, and, in spite of 
all petitions to the contrary, Washington allowed him to be hanged. 
Arnold escaped to the British, but his plan of betraying the forts completely 
failed. Andre's sad fate created a melancholy impression both in England 
and America, but it is hard to see how Washington could be blamed. 

The same year a British army under Lord Cornwallis was sent to 
Charleston, in South Carolina, with a view to driving the American 
army out of the southern states, which contained the largest Surrender at 
proportion of loyalists, and so making them a basis of '^o'^'^town. 
operations against the middle and northern states. At first the jjlan 
seemed successful, and the Americans were defeated at Camden in 1780, 
and Guildford Court-house in 1781. These defeats much discouraged 
the French troops in America, who now amounted to some 7000 men 
under Lafayette, and a truce for two months was proposed by them, 
which was foolishly rejected. After the battle of Guildford, Cornwallis 
marched along the coast towards New York, much as Burgoyne had 
tried to make his way down the Hudson river, but was henmied in at 
Yorktown on the York river by General Green, and forced to fortify 



832 Gemrje III. 1781 

himself on a small peninsula with his back to the coast, where his whole 
force was concentrated on the 22nd August. Had the English possessed 
command of the sea, Cornwallis' position would have been impregnable, 
but eight days afterwards the Count de Grasse arrived off the coast with 
twenty-eight ships of the line ; the British admiral, Graves, was unable 
to drive him away with an inferior force of nineteen vessels. The result 
was that on October ] 7 Cornwallis found his position untenable, and was 
forced to capitulate to Washington, who had concentrated the whole of 
the American forces to effect his destruction. This great disaster brought 
the fighting on land to a virtual close, but the British still continued the 
naval war against the three European states. The disasters of the year 
were somewhat redeemed by Eodney's capture of St. Eustacia, a rich 
West Indian island belonging to the Dutch ; but the French soon 
captured it, and having complete command of the sea, took from us also 
Essequibo and Demerara, St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, and Tobago, and it 
seemed as if the whole of our West Indian islands would soon be lost. 
These disasters were largely due to the half-hearted manner in which the 
British commanders worked together ; the curse of party had for the 
first and last time found its way into the navy, and some captains failed 
to support Kodney because he was a Tory, and others Keppel because he 
was a Whig. Even in Europe we lost command of the sea. Keppel 
fought an indecisive action oft* Ushant. The siege of Gibraltar was 
Loss of carried on simply because we had no fleet to relieve it, 
Minorca. ^^^ jjj March, 1782, Minorca was captured. These dis- 
asters depressed the spirit of the nation to a point lower than it had 
reached since Fontenoy. 

The elections of 1780, coming just after the Gordon riots, proved more 
favourable to the government than was expected. For some time the oppo- 
North's sition leaders were disheartened, but in the autumn of 1781 

Resignation, ^j^gy again became active, and Lords Eockingham, Eichmond^ 
and Shelburne in the Lords, and Fox, Burke, Conway, and Barre in the 
Commons, renewed their attacks on the administration. By this time 
Lord North was thoroughly tired of carrying on a war of whose con- 
tinuance he disapproved, and was only kept in office by the entreaties, 
of the king, who represented resignation as equivalent to desertion, and 
who threatened to return to Hanover rather than fall into the hands of 
the opposition. Facts, however, were too strong for Lord North. In 
February, 1782, General Conway carried a motion to the efi*ect that it 
was impossible to subdue the Americans by force, and when in March 
the news arrived that Minorca had been taken, North insisted on leaving 
office. 



1782 North — Rockingham 833 

His retirement brought into full view the differences which existed in 
the opposition. The king agreed to accept a mixed ministry, composed 
of Rockingham's followers and the Chathamite Whigs ; but 
so great was his prejudice against Lord Rockingham that hai?i"^' 
he refused to see him, and conducted all the negotiations ?^5°."d 

Ministry. 

through Lord Shelburne. Indeed, as Fox plainly told Shel- 
burne, the cabinet was to consist of two parts, ' one belonging to the king, 
the other to the public' Its composition is very instructive. Of the ten 
members of the cabinet, Rockingham, Lord John Cavendish, Keppel, 
Richmond, Fox, and Conway were of one party ; Shelburne and Dunning, 
now created Lord Ashburton, represented the followers of Chatham ; 
Grafton was neutral, and Thurlow, the lord-chancellor under North, 
continued to hold his post apparently because he was too dangerous to 
be driven into opposition. Burke, who, great as is his present reputation, 
was never trusted by his contemporaries, or admitted within the aristo- 
cratic circle which could then claim a place in the cabinet, was paymaster 
of the forces. 

In accordance with Whig principles, active hostilities against the 
Americans were at once discontinued, but the war with the European 
powers was carried on as vigorously as ever. In this the The War 
new ministry met with a success greater than it deserved, continued. 
For more than a year Rodney had been in the West Indies manoeuvring 
against the French admiral de Grasse. He was, however, a supporter of 
Lord North, and as such Rockingham's ministry recalled him. Fortun- 
ately, however, the recall had not reached Rodney when he contrived to 
force the French admiral into a general action off' the island Rodney's 
of Guadeloupe. Rodney had thirty-five ships of the line to Victory, 
his opponent's thirty-three ; and, getting the weather gauge, he employed 
the new manoeuvre of breaking his enemy's line. Sailing at right angles 
to the French line of battle, he cut off some of their ships from the rest, 
and then brought his whole force to bear on these ; while the rest of the 
French fleet, having the wind against it, was unable to come to their 
assistance. In this way the French fleet was thrown into hopeless con- 
fusion ; five ships were taken and one sunk, and the naval superiority of 
the British in the West Indies was at once re-established. 

Almost as memorable as this great victory was Governor Eliott's 
defence of Gibraltar. During the war the chief attention of the 
Spaniards had been devoted to the siege of Gibraltar. This The Siege of 
was formed in 1779, immediately on the declaration of war, 
and as the British had no fleet to spare for the permanent assistance 
of the garrison, General Eliott, a veteran who had been George ii.'s 

3g 



834 George III. 1782 

aide-de-camp at Dettingen, was forced to rely on his own resources. 
To this, however, he showed himself fully equal, keeping his assailants 
at a distance by a free use of red-hot shot. His stock of provisions, 
however, was running low, when, in 1781, Rodney contrived to beat 
the Spanish fleet in a terrible night battle fought oflF Cape St. Vincent, 
and to throw ample sujjplies into the place. However, in 1782, a ■ 
supreme efibrt was made to take the fortress. The Spanish army was 
jomed by a strong reinforcement of French ; a large fleet covered the 
operations of the siege, and, by the ingenuity of a French engineer named 
d' Arcon, huge floating batteries were contrived, which it was hoped would 
prove impervious to Eliott's red-hot balls. On September 13 a tremendous 
Are was opened on the fortress by sea and land ; but Eliott, who had so 
strengthened his defences that he was stronger at the close of the siege 
than at the beginning, defied all their efforts, and set most of the batteries 
on fire. A terrible scene of destruction ensued. Eliott's guns sent their 
shot all over the bay ; in every du-ection gunboats and batteries were 
blowing up, while the water was crowded with wounded and half-burnt 
A\Tetches. Eliott, however, showed that he was as humane as he was 
brave. The Spaniards being completely beaten, the British guns ceased 
firing, and Eliott and Curtis, the commander of the British gunboats, did 
all they could to save life. A few days later, Lord Howe arrived with a 
large convoy of provisions and two fresh regiments, which he safely 
landed in spite of the French and Spanish fleet, and again withdrew after 
a doubtful battle, in which, owing to the wind, the British could not 
compel their antagonists to engage at close quarters. This relief of 
Gibraltar was final, and though the siege was not raised till the end of 
the war, Eliott was not again in serious danger. 

On coming into office Rockingham had stipulated with the king that 
he might pass acts diminishing or abolishing all useless offices, excluding 
Economical contractors from the House of Commons, and depriving 
Reform. revenue officers of their votes ; and to these objects they at 

once applied themselves. Fox being reputed to have said that, provided 
he was able ' to strike a good stout blow at the influence of the crown, 
he did not mind how soon he went out.' Accordingly, Burke's bills 
were again introduced, and this time were passed. The civil list was 
divided into eight classes, and reductions were made to the extent of 
;£72,000 by abolishing useless offices. Among those abolished was that 
of ' king's turnspit,' the holder of which sat in the House of Commons ; 
by another act, contractors to supply government with any articles were 
forbidden to sit in the House ; and by a third, revenue officers were 
forbidden to vote in elections. As it was shown that 11,500 of these 



1782 Rockingham 835 

officers were electors, and that no less than seventy elections turned 
upon their votes, this was a great blow to the influence of the crown. 
Eockingham's party had no love for parliamentary reform, and it made no 
part in the government policy ; but the question was raised by young 
William Pitt, second son of the great Lord Chatham, who had entered the 
House in 1780. His motion, though supported by Fox, was opposed by 
Burke and the other Rockingham Whigs, and was lost by 161 to 141. 
By another motion, all the former proceedings of the House in connection 
with Wilkes' election for Middlesex were expunged from the journals. 

Between the agitation against Wood's halfpence and the breaking out 
of the American war, Ireland, if not contented, had been unusually 
peaceful. Owing to the wise administration of Lord irish 
Chesterfield, she had passed undisturbed through the crisis Grievances, 
of 1745 ; and it was not till the European powers joined the Americans 
that symptoms of disaffection began to show themselves. The grievances 
of the Irish were twofold — commercial and constitutional. The former 
arose from the selfish policy by which, in the supposed interests of 
English merchants and farmers, Irish trade and agriculture had been 
treated. No manufacturing industry except that of linen had received 
anything but discouragement. Even that was now suflering from the 
general depression which had been caused by the Avar ; while the 
exjjortation of provisions to America had also been put under an 
embargo. At the accession of George iii. the chief constitutional 
grievances lay in the existence of Poynings' Act (see p. 382), by which 
no bill could be introduced into the Irish parliament till it had received 
the approval of the English council ; of the act of 1719 (George i., 
ch. vi.), by which the British parliament could pass laws bmding on 
Ireland ; the perpetual Mutiny Act, by which the Irish parliament was 
deprived of any control over the troops in the island ; and the practice 
by which the Irish parliament sat every two years, and Avas only 
dissolved, except with the king's consent, at the death of the sovereign. 

Early in the reign, however, an opposition was organised in parliament 
under Henry Flood, born in 1732 ; and in 1767 he was successful in 
getting an Octennial Bill passed, by which the duration of ^^^^^ 
the Irish parliament was limited to eight years. Flood 
then devoted his attention to acquiring greater control over expenditure 
for parliament ; but in 1774 he destroyed much of his popularity by 

taking office under the government. Flood's place was 

o ^ 1 1 T Grattan. 

taken by Henry Grattan, born 1746, Avho entered parlia- 
ment in 1775. The moment was a critical one, for the struggle with 
America was just beginning, and was watched with intense interest by 



836 George III. 1782 

the Irish, whose grievances, especially the commercial ones, were by no 
means unlike those of the colonists. When France declared war, 
Ireland was almost denuded of troops ; and, to protect themselves 
asiainst a French invasion, the Protestants were allowed to form 
volunteer corps, which were furnished with arms by the government. 
These corps soon amounted to 50,000 eflfective men ; and their leader, 
Lord Charlemont, joined with Grattan to use them as a menace against 
the government. In face of such a military force North saw that 
resistance was useless ; and an act was passed allowing Ireland to 
trade with foreign countries and with the English colonies. The 
passing of this measure had been largely assisted by the eloquence 
of Burke ; but the Bristol merchants, jealous of their trade, punished 
him at the general election of 1780 by turning him out of his seat for 
Bristol. These concessions caused universal rejoicing in Ireland ; and 
Grattan went on to pass through the Irish parliament a Declaration of 
Right, which demanded the repeal of Poynings' Act and the Sixth of 
George i. ; that appeals in Irish lawsuits should go to the Irish and 
not to the English House of Lords ; and, lastly, the repeal of the 
Legislative perpetual Mutiny Act. This Declaration was passed in 
dence^" 1782. Eockingham's ministry at once granted the demands, 

granted. and passed measures by which the Sixth of George i. was 

repealed, and Poynings' Act was so far modified that the Irish parlia- 
ment became legislatively independent. 

In July 1782 the marquess of Rockingham died quite unexpectedly ; 

and this brought to a crisis the quarrel that had long been imminent 

between the Chatham and Rockingham Whigs. Already 

Death of . o & J 

Rocking- Fox and Shelburne — the two secretaries of state — had had 
separate agents negotiating at Paris about the conclusion of 
peace ; and an open quarrel must have broken out before long. George 
acted at once ; and, the instant Rockingham's death was known, named 
Shelburne prime minister. The Rockingham Whigs, on the other hand, 
wanted to have the duke of Portland, a young and amiable nobleman, 
but of no ability — ' a fit block to hang Whigs on,' as some one said. On 
Shelburne's Slielburne's appointment. Fox and Burke immediately 
Ministry. threw \\^ their places, and were supported by Lord John 
Cavendish and Ashburton ; but Shelburne replaced Cavendish by giving 
the chancellorship of the exchequer to William Pitt, while Camden, 
Grafton, Keppel, Richmond, and Thurlow retained their places. 

The resignation of Fox was due quite as much to personal dislike of 
Lord Shelburne as to his policy and connections. The character of 
Shelburne is one of the enigmas of the period. Having entered politics 



1782 RoeUngham — Shelhnrne ,337 

with every advantage, he liecame a secretary of state at twenty-nine ; he 
was the trusted lieutenant of Chatham, and was remarkable for the 
breadth and liberality of his views on all subjects. Yet p^^'s 
for all this he was a political fiiilure, apparently because Action, 
he could convince no one of the honesty of his intentions. In speaking, 
his habitual reservations made it almost impossible to tell what he really 
meant ; and m ordinary life, his habit of habitually suspecting and 
watching his friends made everyone ill at ease. With Fox, indeed, 
distrust was hereditary, for Lord Holland believed that he had been 
tricked by Shelburne ; but it was just the same with those who might 
have been expected to be his hereditary friends ; and Fox and William 
Pitt, if they agreed in nothing else, were at one in distrusting Lord 
Shelburne. Fox, however, whose weak point was want of judgment, 
made a distinct mistake by throwing up his post on personal grounds. 
Pitt, whose strong point was sound judgment, made the right choice 
when he accepted office. 

The independence of the United States had been practically acknow- 
ledged by Kockingham's ministry ; but a formal peace was concluded 
by Lord Shelburne. This was signed at Versailles in 
January 1783 ; and the same day a treaty was also signed States ac- 
between Great Britain, France, and Spain. Fortunately for '^"°wiedged. 
Britain, Eodney's victory in the West Indies, and the failure of the siege 
of Gibraltar, had placed her in a much better position to treat than she 
would have been a year before. Even as it was, she was obliged to 
submit to the loss of Minorca, which was restored to Spain, and to give 
up to France Senegal and the island of Goree. The necessity for 
recognising the independence of the American colonies, and the impos- 
sibility of even a nominal connection between Great Britain and the 
States, were now admitted by all parties ; but their loss was regarded as 
ruinous to the mother-country. A very considerable number of the 
colonists wholly objected to breaking the British connection, and under 
the name of the united empire loyalists settled in New Brunswick, Nova 
Scotia, and Canada, where their arrival materially strengthened the 
British section of the community. 

When parliament met, at the close of 1782, it was seen that neither 
the followers of the government, nor those of Fox, nor those of Lord 
North, could command a majority by themselves ; and paii of 
intrigues of all sorts were at once set on foot for a coalition Shelburne. 
between two of the three parties. Shelburne applied both to Fox and 
North, but the distrust that he inspired in both was fatal to an alliance. 
On the other hand, negotiations between Fox and North were successful ; 



838 George TIL 1782 

and they agreed to form a coalition against the government. Snch an 
alliance was received by the public of the day with disgust, and has 
since received more abuse than perhaps it actually deserved. Unluckily 
for Fox, the regular reporting of speeches enabled his critics to look back 
to his previous sayings. Fox had never spoken in measured terms of 
any political opponent ; and on his very first speech after Shelburne 
became premier, had depicted him as being capable of an alliance with 
North — 'the depth of political infamy.' Fox, however, had always 
distinguished between the policy and character of Lord North, with 
whom he was personally on the best of terms, and had had frequent 
abortive negotiations about joining him ; but this the public did not 
know. What it did see was that two politicians, each of whom had held 
up the other as guilty of infamous conduct, had allied together against a 
third, whom one of them had recently deserted on personal grounds ; 
and it regarded the whole affair as a disgrace to the politicians con- 
cerned, especially to Fox. The king, on the other hand, was furious at 
a scheme which threatened to saddle him with a ministry composed of 
Fox, whom he detested, and North, who he thought had deserted him. 
In the House of Commons, however. Fox and North had a large 
majority, who carried an amendment against the government by 207 to 
190 ; and on this Lord Shelburne resigned, and soon afterwards went 
abroad. George, however, did not, as he said, ' take the bitter potion ' 
without a struggle. After offering the post of premier to Pitt — and, 
indeed, going so far as to say that he would offer it to ' Mr. Thomas 
Anybody who would take it ' — he found himself fast in the toils ; and, 

after thirty-seven days without a ministry, the coalition 
Coalition came into power, with the duke of Portland as prime 
inis ry. ,^jinister, and Fox and North as secretaries of state, sup- 
ported by Lord John Cavendish, Keppel, and Burke. 

The affairs of India demanded the immediate attention of the new 
ministry. Since the battle of Wandewash a great revolution had taken 

place in that country. Between 1760 and 1765 the affairs 

India. ^ "^ 

both of the Mogul empire and of Bengal had been in a 
state of great confusion. . At Delhi a fierce struggle had been going on 
between one vizier, supported by the Mahrattas, and another supported 
by the Afghans, which resulted in the defeat of the Mahrattas at the 
great battle of Paniput. The British, however, recognised as Padisha or 
emperor, a son of the reigning sovereign named Shah Alum, who was an 
exile in Oude. In Bengal Mir Jaffier, who had been made Nabob after 
the battle of Plassey, was deposed as inefficient and his place taken by 
his son-in-law, Mir Cassim. He, in his turn, quarrelled with the British, 



1783 Shelhnrne — Portland 839 

and put to death a number of British prisoners in the massacre of Patna. 
His troops, however, were defeated in 1V64 by Major Mimro at the 
Ixittle of Buxar, which made the British masters of Bengal Next year 
Olive again visited India, and he made an arrangement with Mir Jaffier 
and Shah Ahim, by which the East India Company was recognised 
as the collector of revenues in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa at the price 
of paying ^500,000 a year to the Nabob of Bengal, and £250,000 
to the nominal Padisha, Shah Alum. This arrangement made the 
company the virtual rulers of these three provinces, which together made 
up a territory as large as France. Clive's plan for the future was that 
both the government and the collection of revenue should be carried on 
by the native officials, while the company should pay an army for 
purposes of defence, retaining in its own hands so much of the revenue as 
remained after the tribute and army had been provided for. Olive also 
attempted to put a stop to the practice of private trading in which, to 
the great loss of the company, the company's officers had indulged. This 
he accompanied by a general rise of salaries ; and he also, in spite of 
much opposition, carried out salutary reforms in the condition of the 
army, and left India for the last time in 1767. When Olive's stern hand 
was removed, abuses again broke out. The financial demands of the 
company were too heavy for the resources of the country, and matters 
were made worse by the utter corruption of the native officials. The 
result was severe distress, culminating in a famine which desolated 
Bengal in 1770, and in 1772 a new system had to be adopted. This 
was introduced by Hastings, who was sent out in 1772 as governor of 
Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, generally spoken of inexactly as Bengal. 

Warren Hastings was born in 1732, and, after passing some time at 
Westminster School, was sent to India in 1750. There he exhibited the 
versatility which has distinguished so many of our great vvarren 
Indian officials. At first he acted as a merchant, but being Hastings, 
seized by Surajah Dowlah in 1756, he became deeply involved in the 
conspiracy in fiivour of Mir Jaffier. Having escaped from detention, he 
joined the army and carried a musket at Plassey ; but his talents having 
attracted the notice of Olive, he was employed in diplomacy, and was 
soon recognised as one of the ablest officials of the company. Hastings 
was in England during the famine, and went out with large powers to 
reform the abuses which had led to that terrible event. His first act was 
to place the administration of Bengal in the hands of English collectors 
and magistrates instead of those of the native officials who had proved 
themselves unfit for the charge. 

Meanwhile, the afiliirs of the East India Oompany had attracted the 



g40 George III. 1783 

attention of parliament. The fact that a mere trading company should 
have become the virtual ruler of an immense territory with millions of in- 
Attitude of habitants was itself an anomaly, and parliament was inclined 
Parliament, j.^^^^ ^^y^ ^q ^^q jealous of the company's political power, but 
also wished to relieve taxation by making the company pay as hand- 
somely as possible for its privileges. The matter was taken up by Burke, 
who drew a graphic picture of the insatiable desire for wealth of the com- 
pany and its servants, describing them as, ' animated with all the avarice 
of age and all the impetuosity of youth, they roll in one after another, 
wave after wave ; and there is nothing before the eyes of the natives but 
an endless, hopeless prospect of new birds of prey and of passage, with 
appetites continually renewing for a food that is continually wasting.' 

This picture, though, like all Burke's rhetoric, it was highly coloured, 
and, since Olive's reforms, largely untrue, rej)resented the ideas 

The of the day. Numerous persons who had made money 

' Nabobs.' -^^ India had returned to England, and their wealth 
being greater than that of the average gentleman of the day, at- 
tracted attention. Their manners were often not equal to their new 
position ; and their ostentatious attempt to make up by their wealth 
what they wanted in breeding and education made them so extremely 
unpopular that, under the name of 'Nabobs,' they became a butt for 
the satire of the day. Accordingly, in a parliamentary committee which 
investigated the case, Olive, as the representative of a whole class, was 
bitterly attacked ; and though he defended himself with success he never 
recovered his spirits, and in 1774 put an end to his life. 

On the w^hole, however, the decision of parliament was moderate and 
judicious. A ' Eegulating Act' was passed, based on the principle that 
The Reguiat- parliament should have a voice in the political as distin- 
ing Act. tinguished from the commercial affairs of the company. 

Hastings was made governor-general of India, with the right of deciding 
the policy of the presidencies of Madras and Bombay in matters of peace 
and war, and was assisted by a council of five, made up of two officials 
of the East India Oompany and three members appointed by parliament. 

The new arrangement did not make Hastings' task an easier one. By 

taking from them the administration he had already deeply offended the 

natives, especially a certain Brahmin of the name of Nun- 
Hastings XT <. 1 • 1 • -11 1-11 

Governor- coniar. He found it almost impossible to work with the 

council, the parliamentary members of which, headed by 

Philip Francis, who has often been thought to be the author of the letters 

of ' Junius,' set themselves to thwart him. Besides this he was in the 

greatest straits to provide money for the administration, and to satisfy 



1783 Portland 841 

the deinands of the directors. However, in 1775, Nimcomar was tried 
before Chief- Justice Impey, convicted of forgery, and hanged.^ In 1781 
Francis went home, and matters became more tolerable at the council 
table. The demands for money, however, were incessant. Pushed on 
by these, Hastings actually sold to the Naboli of Oude the services of a 
regiment of English troops for the purpose of attacking the Rohillas of 
Rohilcund, whose territory was coveted by the Nabob. Still more diffi- 
cult became Hastings' position when the outbreak of war with France 
revived all the old difficulties with the French settlements ; and matters 
were also complicated by a war with Hyder Ali, a Moham- 
medan, and Sultan of Mysore. Hyder Ali was a typical ^ 
man. In youth he had seen service and acquired a knowledge of drill 
as a French Sepoy, and had then raised himself by his military skill to 
be the commander-in-chief of the troops kept by the Rajah of Mysore. 
He then deposed the legitimate princes, and took the title of Sultan. 
Hyder Ali was an excellent soldier, and with French aid he attacked 
Madras so vigorously that it was all Hastings could do to provide the 
means of repelling him. In his extremity Hastings had recourse to the 
most questionable means of raising money. He resorted to intimida- 
tion, and, among other acts of injustice, extracted a large sum from the 
Begums, or Princesses, of Oude. Eventually, however, his determined 
courage surmounted all obstacles. Hyder's troops were defeated by 
Eyre Coote at the battle of Porto Novo, one of the old Portuguese settle- 
ments ; while Admiral Hughes, with only nine shij)s, fought Suffren's 
fleet of twelve no less than four times without losing a ship, and so 
not only prevented the French from giving any efficient assistance to 
their Indian ally, but preserved Great Britain's command of the eastern 
seas at a most critical period. Nevertheless, the finances of the company 
were unable to support the expenses thrown upon them by the wars, and 
in 1783 its imminent bankruptcy compelled the government to interfere 
in its affairs. 

Accordingly the Coalition Ministry drew up an India Bill, which was 
designed, as Burke said, to be the Magna Carta of Hindostan. The bill, 
so far as it concerned the administration of afi'airs in India, Fox's India 
was admirable ; and is said to have been designed by Burke ^'"• 
himself ; but the part that attracted most attention was that which dealt 

1 In bis celebrated essay on Warren Hastings, Lord Macaulay takes it for granted 
that Nuncomar's execution was a judicial murder ; but a great English judge, 
Sir James Stephen, in his Nuncomar and Impey, says : ' I think that Nuncomar's 
trial was perfectly fair ' ; and shows his reasons for thinking that Macaulay's 
inferences are untnie. Vol. ii., pp. 83-86. Indeed, Macaulay's brilliant writing 
has given quite a false impression of Hastings' career. 



842 George HI. 1783 

with the relations between the company and tlie crown. By this the 
transference to the crown of the political power of the company, begnn 
in 1773, was completed. A body of fifteen directors was formed, seven 
of whom were to have all the political power in their hands, and eight 
all the commercial. The appointment of the eight was in the hands of 
the company ; the seven were to be named by parliament for four years, 
after which they were to be appointed by the crown. The weak point of 
the Act lay in the method of appointing the seven political directors ; for 
it was represented that, being appointed by the parliamentary majority, 
they would in the first instance be friends of Fox and North, and that 
for four years they would have the whole patronage of India in their 
hands with which to secure for ever the parliamentary ascendency of the 
coalition. When the bill was shown to North he remarked that ' it was 
an admirable recipe to knock up an administration,' and his words proved 
correct. Every effort was made to excite feeling against the bill. Fox 
was represented in one caricature as Carlo Khan riding into Downing 
Street on the top of an elephant, and the charter of every corporation 
in the country was declared to be endangered by the attack on that of 
the East India Company. Nothing, however, could be done in the 
Commons, where the bill passed by large majorities ; but when it reached 
the Lords, George ventured on the highly unconstitutional course of 
sending young Lord Temple, son of Chatham's friend, to each peer with 
a plain message written on a visiting card, that ' whoever voted for the 
India Bill was not only not his friend, but would be considered by him as 
an enemy.' The result was that the bill was rejected on December 18, and 
George sent for the seals of the coalition ministers the very same night. 

As his new prime minister George named, not Shelburne, but William 
Pitt. Pitt was then twenty-four years of age, and had only been in 
Pitt's first parliament three years ; but he accepted the post with- 
Ministry. Qy^\^ hesitation. His whole life had been a careful training 
for a parliamentary career. As a mere child his father had taught him 
to declaim Paradise Lost and to translate the classics at sight, in order to 
give him command of the voice and facility in the choice of words. His 
delicacy prevented him from entering a public school ; but at fourteen he 
was sent under a tutor to Cambridge, and remained there for the most 
part during the term time till he entered parliament. At the university 
he devoted himself not only to classics and mathematics, but also to the 
study of such works as bore on the politics of the day, especially to 
Adam Smith's work, the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, in 
which the principle of Free Trade was first systematically argued. At the 
election of 1780 he stood for the university, but was defeated, and was 



1784 Portland— Pitt 843 

returned hy Sir Jniiies Lowtlier for his pocket boron,f,di of Appleby. In 
parliament he showed a readiness and a solidity iar ])eyond his years, 
coupled with a belief in his own powers that bordered on the ridiculons. 
Bold as he was, however, he now required all his courage, for he had 
against him all the old parliamentary hands of the day, and those who 
might have been expected to support him were reluctant to connect their 
reputations with what seemed certain failure. 

In the House of Commons, Pitt was the only cabinet minister ; for his 
only efficient supporter in debate— Henry Dundas, lord-advocate for 
Scotland, and treasurer of the navy — was not in the cabinet. 
In the Lords he had no colleague of the first ability except, mentlry 
perhaps, Thurlow, who was more a hindrance than a help in ^^^^^^• 
general policy. Camden, Grafton, and Temple all held aloof. To Shel- 
burne, Pitt, afraid either of his unpopularity or of his ability, did not 
offer a place ; and that statesman soon afterwards went abroad. Against 
this apparently weak administration were arrayed Fox's genius for debate, 
the easy banter of Lord North, and the solidity of Burke. The tactics of 
both parties were simple. George and Pitt Avere determined to hold on 
till time had been given for the slow-growing public ojiinion of that day 
to form itself. Fox and North wished to force either resignation or dis- 
solution at the earliest possible moment, and even contemplated a refusal 
to vote supplies in order to make government impossible. Short of this, 
however, no law of the constitution can compel a minister to resign ; and 
though Pitt was beaten night after night in the Commons, he had no 
more thought of resigning than George had of demanding his resignation. 
Meanwhile, proofs were not wanting that the flowing tide was with Pitt. 
The House of Lords showed a division in his favour of two to one. The 
city of London, the most liberal constituency in the kingdom, voted him 
its freedom. Encouraging addresses came in from every side. In vain 
the opposition wits laughed at ' a kingdom trusted to a schoolboy's care,' 
and passed resolutions in favour of 'an efficient, united, and extended 
administration.' Their majority steadily dropped, and at length a resolu- 
tion against the government was carried by one only. Then Fox gave in : 
the Mutiny Bill was passed, and on March 25 parliament was dissolved. 

The struggle was then transferred to the constituencies. In those days 
of public nominations, open voting, and polls extending over days and 
even weeks, an election presented an exciting scene of riot, ^he General 
influence and bribery, and few elections had been harder Election. 
fought than this. On the one hand the East India Company sent a copy 
of the bill to every borough, with the advice, ' our charter is invaded, look 
to your own.' On the other, the great Whig fomilies put forth all their 



844 Gem-ge III. 1784 

strength in defence of the monopoly of power which they had enjoyed for 
seventy years. In the end, however, victory declared for Pitt and the 
kino;. Wilberforce, Pitt's yoiino' friend, carried Yorkshire against all the 
efforts of the great Whig county families. Pitt himself came in trium- 
phantly for Cambridge University ; while Fox with difficulty secured 
the second place for the popular constituency of Westminster which he 
had already represented. No less than one hundred and fifty of Fox's 
followers lost their seats, and were called by the wits of the day Fox's 
Martyrs. The main cause of this great discomfiture of the old Whigs 
was the disgust of the country with the old gang of politicians, who had 
treated the government of the country as a monopoly of their own. 
Another element was certainly belief in Pitt. Not only did he inherit 
his father's name, but he had won the esteem of the country by his 
ability, by his 'pluck' — the most .widely recognised of all virtues — and 
above all by his disinterestedness. Of this he had given a remarkable 
proof by handing over to his father's old friend, the blind Colonel Barr6, 
a sinecure office of £3000 a year, which all the world expected that 
he would take for himself. But, however its cause may be analysed, 
Pitt's success was complete, and as the first minister of the reign who had 
enjoyed at once the confidence of the king, of parliament, and of the 
country, he occupied a position of power and security to which no one 
since Walpole had been able to pretend. 

Pitt's first consideration was the affairs of India. In the late parlia- 
ment he had already brought in a bill, which had been rejected. He now 
Pitt's India brought in another which combined the method of Fox's 
^Biil- bill for the actual government of India with a new method 

of securing the control of the government over the political affairs of the 
company. For this purpose it created a Board of Control consisting of six 
members, which was to be a department of the government of the day. 
This was to control all political affairs, while everything connected with 
commerce was left, as before, in the hands of the company. The appoint- 
ments to the posts of governor-general and commander-in-chief were left 
in the hands of the company subject to the veto of the government ; all 
other political appointments were in the hands of the Board of Control. 
This scheme lasted till 1858. In theory, it seemed to give a fair share of 
Indian patronage and administration to both political parties ; in practice, 
during the long rule of Pitt, it was used by his friend Dundas, who 
became the first president of the Board of Control, to secure Pitt's 
power in Scotland. To be a Scotsman and a supporter of Pitt were 
the two essential conditions for a successful application for a post under 
the Indian government ; and so cleverly did Dundas use his power, that 



1788 Pitt 8^5 

the Scottish constituencies became, ahnost without exception, supporters 
of Pitt's administration. 

In 1785 Warren Hastings came home, and the question immediately 
arose whether his Indian rule, which had been the subject of most 
violent attack during the recent debates, should be passed Trial of 
over in silence, or whether he should be subjected to a Hastings, 
prosecution. Hastings played his cards badly, and his agents succeeded 
in drawing attention to his case without forming a party for his defence ; 
on the other hand, he was violently attacked by his old enemy Francis, 
and in parliament Fox and Burke loudly demanded his prosecution. The 
first impulse of Pitt and Dundas was naturally to support a man who had 
brought British India through such a crisis ; but, on carefully examining 
the evidence, they found it impossible for government to undertake his 
defence. Accordingly they took up an attitude of neutrality, and left 
the lead to the opposition, who carried a resolution to impeach Hastings 
on four heads : first, the extirpation of the Rollillas, for which he had 
received i,'400,000 from the Nabob of Oude ; second, for extracting 
^500,000 from Cheyte Singh, Rajah of Benares, for delaying to pay a 
sum of ^50,000, which was by no means clearly due at all ; fur deposing 
Cheyte Singh and appropriating his whole revenue of J200,000 a year ; 
and lastly, for extorting large sums from the Begums or Princesses of 
Oude. The trial began in 1788, and the principal speakers against 
Hastings were Fox, Burke, R. B. Sheridan, and W. W. Windham. 
Public opinion on the subject was much divided. The Court wiis 
strongly for Hastings ; the rising humanitarian feeling of the day was 
against him. Eventually, the trial dragged on six years, for the Lords 
only sat to hear evidence a few days in each session. In the end 
Hastings was acquitted ; but the effect of the trial was altogether out of 
proportion to the apparent insignificance of this result. The attention of 
the country had been fully concentrated on India, and public opinion 
had been formed more rapidly than would probably have been the case 
under the influence of any less dramatic event. Hitherto the British 
administration of India, though illuminated by many deeds of bravery, 
and by much- ability, had been on the whole a disgrace to the country. 
It was now gradually changed ; a much higher standard of duty, both 
to the natives and to the service to which they belonged, was set before 
Indian officials ; and during the seventy remaining years of the company's 
rule, some of the noblest names of which the nation can boast have been 
associated with the government of India. 

Meanwhile, Pitt had been vigorously engaged in reforming, or attempt- 
ing to reform, most branches of the administration. Pursuing his own 



846 George III. 1784 

and his father's policy, he brought forward in 1785 a bill for parlia- 
mentary reform. By this he proposed to disfranchise thirty-six rotten 
Parliament- boroughs, with less than six voters each, and to compensate 
ary Reform. \^q[j. owners with a money grant. The seventy-two seats 
thus set free he i3roj)osed to give to the counties and to London. He 
also proposed to give votes to copyholders in counties holding land worth 
forty shillings a year. This plan received the support of Fox, but Avas 
vigorously opposed by Burke. The king Avas against it, and many of 
the older reformers, satisfied with the existing government, had grown 
cold. In spite, therefore, of Pitt's genuine wish for the success of his 
measure, it was thrown out on the second reading by 248 votes to 174. 

Foiled in his attempt to reform parliament, Pitt succeeded in doing 
something to purify the administration itself by passing an act establish- 
ing a systematic audit of the government accounts. Hitherto the 
amount of jobbery had been frightful, and it was found that no less than 
,£300 a year had been credited to Lord North for pack-thread for his own 
use. Pitt also did a great deal to aid the public in forming an opinion 
on the administration by publishing a public statement of accounts after 
the fashion set by Necker in France. Another change connected Avith 
Pitt's administration is an alteration in the time of the parliamentary 
session. Hitherto parliament had usually met in November. After the 
session of 1783-84 it was not called till January, 1785, and this practice 
has since been continued. 

It Avas in finance, hoAvever, that Pitt achieved his most striking 
success. He adopted the principles of Adam Smith, who advocated the 

Pitt's encouragement of commerce by low duties, instead of the 

Finance. \{i<^\ rates by Avhich previous financiers had endeavoured to 
restrict the imports of the country, and in 1785 he reduced the tea-duty 
from 50 per cent, to 12 per cent., making up the difi'erence by means of 
a window-tax, from which cottages with six AvindoAvs or less were 
exempt. He also carried out Walpole's plan of putting wine and tobacco 
under the excise. Even more important was his commercial treaty with 
France, negotiated in 1786. In spite of the old prejudice AA^hich 
regarded France as our 'natural enemy,' Pitt declared in favour of 
reducing the customs duties of both countries to the smallest possible 
amount in order to encourage trade, and declared his conviction that 
nothing was so certain to secure peace as the development of commercial 
relations between the tAvo countries. The immediate result Avas most 
favourable to the revenue. Before 1786, for every gallon of brandy that 
passed through the custom-house, at least six were smuggled, but the 
reduction of the duty made smuggling unprofitable, and the revenue 



1788 Pitt 8,47 

gained accordingly. Pitt would willingly have applied the same system 
to Ireland, and in 1785 introduced a bill equalising the duties of the two 
countries ; this measure, however, was received with the utmost hostility 
by the commercial men in the English Parliament, supported by Fox and 
other leaders of the opposition. Pitt, therefore, was obliged to remodel 
his scheme, and in its new form it was so little favourable to Ireland 
that it was rejected by the Irish Parliament. 

Pitt next brought forward a scheme for paying off the national debt, 
which at this time amounted to £250,000,000. It consisted in settin" 
aside £1,000,000 every year, which was to be applied to The Sinking 
buying stock. This stock was to be held by certain com- ^und. 
missioners, and in the second and succeeding years they were to apply 
the interest of the stock they held, and the fresh £1,000,000 voted by 
parliament, to buying up more stock. In this way a larger sum would be 
applied each year to buying stock ; and when the stock in the hands of the 
commissioners became equal in amount to the national debt, the debt 
could be cancelled by a stroke of the pen. The scheme was an honest 
attempt to make the nation tax itself to extinguish the debt, but was 
subject to the drawback that if money had to be raised by loan, and the 
price of the loan exceeded the rate of interest of the national debt, the 
nation would be borrowing at a high rate of interest to pay off debts 
at a low. This was pointed out by Fox and Sheridan — who, on the 
subject of debts, could certainly speak with experience. When the 
great French war broke out this actually happened. Nevertheless, so 
long as Pitt lived, the £1,000,000 was duly paid ; but, in 1807, 
the scheme was virtually dropped, and was formally abandoned in 
1828. 

The humanitarian feeling, which had shown itself in the impeachment 
of Hastings, was also manifested in a growing agitation against the slave 
trade ; and the leader of this, outside parliament, Avas Thomas The Slave 
Clarkson, a young Cambridge graduate, who had won a ^^ ^' 
Latin prize essay on the subject. In parliament the sj)okesman of the 
movement was William Wilberforce ; and in 1787 an association was 
formed for the total abolition of the trade. This could not be effected 
at once— so large were the interests involved — but a j^arliamentary 
inquiry into the conditions of the trade revealed such iniquities, that 
in 1788 a bill was passed for the better regulation of slave-ships, and 
next year, through the efforts of Pitt, Wilberforce, Fox, and Burke, 
resolutions condemning the slave trade itself were introduced. 

In regard to foreign affairs Pitt was neither able nor anxious to attempt 
a great deal. The loss of her colonies and the severe struggle with the 



848 George III. 1784 

continental powers had left Great Britain comparatively powerless. 
Her wealth and her admirable navy still made her respected, but she 
Foreign ^^'^^^ not regarded as capable of undertaking military opera- 
Affairs, tions on a large scale. Pitt, however, was as tenacious as 
his father had been of Great Britain's position as a leading European 
power, and in dealing with other nations never admitted any inferiority 
of position. The first question that attracted his attention arose out of 
a revolution in Holland. This was efiected by the French, or Eepublican 
party, which, in 1787, expelled the hereditary stadtholder. Prince William 
of Orange, and proposed to revert to the old Federal constitution of 

,^ ,, the united provinces. To this, however, objections were 

Holland. ^ . 

raised by the kings of Prussia and England, both of 

whom were connected with the house of Orange. Accordingly, Pitt made 

common cause with Prussia to compel the Dutch to receive back their 

stadtholder. The pressure of the Prussian army and the British navy 

soon compelled the Dutch to give in, and the stadtholder was restored 

under a sort of guarantee from England and Prussia to defend him and 

his dominions. 

The next difficulty arose out of the question whether the British had 
a right to form settlements on Nootka, now St. George's Sound, between 

Nootka Vancouver Island and the mainland. This involved a 

Sound. decision of the question whether discovery supported by 

a mere declaration of ownership, but without occupation, was a bar to 
settlement by other nations. The English had always declared that 
actual occupation was necessary ; but the Spaniards, who claimed the 
whole w^estern coast of North America under the will of Alexander vi., 
asserted the contrary. Matters came to a crisis in 1 790, and Pitt's firm 
attitude forced the Spaniards to give Avay. 

Against the Dutch and Spaniards Pitt had been successful, but he 
failed in an attempt to coerce Kussia. The reigning sovereign of Kussia 
was the famous Empress Catherine ii., who was bent on 
giving Kussia access to the Black Sea, just as Peter the 
Great had secured it a footing on the Baltic. In 1788 her General 
Potemkim took Oczakov at the mouth of the Dnieper, and in 1790 
Ismail was stormed, with terrible loss of life, by the great Suvarov. These 
successes roused the fear of Pitt, who regarded with apprehension the 
prospect of seeing Russia established at Constantinople. Accordingly 
he determined to bring both diplomatic and military pressure to bear on 
Russia. He found, however, that the House of Commons was in no 
mood to support him in the pursuit of w^hat seemed so remote an object ; 
and Catherine was too clever not to perceive that Pitt's threats, if 



1788 Pitt 



849 



unsupported by arms, were valueless. Accordingly she maintained her 
determination to secure a port on the Baltic, and though her allies, the 
Austrians, withdrew from the war, she obtained by the treaty of Jassy 
the fortress of Oczakov and the district between the Dnieper and 
the Bug. 

During the early years of Pitt's ministry some progress was made 
towards replacing the colonies we had lost in America by a new colonial 
empire at the other side of the world. The voyages of Captain Cooke 
between 1769 and 1779 had given a fuller knowledge of the islands of 
the Pacific than any nation had before possessed ; and though he showed 
conclusively that no habitable continent existed in the southern ocean he 
made known the existence of an excellent region for colonisation. At that 
date, however, there was not nuich demand for emigration, as the new 
manufacturing industries provided ample work at home. Nevertheless 
the government determined to send out a penal settlement, and in 
January 1 788 a batch of convicts was landed in Botany Bay, New South 
Wales. In 1788 the town of Sydney was founded, and named after the 
colonial secretary. Henceforth the whole of the shores of Australia and 
New Zealand were claimed as British territory ; and though the lands were 
almost entirely unoccupied, our unrivalled command of the sea prevented 
other nations from disputing our claim. 

In 1788 an event happened which threatened not only to deprive Pitt 
of power but also to put Fox and North in office. As early as 1765 
George had been visited by a slight attack of insanity, and in George's 
1788 he became unmistakably mad. Should such an event badness, 
occur now, no difference would he. made in the condition of parties : a 
regent would be appointed, and the government would go on as before. 
In those days, however, the case was very different. In the existing 
House of Commons it was calculated that 185 members ' would probably 
support his majesty's government under any minister not peculiarly un- 
popular.' The independent members were reckoned at 108, the followers 
of Fox at 138, those of Pitt at 52. From this it was calculated that if 
Fox was placed in office he would have the support of at least 323 
members, which would give him a majority of the House, and conse- 
quently it made all the difference as to who should be appointed regent. 
The natural person to hold the office was George, Prince of Wales, now 
twenty-six years of age. His character, however, was extremely bad. 
He had taken advantage of the Royal Marriage Act to contract an illegal 
marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert, a Roman Catholic— a legal marriage 
with whom would have forfeited his right to the crown under the Act 
of Settlement— and had disgraced himself in the eyes of all honour- 

3 H 



850 George III. 1788 

able men by authorising Fox to deny the existence of the marriage in 
the House of Commons. He was also a notorious profligate and 
o-ambler, and overwhelmed in debt. In politics he professed to be a 
Whio', and on coming into power would certainly have dismissed Pitt 
and called Fox to office. Eager for place, Fox foolishly asserted that the 
Prince of Wales had as good a right to ' exercise the power of sovereignty 
during the continuance of the king's illness and incapacity ' as if the king 
were dead, while Pitt maintained the constitutional practice of parliament 
appointing a regent and guardian of the king's person, as had been done 
in the case of Henry vi. Eventually Pitt brought in a bill, giving the 
prince the regency with full political power, but reserving the guardian- 
ship of the king and the management of the royal household to the 
queen. However, before the bill was passed, George recovered, and 
Pitt's position became more assured than ever. The king's illness forms 
a turning-point in his life. Up to this time he had been decidedly un- 
popular, for the bad management of ministers had been put down to his 
influence. But he now began to get credit for Pitt's success ; and for the 
remainder of his reign he was distinctly popular, and the more so, because 
the vices of the heir to the throne acted as a foil to the unostentatious 
virtues of the old king. 

Even the judicious financial measures of Pitt would not have sufficed to 
restore prosperity to the country, had not his administration coincided 
with the commencement of an industrial revolution which 
dustrial has efi'ected a greater change in the condition of the English 

evo ution. popi^jj^tion than anything which had occurred since the 
enclosure of the commons under the Tudors. Though some steps had 
been taken towards the creation of a manufacturing industry, England 
had continued to be in the main an agricultural and commercial country, 
and down to the year 1769 had even exported corn to foreign countries. 

Since that date, however, an immense impetus had been given to 
manufactures by a revolution that had taken place in the cotton trade. 
Textile ^^^^ ^^^ spread thence with the other textile industries — 

Industries, linen, wooUen, and silk. Down to the reign of Henry viii. 
all spinning in this country had been done with the spindle and distafl', 
but in his time the one-thread spinning wheel was introduced. This 
was a great improvement, and no further change was made for some 
time, because in practice the head of the family was able to weave as 
much as his wife could spin. The loom used was that depicted in 
Hogarth's Idle and Industrious Ajpiwentices. However, in the early part 
of the eighteenth century, several improvements were made in the art of 
weaving. The ' fly shuttle ' saved the weaver from having to throw the 



1788 Pitt 



851 



shuttle backwards and forwards by hand. The invention of the 'drop 
shuttle' enabled him to change from one coloured thread to another 
without breaking the thread. In consequence of these improvements, 
the process of weaving grew more rapid, and the demand for thread 
increased. Increased attention, therefore, was given to spinning ; and in 
1764, Hargreaves, who had already invented a 'carding' machine^ designed 
the 'spinning jenny,' which enabled one wheel to spin several threads at 
once. In 1769 Arkwright took out a patent for a machine which spun 
the threads by passing them between pairs of rollers revolving in diflferent 
directions ; and, in 1776, Crompton combined the two inventions in his 
mule, which was made self-acting by Roberts. Hardly had this been 
done, when Cartright, a clergyman, and Horrocks, a Lancashire weaver, 
separately designed a power loom that would act by machinery. 

In the mule and the power loom the motive power was usually 
supplied by water ; but Watt's improvements in the steam engine now 
brought a new force into play. The first working steam ^he stea 
engine was that of Nevvcomen, patented in 1705. It had. Engine, 
however, only been used for pumping water out of mines ; and it was 
not till 1782, when Watt took out a patent for a double-acting steam 
engine, that it became possible to use it for general purposes. The gist 
of Watt's invention was a contrivance by which the piston was driven 
both up and down the cylinder by steam ; and this method, which 
saved fuel and increased the speed at which an engine could be run 
enabled manufacturers to apply it as a motive power to the new 
machines. Even this would have been impossible, owing to the great 
cost of iron- work, had it not been for the application of jron- 
the discovery that pit coal could be used as well as charcoal working, 
for smelting iron ore. This discovery, which had been originally made 
by an Oxford man named Dudley, in the reign of James i., had attracted 
little attention so long as the demand for iron was limited, and plenty of 
wood remained ; but it was revived in the eighteenth century, and first 
applied on a large scale at the Carron iron-works near Stirling. These 
three great inventions — the mule, the power loom, and the steam 
engine — revolutionised British industry. Hitherto the work of spinning 
and weaving had been carried on in the houses of the workmen ; now it 
began to be transferred to factories, where large numbers of hands 
worked for the wages of one employer. The result was the desertion of 
the country by manufacture, and the concentration of all such industry 
in great manufacturing towns, wherever the neighbourhood of coal 
and iron, and easy access to the sea, gave promise of remunerative 
employment. 



852 George III. 1788 

In the development of their industrial resources the inland towns 
were immensely aided by the new system of canals. Since the days of 
the Romans, the first canal dug in England was the Bridg- 
water canal, designed to bring coal from the duke of 
Bridgwater's collieries to Manchester, and completed in 1761 by 
Brindley. The success of this undertaking caused it to be widely 
imitated ; and before the end of the century no less than three thousand 
miles of canals had been constructed, and the natural waterways of the 
Thames, Trent, Severn, Mersey, and Humber connected by an artificial 
system of navigation. Scarcely less important was the 
great improvement of the roads, chiefly effected by John 
Metcalfe — long remembered as 'blind Jack of Knaresborough ' — and 
Improved Telford, a Scottish engineer. Of this Pitt took advan- 
Posts. tage, in 1785, to increase the rate of postal delivery by 

the adoption of Palmer's scheme of fast mail-coaches — an enormous boon 
to the whole community. These improvements were of more value to 
England than the discovery of the richest gold mine. If the prosperity 
of a country is to be measured by the density of its population, that of 
England advanced by leaps and bounds. In 1700 the population 
amounted to live millions ; at the accession of George iii. it was six 
millions ; and in 1801 nine millions. At the same time the demand for 
work was growing at least as rapidly as the population ; and, until the 
outbreak of the great French war, the country enjoyed, under Pitt, a 
period of almost unexampled prosperity. 

The early years of Pitt's ministry also witnessed the close of one 
literary period and the dawn of another. In 1784 died Samuel Johnson, 
the successor of Dryden and Pope in the literary sovereignty of the classical 
school of English literature. For thirty years he had been the recognised 
authority on literary taste, just as Voltaire had been in France. He had 
no successor ; for, after his time, men of letters refused to submit to a 
dictator ; and, indeed, in the new age a dictatorship was impossible, 
because, instead of all writers endeavouring to conform to a received 
standard of excellence, originality again resumed her sway, and variety 
not uniformity pointed . the way to excellence. Johnson's death was 
soon followed by that of the other leaders of his school. Adam Smith 
died in 1790 ; Robertson, the historian, in 1793 ; Gibbon in 1794 ; 
Horace Walpole in 1797. On the other hand, modern poetry begins 
with the publication of Cowper's first poems in 1782, and Burns' in 
1786. In 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge published their lyrical 
ballads. Modern philology begins with Home Tooke's Diversions of 
Pitr/ey, published in 1786 ; and modern classical criticism with Porson's 



1789 



Pitt 



853 



edition of the Hecuba in lVl)5. In 1798 Maltlms published his hook 
on the principles of the increase of population. Indeed, there is hardly 
a subject in which the last twenty years of the eighteenth century 
cannot show the upspringing of a new life. 



CHIEF DA TES. 

Peace of Paris, 

Wilkes and the ' North Briton,' 

The Stamp Act passed, 

The Middlesex Election, . 

Junius' Letters, .... 

American War begins, 

Declaration of American Independence, 

Surrender at Saratoga, 

Siege of Gitoraltar, .... 

Surrender at Yorktown, . 

Rodney's victory over de Grasse, 

Burke's Economical Reform Act passed. 

Peace of Versailles, .... 

Fox's India Bill rejected, . 

Pitt becomes Prime Minister, . 

Pitt's India Bill passed, . 

Impeachment of Warren Hastings, . 

Sydney founded, .... 



1768 



A.D. 
1763 
1763 
1765 
1769 
and 1772 
1775 
1776 
1777 

1779-1782 
1781 
1782 
1782 
1783 
1783 
1783 
1784 

1786-1792 
1788 



CHAPTEE IV 



THE WARS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES AND GOVERNMENTS 



France. 
Louis XVI., executed 

in 1793. 
Republic, 1792-1794. 
Directorate, 1794-1799. 
Consulate, 1799-1804. 
Napoleon, Emperor, 

1804-1814. 
Louis XVIII., 1814-1824. 



Emperors. 

Leopold II., 

1790-1792. 

Francis Ii. , 

Emperor of 

Austria, 
1805-1835. 



Prussia. 
Frederick William ii., 

1786-1797. 
Frederick William iii. 

1797-1840. 



Russia. 

Catherine ii., 

1762-1796. 

Paul, 

1796-1801. 

Alexander i. , 

1801-1825. 



Causes and Progress of the French Revolution— Its effect on the Relations of 
Great Britain and France — The War against the French Republic — Irish 
Affairs — The Union, and Fall of Pitt — The War against Napoleon — The 
Peace — Its effects on England. 

The gradual awakening of a new political and literary life, wliicli we 
have seen in England under Pitt's ministry, was only one side of a far 
The French greater movement which soon absorbed the attention of 
Revolution. Europe. This is the French Revolution, an event which is 
certain to be always reckoned one of the epoch-making incidents of the 
world's history. It effected a change in the condition of Europe as 
great as that produced by the Reformation, and of which the influence 
is by no means exhausted. Like all great movements, the Revolution 
may be looked at from various points of view. From one, its chief result 
was the abolition of the relics of mediaeval feudalism, and the substitu- 
tion of modern society ; from another, its chief work was the abolition 
of privilege, and the ' opening of a career to talent ' ; from a third, it 
resulted in the substitution of constitutional government for the absolute 
monarchies which then existed in every country on the continent ; from 
the point of view of thought, it represented a breaking off from old 

£51 



1789 Pitt 855 

ideas, similar to that which accompanied the Renaissance ; and, 
incidentally, it produced the feeling of nationality on which our present 
European system is for the most part based. In short, it is impossible 
to look at any side of European society which has not undergone some 
change in consequence of the French Revolution. The violence of this 
change varied in different countries. In England, which had long 
enjoyed representative government, and where no privileged class was 
known to the law, much of the transformation, which in other countries 
was brought about by revolution, had been already produced by a 
gradual process of evolution ; and, consequently, the force of the storm 
was hardly felt here. Elsewhere, however, it was much more violent, 
and especially so in France. This was not due to there being more 
oppression and hardship in France than elsewhere — for the contrary was 
the case — but to the circumstance that in that country people were 
more alive to the existence of abuses, and also that the course of events 
in France gave an opportunity for a political revolution. 

In France, as in other continental countries, the framework of 
feudalism, which had been the basis of society in the middle ages, 
remained almost unchanged ; but its usefulness had causes of the 
departed, and its abuses only remained. Society was devolution, 
divided into the privileged classes and the unprivileged, who were to 
one another as one to thirty. The privileged classes paid little in 
taxation, by far the largest share of which fell on the unprivileged. For 
example, the chief taxes paid at this date were a land tax called the 
tailU, which the two privileged classes — the nobility and the clergy — did 
not pay ; second, a poll tax, which all paid ; and, third, a property tax, 
chiefly assessed on land. The indirect taxes were still more oppressive. 
The chief was the hateful gabelle, or salt tax, which of course fell most 
heavily on the poor, who were compelled to take a certain quantity of 
salt whether they wished or no. It was, moreover, extremely badly 
managed. No less than sixty thousand persons were engaged in 
collecting it, and not more than one-fifth of the sum paid ever reached 
the treasury. In addition to the general taxation of the country, many 
of the French provinces had the right to levy duties on all goods 
crossing the frontier ; the towns claimed the octroi on goods entering 
their gates ; and tolls were exacted on every possible pretext. Conse- 
quently, it cost so much to transport goods from one part of France to 
another that internal trade was almost prohibited ; and, even in time of 
famine, corn could hardly be brought to the starving population from 
districts where the harvest had been plenteous. 

In the country districts, the special grievances arose out of the relics 



856 George II T. 1789 

of the seigniorial system. Generally speaking, this was analogous to the 
English manorial system (see page 258). The vast majority of the land 

in France was in the hands of peasant landowners, who 
Seigniorial held their lands in perpetuity on condition of performing 

certain services to the lord or seigneur. These varied from 
holding to holding, and had often been commuted for money ; and the 
hardships connected with them arose chiefly from their being often 
farmed to some one unconnected with the estate, who treated the tenants 
with great severity. Some causes of opj)ression, however, were general. 
The first was the corvee^ or forced labour on the roads or holding of the 
lord. Such a duty had been known in England from the earliest times, 
but had long been commuted for a highway rate ; in France, however, it 
was still performed in person, and was often made an engine of oppression 
through the peasant being often called olf from his own work just when 
he was most wanted at home. The game laws, too, were very oppressive. 
In England, if a farm has much game on it, the farmer will offer less rent 
for it than if there is little, and now he has also an inalienable right to 
kill hares and rabbits ; but in France the seigneur, or lord of the manor, 
could keep up as much game as he liked on the land held from him, and 
tlie holder suffered in proportion. Moreover, there was much preserva- 
tion of deer and wild boars, which did a great deal of harm by their 
depredations on the crops. The seigneur also had the right to keep a 
dovecot, with thousands of pigeons, which devoured such quantities of 
grain that fields had frequently to be sown three times before sufficient 
remained to make a crop. Townsmen too had their special grievances. 
In tlie towns all trades were in the hands of corporations or guilds 
— which, in England, had been dying out since the reign of Edward vi, 

^, _ — and no one could set up in business without paying a 

The Towns, ^ i i 

large sum to be admitted as a member. In the church, all 

the best places fell to the lot of the nobility : no peasant's son could hope 

to be more than a village cure. In the army, no one but a noble could 

rise above the rank of non-com-missioned officer. Everywhere men of 

ability found themselves held down and rebuff'ed by privilege. 

What, however, made this state of things so unbearable in France 

was the intellectual awakening which had been in progress almost since 

_. the beginning of the century, and by which all classes were 

Discontent. * => » i 

more or less aff^ected. Of this movement the leaders were 

Voltaire, Rousseau, and the grouj) of men known as the Encyclopasdists. 

Voltaire — dramatist, poet, historian, novelist, pamphleteer — used each 

and all of these weapons to attack the existing order of things both in 

cliuich and state, and particularly the infamous intellectual tyranny 



1789 Pitt 857 

exercised by the ecclesiastical authorities. Voltaire's satire, however, 
appealed mainly to the educated classes. It was Rousseau who was the 
apostle of freedom to all. Seeing that society, with its culture and 
its teachers, was sunk in sensuality and selfishness, he called on his age 
to return to that imaginary state of nature where each man, satisfied 
with the supply of his own immediate wants, would not interfere with his 
neighbour supplying himself from nature's bountiful store. Almost as 
important was the work of d'Alembert, Diderot, and others, who in 1771 
completed a new encyclopcedia, which they used to express the most 
advanced ideas on religion, politics, and society, and which had an 
immense influence in moulding public opinion. A few years later, the 
part taken by Lafiiyette and the French contingent in the American war 
familiarised Frenchmen with rebellion against constituted authority, and 
spread widely a liking for republican institutions, while the utter rotten- 
ness of court society under Louis xv. did much to bring monarchy 
itself into disrepute. Everything pointed to some tremendous political 
catastrophe. As early as 1753, Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son that 
' all the symptoms which I have ever met with in history previous to 
great changes and revolutions in government, now exist and daily 
increase in France' ; and Rousseau, who died in 1778, observes: 'Every- 
thing I see scatters the seeds of a revolution which I shall not have the 
happiness to witness.' 

Nevertheless, unless opportunity offers, a state may continue for a very 
long time in a condition verging on revolution without any catastrophe 
occurring. However, in 1789, such an opportunity came ^he Political 
through the condition of the state finances. The long wars Opportunity. 
of Louis XIV., and the unsuccessful but expensive part taken by Louis xv. 
in the Seven Years' War, had thrown French finances into confusion. 
The reckless way in which taxation was imposed impoverished the 
country, with the result that while the expenditure increased the 
revenue steadily diminished. Louis xvi., who came to the throne in 
1774, was well-intentioned, and his finance minister, Turgot, was per- 
mitted to propose some reforms ; but the moment it was suggested that 
certain useless offices should be abolished, and that the burden of taxa- 
tion ought to be equalised, such a clamour was raised by the courtiers 
that the king was obliged to dismiss his minister, and things went on as 
before. Unluckily for herself, the queen, Marie Antoinette, who, though 
frivolous and extravagant was not intentionally wicked, aided the 
opposition to Turgot, and from that time her name was identified in the 
popular mind with resistance to reform. 

But though Turgot was dismissed, the deficit remained ; and no effort 



858 Qeorge tit. 1789 

to hide it availed. After a time recourse was had to Necker, a Genevese 
banker ; but his skill in accounts served only to make the difficulties 
more obvious, and it was certain that nothing but fresh 
taxation could meet the case. In these circumstances a 
meeting of notables was called, who in their turn advised the king 
to summon a meeting of the Estates-General. This body, which had been 
constituted by Philip the Fair in the time of Edward i., but had not 
met since 1614, consisted of members elected to represent in each district 
the clergy, nobility, and third estate. The elections took place amidst 
great excitement, and the members assembled at Versailles on May 5, 1789. 
The condition of France was most critical. Crops were failing, bread was 
scarce, and riots and outrages were taking place all over the country. 
Hitherto it had been the practice for the three estates to sit separately, 
so that the votes of the two privileged estates always outweighed that 
of the third. Now, however, the third estate, after a long dispute, 
insisted that the three should sit together, and as the members for the third 
estate numbered six hundred, to the three hundred of each of the others, 
and were joined by some of the inferior clergy, they were practically 
supreme in the combined body, which came to be called the National, 
and sometimes the Constituent, Assembly. The assembly thus constituted 
was, however, deficient in the characteristics which make an efficient 
legislative body. The members were enthusiastic, but they had had no 
experience of practical affairs ; and, consequently, instead of dealing with 
the matter in hand in a business-like way, they were continually falling 
back upon general principles — the rights of man, and the like. They 
wasted an immense amount of time in speech-making, and their speeches 
were prepared and read like essays of a debating society, and had little 
about them of the discussions of practical men. Nevertheless, the 
assembly did much good work. It swept away all the privileges of the 
nobles and clergy, did away with tithes and seigniorial rights, abolished 
titles of nobility, and declared all trades and professions open to all men. 
It also confiscated the property of the church, and of all those who fled 
from the country to avoid the Eevolution. So far, its work was de- 
structive, and therefore easy. It was now confronted with the business 
of creating a new constitution for France ; but as one of its ablest 
members, Mirabeau, remarked : ' Pigmies may pull down, but it takes a 
great man to build up,' and its work was therefore slow. 

Meanwhile, the mob of Paris — maddened by hunger, and excited by 

FaU of the ^^^^ oratory of agitators like Camille Desmoulins — bad taken 

Bastille. \\^q j^w into their own hands and stormed the Bastille, a 

fortress which answered to the Tower of London, and in which prisoners 



1792 Pitt 859 

confined under lettres de cachet — that is, by order of the king — were placed. 
These letters had been one of the great grievances of the time, but when 

the doors were forced it was found that there were only seven prisoners 

four accused of forgery, one an idiot, one imprisoned at the request of his 
family, and one imprisoned during thirty years for an offence of which 
he had no recollection. Nevertheless, the taking of the Bastille created 
an immense sensation ; for it showed that there was no authority in 
France that could control the mob of Paris. The army had looked on at 
the riot ; the assembly had done nothing ; and the king had spent the 
day in hunting. When told of what had occurred, Louis remarked : 
* Why, this is a revolt.' ' No, sire,' said his attendant, ' it is a revolution. 
In the provinces, as in the capital, law and order were set at defiance. 
Everywhere the peasants assembled in mobs, burnt the country-houses, 
destroyed the lords' rolls, and killed the game. In Paris, some 
order was restored by the constitution of the national guards, a body of 
middle-class citizens, commanded by Lafayette ; but in October the 
mob again rose, and, marching to Versailles, compelled the king, the 
queen, and the national assembly to come to Paris. From that moment 
the mob were the real masters of the situation. 

For some time there was just a possibility that, if the king would give 
his confidence to Mirabeau, whose influence in the assembly was very 
great, some arrangement might be made by which order would have 
been restored and the monarchy re-established in power ; but Mira- 
beau's death in March 1791 destroyed all hopes of this, and the king 
further discredited himself by an abortive attempt to escape from Paris 
and take refuge with the French army on the frontier. However, in the 
summer of 1791, the Constituent Assembly had completed its work, and 
in October the new constitution came into force. The scheme, however, 
worked badly. The ministry was weak ; the king was distrusted, and 
the new legislative assembly soon fell under the influence of the com- 
mune, or corporation, of Paris and of the Jacobin Club, which contained 
Danton, Marat, Eobespierre, and the most advanced leaders of the 
revolutionary party. 

Meanwhile, the greater part of the old nobility who had been ruined 
by the abolition of their privileges, had fled the country headed by the 
king's brothers, who afterwards reigned as Louis xviii. and Fall of the 
Charles x. They appealed for protection to foreign states, Monarchy, 
and particularly to Austria, for the Emperor Leopold was the brother of 
Queen Marie Antoinette. In consequence, a coalition was made between 
Austria and Prussia to invade France, and their armies collected on the 
frontier in the summer of 1792. The result of this interference was 



860 George III. 1790 

fatal to the monarchy. On August 10 the Tuileries, where the court 
resided, was stormed by the mob ; Louis, with the queen and royal 
family, Avas transferred to the Temple ; and all suspected of sympathy 
with the refugees were thrown into prison. The advance of the allies 
only made matters worse. Exasperated by a proclamation of the duke 
of Brunswick that ' if the king and queen were not set at liberty, Paris 
would be given over to military execution,' the whole nation flew to 
arms. The legislative assembly gave way to a National Convention in 
September ; and when it was known that the foreigners were across the 
frontier, the prisoners were massacred wholesale, and the mob became 
more powerful than ever. Had the invasion been successful, it could 
hardly have turned back the tide of revolution. As it was, it proved a 
Cannonade Complete failure ; for the raw French troops under Keller- 
of Valmy. mann held a position at Valmy in spite of a severe cannonade 
from the allies, and Brunswick, easily disheartened, withdrew from a 
further attempt. His invasion, however, exasperated the French to 
Death of frenzy ; a Eepublic was proclaimed ; in February 1793 Louis 
the King. ^^^^ ^^^ tried and put to death, and for some months there 
was a reign of terror, during which thousands of persons who, on some 
pretext or another, were suspected of complicity either with royalty or 
the foreigners, were put to death. 

When the news of the Eevolution first reached England, most people 
received it with satisfaction : some, because they believed that the 
English French were merely establishing a constitutional monarchy, 
Feeling. ^^^ |.j^^^ ^^^ ^^^ countries would be more friendly under 
similar institutions than heretofore ; some, because they believed that 
France was ruining herself, and would no longer be a source of danger ; 
others, because they had a genuine sympathy with the cause of freedom, 
and believed that what was going on in France was a step towards the 
realisation of a higher ideal. ' How much the greatest event in the 
history of the world, and how much the best ! ' was Fox's exclamation 
w^hen he heard of the fall of the Bastille. As might be expected from 
the complexity of the subject, all these opinions were more or less 
wrong. The French Eevolution differed from that carried out in 
England during the seventeenth century in the fact that it was pre-emin- 
ently asocial uprising, in which politics held only a secondary place. So 
far from France being weakened, it became very much stronger, for the 
national feeling aroused by Brunswick's invasion filled the ranks of the 
army with enthusiastic soldiers, who only required good drilling and good 
leading to make an admirable army. Fox and his friends, though right 
in the end, overlooked the disastrous circumstances under which the 



1793 Pitt 



861 



Revolution was being effected, and the terrible crimes of which its advo- 
cates were guilty. 

For over a year, however, sympathy decidedly prevailed, when the 
current of public opinion began to be turned by the publication of 
Burke's Refiections on the French Bevolution. In this The ' Reflec- 
book, which was perfectly consonant with Burke's fre- *^°"^ °" ^^^ 

, 1 -. French 

quently shown attachment to the lorms of ancient institu- Revolution.' 
tions, he pointed out that the key to the Revolution was to be found in 
its social character, and utterly condemned the abstract principles of 
liberty, fraternity, and equality on which the new system was said to be 
based. He also pointed out the injustice with which the seigneurs and 
the church had been treated, denounced the ill-treatment to which the 
royal family had been subjected, and foretold the complete ruin of 
French society and the rise in its place of a military despotism. Finally, 
he declared for an armed intervention. This book, of which some 
30,000 copies were soon sold, had an enormous effect. Englishmen, as 
a rule, dislike and despise abstract ideas ; they detest injustice ; their 
chivalry is easily roused by the ill-treatment of a sovereign, and especi- 
ally of a queen ; and when, as the Revolution developed itself, and they 
saw Burke's predictions coming true, many accej)ted him almost as a 
prophet, and a war party was rapidly formed. Against this feeling 
Fox protested in vain. It was useless to point out that the excesses 
complained of were those of the mob, and that the National Assembly 
had nothing to do with them ; and, as time went on, that the intrigues of 
the court with foreigners, and the invasion of the country by Brunswick, 
were responsible for the massacres of September and the proclamation of 
a Republic. Burke was almost too furious to be reasoned with. In 
1790 he declared his friendship with Fox to be at an end, and even 
people who were more reasonable than Burke thought the time inoppor- 
tune for reform. Burke's book received many answers, the most notable 
of which were the Vindicicn Gallicfe, by James Mackintosh, and Thomas 
Paine's Rights of Man. The former of these combated Burke's position 
from a philosophical point of view, and appealed to men of culture and 
education. Paine's work, on the other hand, appealed to the passions of 
the masses, and covered with violent abuse both Burke himself and 
those whose cause he advocated. No less than a million and a half 
copies of the Rights of Man were quickly sold, and the government 
became seriously alarmed by the spread of opinions which they regarded 
as hostile to all government. 

The temper, however, of the English people against those whose 
admiration for France carried them too far was clearly shown. In 



862 Gemje III. I79i 

Birmingham the mob broke into and destroyed both the house and the 

chapel of Dr. Priestley, a Unitarian minister and man of science who 

had organised a public dinner on July 14, 1791, to cele- 

sive brate the taking of the Bastille ; and other friends of 

easures. jij.jj^jjgg were publicly insulted. In these circumstances, 
the government might well have afforded to look with disdain 
on much wild talk and writing. Nevertheless, this was not the 
opinion of those in power ; and both in and out of parliament govern- 
ment engaged in such a series of repressive measures and prosecutions 
as to justify the remark that ' because Frenchmen had abused their 
liberties, Englishmen had been deprived of theirs.' In 1792 a proclama- 
tion was issued against seditious writings, aimed obviously at the 
Rights of Man, and at the close of the year the militia w^ere called out 
in consequence of the prevalence of ' a spirit of tumult and disorder,' 
In 1793 the Traitorous Correspondence Act was passed. The Habeas 
Corpus Act was also suspended, and remained so till 1801. In 1795, 
after stones had been thrown at the king's coach on his way to open 
parliament, further restraints were placed on public liberty by a Trea- 
sonable Practices Act, which enlarged the definition of treason, though it 
did not permit the punishment of death ; and by a Seditious Meetings 
Act, which practically made it impossible to hold a meeting of more than 
fifty persons to advocate any measure disapproved of by government. 
The result of these repressive measures was to drive open critics of the 
constitution into secret sedition. The members of the London Corre- 
sponding Society entered into relations with societies in Ireland, which 
were aiming at the overthrow of British rule, and were compromised in 
attempts to foment disaffection in the army and navy. The result of 
their folly was to bring discredit on political associations of all kinds, 
and in 1799 a bill w^as passed, almost without opposition, by which the 
London Corresponding Society was suppressed by name, and it was 
made a penal offence to belong to any society which had secret rules or 
committees. 

Besides making these alterations in the law itself, government made 
the most of existing laws to punish political offences. In 1792 Thomas 

Political Paine was indicted for seditious writing, and convicted in 

Tnals. spite of an able defence by Erskine, who based his argument 

on the principle that 'opinion is free, and that conduct only is amenable 
to the law.' In 1793 Thomas Muir, a young Scottish advocate, was in- 
dicted for sedition on the ground that he had advocated parliamentary 
reform, and actually sentenced to fourteen years' transportation ; while 
Palmer, a clergyman, was transported for seven years for circulating an 



1792 Pitt 



863 



address from a ' Society of the Friends of Liberty to their fellow-citizens.' 
In England things were not quite so bad, as English juries refused to be 
carried away by panic, or overawed by the charges of prejudiced judges. 
A few convictions were secured for sedition ; but when, in 1794, the 
government prosecuted Home Tooke, Hardy, and Thelwall for treason 
on the ground of their connection with the ' Corresponding Society' and 
the ' Society for Constitutional Information,' the juries returned a verdict 
of not guilty, and a stop was put to such frivolous interference with 
liberty. 

In parliament, however, the panic caused by the French excesses put 
a stop to the progress with liberal measures which had characterised the 
earlier years of Pitt's ministry. A motion in favour of the 

Check to 

repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, proposed by Fox Liberal 
in 1790, was rejected by 294 to 105, and the subject was ^^e^^i^tion. 
not brought forward again for nearly forty years. In 1793 a motion for 
parliamentary reform, proposed by Mr. Grey (afterwards Earl Grey and 
prime minister), was rejected by 232 to 41 ; and suffered a similar defeat 
in 1797, after which it too was dropped. After this, despair settled 
upon the Whig party. Its members rarely attended parliament, and 
even such a measure as the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was 
only opposed by thirty-nine votes. The only progressive measure of the 
time was Fox's Libel Act, passed in 1792 with the support of Pitt, by 
which juries were allowed to return a verdict upon the law as well as 
the fact, whereas hitherto judges had insisted that juries must 
confine themselves to the question of publication, the judge deciding 
whether what was published was libellous. 

Meanwhile, there was no logical necessity why disapproval of French 
opinions, and even severe repression of anything approaching them in 
England, should lead to war with France. Burke, un- England 
doubtedly, was for armed interference, but Fox was clear ^^^ France, 
for neutrality, and in this matter Pitt agreed with Fox. He wanted 
^ France to arrange its own affairs as it can,' and it is a cruel injustice to 
his memory to credit him with undertaking a war against French republi- 
canism. This attitude of absolute neutrality Pitt maintained till the 
close of 1792. No one could have been more averse than he to war of 
any kind, and especially to a war with France, for all his schemes of 
financial reform depended on the maintenance of peace ; his commercial 
treaty was doing good work, and in 1792 he had paid off two and a half 
millions of debt. So hopeful, indeed, was he of maintaining peace that 
in 1792 he declared his firm belief that Europe was never more secure 
«f fifteen years' peace than at that moment. Circumstances, however, 



864 George III. 1792 

proved too strong for him. A proclamation, issued by the French in 
November 1792, offered the assistance of France to all peoples who would 
rise against their rulers. The victory of Jcniappes in the same month 
was followed by the occupation of the Austrian Netherlands, evidently 
with the design of permanent annexation ; and Holland, which we were 
bound by treaty to defend, was clearly to be the next object of attack. 
These acts of the French would have made war practically inevitable, 
as an act of self-defence, even if Pitt had been dealing with an old- 
established monarchy. To these causes of provocation, however, are 
added the execution of Louis xvi., which, in the words of Fox himself, 
was considered by everybody out of France as ' a most revolting act of 
cruelty and injustice.' In England the news was received with the 
utmost horror. Every member of parliament but one wore mourning, 
and the king's coach was surrounded by a crowd shouting * War with 
France.' In these circumstances, even Pitt admitted that war w^as 
inevitable. The actual declaration of war was, however, made by 
France on February 1, when hostilities were declared against England 
and Holland ; so that if Pitt was to pay any regard to his treaty with 
Holland of only four years before, he must come to her assistance in- 
dependently of the need of defending himself. From a European point 
of view the entrance of Great Britain into the war was most disastrous. 
The war between Prussia and Austria and France could not have lasted 
long ; but the entrance of Great Britain into the strife protracted it till 
the French army became the most powerful body in France, and the 
creation of a military despotism naturally followed. 

Though Pitt entered into the war with reluctance, he prosecuted it 
with vigour. A nation which has no large standing army must, if it 
Pitt's War enters into a war, be largely dependent on its allies ; and it 
Policy. ^y^g^ therefore, Pitt's policy to subsidise Prussia and Austria, 

so as to enable them to keep armies in the field. Great Britain was 
only to take a small part in military operations ; but he designed to use 
its excellent fleet to destroy the French navy and to capture the French 
colonies. He also planned a number of small expeditions to the coast of 
France in the hope not only of aiding the French royalists, but also 
because the fear of such descents compelled the French to keep troops 
at home who would otherwise have been despatched to the frontier. 

Pitt, however, was singularly unfortunate both in his allies and his 

generals. The Prussians and Austrians, after a short period of success, 

111 success were beaten by the admirable armies of Frenchmen which 

on land. }^^^ been called into existence by the energy and ruthless- 

ness of the Convention ; and Frederick duke of York, the second son of 



1794 Pitt 865 

the king, being put through his father's influence at the head of an 
English contingent sent to aid the Austrians and Prussians in the 
Netherlands, proved quite incompetent. The Austrians and Prussians, 
indeed, were both half-hearted in the war, for both were bent on 
aiding Russia to carry out the iniquitous partition of Poland, which 
had been beguu by Frederick of Prussia in 1772, and was completed 
in 1793. In consequence, the French soon carried all before them. 
Lazare Hoche defeated the Austrians, and the British contingent, after 
being beaten at Bois-le-Duc, had to make a disastrous retreat into 
Holland. There they were followed by Pichegru, and driven from 
point to point. Eventually the French, by a charge of cavalry, took the 
Dutch fleet when icebound ; and the British contingent having been 
completely withdrawn, Holland was recognised as an ally of France, 
under the name of the Batavian Republic. 

Our attempts to aid the French royalists met with no more success. 
In 1793 our fleet entered Toulon harbour to assist the citizens of France 
who were endeavouring to hold that town against the troops ^^j. -^^ 
of the Convention. The plan was a failure. The harbour France, 
of Toulon is situated at the end of a bottle-shaped bay. According to 
tradition, Napoleon Bonaparte, then a young artillery officer, pointed out 
that a battery placed so as to command its narrow entrance nR^st compel 
the British to retire. His advice was carried out, and the British fleet 
immediately withdrew, after destroying all the French men-of-war in 
the harbour, leaving the royalists to their fate. In 1795 we landed a 
body of French refugees in Quiberon Bay ; but the step was most 
disastrous, for they were cut to pieces by an army under Lazare Hoche. 
Other expeditions were sent to Corsica to support the patriots in revolt 
against the Jacobins, and there was some hope of taking it from the 
French, but it was evacuated in 1796. 

In naval warfare we did better. There the French laboured under the 
disadvantage of having one of their best harbours, Toulon, on the Medi- 
terranean, and their other, Brest, on the Bay of Biscay, while ^^^ ^^ ^^^ 
their harbours on the British Channel were not at that date 
large enough to hold large vessels, and had again and again been bom- 
barded by the British. Moreover, the Revolution had been fatal to the 
efficiency of the French navy. A very large proportion of the officers 
came from Brittany, and were royalist in politics. These either retired 
or deserted ; and as it w^as impossible to fill their places at a moment's 
notice, or to train sailors as rapidly as to drill soldiers, the navy was much 
weakened, and the fleets which fought during the revolutionary war were 
far less efficient than those which we had before encountered. The 

3i 



866 George III. 1794 

destruction of the French fleet in Toulon was a decided blow to the 
French power in the Mediterranean ; and on June 1, 1794, Lord Howe 
The First inflicted a crushing defeat on the Brest fleet, which had 
of June. ventured out to escort some corn ships Avhich were being sent 
to France by the United States. The corn ships escaped ; but of the 
twenty-six French ships of the line seven were taken and two were 
sunk. These two blows for a time disabled the French ; but in 1795 
they were joined both by the Spaniards and the Dutch, and it was 
exceedingly doubtful whether we could hold our own. In 1796 the 
French designed an expedition to Ireland under the command of Hoche — 
an excellent general — and expected to be aided on their arrival by an 
insurrection of the Irish. The fleet avoided the English cruisers, but 
before it reached Ireland was overtaken by a gale and dispersed. Only 
three ships reached Bantry Bay, and their commander, Grouchy, dared not 
take the responsibility of landing his men. The attempt, therefore, came 
to nothing. The Spanish fleet was not very formidable ; and Nelson, who 
had seen them when our allies, said they w^ould ' soon be done for ' ; but 
there was great risk lest a combination of the three allied fleets might 
deprive us of the command of the Channel, and, consequently, the great 
hope of the British was to defeat them in detail. This they were lucky 
enough to do. 

On February 14 Admiral Jervis and Commodore Nelson, with onW 

fifteen ships of the line, fell in with twenty-seven Spanish men-of-war 

Cape St, ofi" Cape St. Vincent. A clever manoeuvre separated nine 

Vincent. ^f ^.j^g Spanish vessels from the rest. An attack on the 

main body, in which Nelson did the lion's share of the action, resulted in 

the capture of four ships of the line, and the rest took refuge in the 

harbour of Cadiz, where they were strictly blockaded till the end of 

the war. Thus the Spanish fleet was disposed of, and on October 11 

Admiral Duncan gained a decisive victory over the Dutch fleet at 

Camper- Camperdown. The Dutch, with eleven sail of the line, had 

down. escaped from the Texel during a storm, and w^ere on their 

way to join the French fleet at Brest, when they were encountered by 

Duncan with sixteen sail of the line. The Dutch fought splendidly, but 

against such disparity of numbers their efforts were unavailing, and they 

lost eight of their men-of-war. 

In spite of these great successes, the year 1797 was a most critical 
year for Great Britain, for between the victories of Cape St. Vincent and 
The Mutiny Camperdown two formidable mutinies had broken out in 
at Spithead. ^^^ jj^^j.^ tj^Yiq trouble began at Spithead, the chief station 
of the Channel fleet. The grievances of the sailors were incontestable. 



1797 Pitt 



867 



Their pay had not been raised since the time of Charles ii. ; their 
allowance of provisions, reckoned at sixteen ounces the pound, was 
really only fourteen ounces, the difference being retained by the pursers ; 
the victuals themselves were often extremely bad ; they had no vef^etables 
even when in harbour ; their pensions were extremely small, and the pay 
of wounded sailors was reduced. Matters came to a head in April, 
1797, when the whole fleet unanimously refused to put to sea till these 
grievances were remedied. Confronted with such a humiliating danger, 
the government exhibited great vacillation ; while the conduct of the 
sailors in maintaining discipline on board ship, and the tone exhibited 
in their negotiations with the authorities, were admirable. Even when 
it granted the demands of the sailors, the government did so in such 
a way as to give every ground for suspicion as to its good faith, and 
only the popularity of Lord Howe succeeded in bringing about a satis- 
factory settlement. A number of the most unpopular officers were 
removed, and the men then demanded to be led against the Brest fleet, 
which, luckily for Great Britain, had remained in harbour ignorant of 
its opportunity. 

Still more formidable was the mutiny at the Nore, among the ships of 
the North Sea fleet. The sailors of this had, of course, sympathised with 
their fellows at Spithead ; but after the Spithead sailors The Mutiny 
were satisfied, the mutineers at the Nore hoisted the red ^^ *^^^ Nore. 
flag. Their leader was Richard Parker, an ordinary sailor, but a man of 
some education, and full of republican ideas. Under his guidance they 
formulated a series of unreasonable demands, which were at once refused 
by the admiralty. The ships then formed line across the mouth of the 
Thames, and blocked the road to all merchant ships. Fortunately, how- 
ever, they received no aid from shore, and when the sailors found that 
they had no sympathy from the Spithead men, the greater part came to 
their senses and returned to their duty. Parker and two or three more 
were hanged ; but the general loyalty of the fleet was shown in the battle 
of Camperdown, in which the mutinous crews played an honourable 
part. During the mutiny. Admiral Duncan, who was watching the 
Dutch fleet in the Texel, and who was deserted by all but his own ship 
and two frigates, cleverly deceived the Dutch by sending the frigates to 
the offing, and constantly signalling to an imaginary fleet out of sight off 
the coast. 

In spite, however, of these successes, Pitt would have been glad to 
discontinue the war had there been a chance of a durable Expenses 
peace. The expenses had been very heavy. The annual of the War. 
expenditure in 1792 was J18,000,000, in 1795 i'50,000,000, in 1797 



868 George III, 1797 

^35,000,000, and besides that, loans had been raised to the value of 
^90,000,000, the interest on which amounted to nearly ,£5,000,000 a year. 
The result of this heavy expenditure was to throw into confusion the 
finances of the country; and in order to save the Bank of England from being 
obliged to suspend payment, an act of parliament was passed 

Suspension . i-iit r-ini ^ • ^ 

of Cash in 1/97 by which the directors 01 the bank were authorised 

Paymen t.. ^^ meet all calls upon them in bank-notes, and Bank of 
England notes were made legal tender throughout the country, except 
for the payment of soldiers and sailors. This act was passed as a 
temporary measure, but was renewed from time to time, and cash pay- 
ments were not resumed till 1819. The immediate result of the 
suspension of cash payments was to cause a rise in prices calculated in 
paper money ; and eventually, no less than thirty shillings in paper 
money had to be given for a guinea in gold. This was a cause of great 
annoyance to all classes, but to the poor it was an incalculable hardship ; 
for it has been found that wherever a sudden rise in prices occurs from 
whatever cause, the rate of wages never rises so fast as the rate of prices. 
Moreover, it happened that the war years were also years of bad harvests, 
and the two causes working together were disastrous in their effects. 
Corn, for instance, which before the war rarely cost more than 50s. a 
quarter, cost, in 1795, 80s,, and in 1801, 128s. ; and in general the prices 
of provisions nearly doubled. On the other hand, a carpenter's wages in 
1795 were 2s. 6d. a day ; in 1800 they had only risen to 2s. lOd. The 
provisions which, in 1795, would have cost a labourer 5s., would, in 
1801, have cost him 26s. 5d., while his wages would only have increased 
to 9s. In consequence, there was a great increase in pauper- 
ism ; and in 1796 the bad practice was begun of allowing 
the guardians to supplement the wages of able-bodied paupers out of the 
rates. This plan was initiated by the Berkshire magistrates at quarter 
sessions, and was soon adopted in other parts of the country. It was 
done out of kind-heartedness ; but the results were disastrous, as, of 
course, farmers paid no more wages than before, and the necessities 
caused by the rise of prices were met by raising the parish rates. 
Moreover, as the payments were made in proportion to the size of the 
labourer's family, the married man was far better off than the single man. 
The result was a great increase in the rural population living upon the 
rates. Naturally this was followed by a rapid rise in the rates them- 
selves, so that in some parishes they actually came to exceed the rental 
of the land, and a stop was not put to this disastrous state of affairs till 
the new Poor Law was passed in 1834. 

In spite, however, of Pitt's wishes for peace, there was little prospect 



1797 Pitt 869 

of terminating the war. When hostilities began, Pitt, in common with 
all other Englishmen, expected the war to be short. It was the universal 
opinion that the Revolution had ruined the French army, strength of 
and that the country was bankrupt. Both these expecta- France, 
tions proved to be unfounded. It was true that the old army of the 
monarchy was in the main broken up ; but its place was rapidly taken 
by a far superior force, the credit for raising which must be given to the 
Jacobins, the most advanced of the French republicans. In the new 
force promotion went entirely by merit, and it was speedily officered by 
excellent soldiers, such as Hoche and Massena, both of whom had served 
in the ranks of the old army ; or like Moreau, who, trained as a lawyer, 
had discovered that he had talents for a military life. Such a force soon 
became almost invincible, and its victories enabled it to provide for its 
necessities at the expense of the countries conquered. As for a financial 
catastrophe, that was soon shown to be a delusion. France got rid of her 
old debts by simply repudiating them ; and the abolition of privileges and 
tithes, and the removal of restrictions of all kinds on agriculture and 
commerce, was the signal for the commencement of an era of prosperity 
which enabled her to bear with ease the comparatively slight burden of 
a successful foreign war. Only at sea was her strength diminished by 
the Revolution, and her attempts to supplement her weakness by the 
assistance of her allies were defeated by the British admirals, with the 
result of the loss of the whole of her colonial jDossessions. Her allies also 
suffered. For the British took Trinidad from the Spaniards, the Cape of 
Good Hope and Ceylon from the Dutch, and from the French the whole 
of their possessions both in the East and West Indies. 

Meanwhile, the government of France itself had been passing through a 
rapid series of transformations, Duringthe spring of 1793, when the French 
were reduced to despair by the successes of the allies, and „ 

. . Progress 

the simultaneous invasion of her territory by the Spaniards, of the 
Portuguese, Piedmontese, Austrians, Prussians, Dutch, and 
British, the French had committed their affairs to a Committee of Public 
Safety, with full powers to save France by repelling invasion from 
abroad, and putting down insurrection at home. The result was the 
terrible Reign of Terror ; but when victory had returned to France, and 
her young generals had not only cleared her own territories of the 
invaders, but had victoriously carried her arms into those of her enemies, 
a reaction took place. The first result of this was a series of quarrels 
between the extreme republicans, in which Hebert, Danton, and Robes- 
pierre were successively guillotined; and after a time a new constitution 
was set up, consisting of an executive of five directors, and an assembly 



870 George III. 1797 

consisting of two bodies — the Ancients and the Five Hundred. Against 
the adoption of this new constitution an insurrection took place, known 
as the rising of the sections. It was, however, defeated by the Conven- 
tion, which employed the services of Bonaparte, who happened to be in 
Paris ; and the new government came into existence in October 1795. 
The rule of the directory, which seemed likely to be of greater stability 
than its predecessors, inspired Pitt with the hope of a successful negotia- 
tion. Hitherto he had based his hopes largely on the promises of the 
Abortive emigres^ but he was now quite undeceived as to their 
Negotiations, influence. Accordingly, in 1796, as soon as the directorate 
had been in existence a year. Lord Malmesbury was sent to Paris to 
open negotiations for a peace ; but as his first demand was for the 
restoration of the independence of Belgium, which the directors would 
never have dared to grant, his proposals came to nothing. Again in 
July, 1797, a conference was held at Lille, but as Lord Malmesbury 
again made the same demand, the negotiations were again broken off. It 
is probable, however, that had the French been really willing to negotiate, 
Pitt would have gone a long way in the direction of concession ; but at 
the moment the war party was supreme in Paris, and the negotiations 
were never seriously entered on. Moreover, Prussia had already made 
peace in 1795 ; and in 1796 Napoleon Bonaparte, who had been placed 
ill command of the army of Italy, defeated the Austrians in his cele- 
brated campaign in Lombardy ; and, following up his success, in 1797 
comjDelled the Austrians to conclude the treaty of Campo-Formio. This 
left Great Britain single-handed, and inspired the French with fresh 
hopes of success, while the victories of her generals began to create a 
thirst for military glory in France which was itself dangerous to 
peace. 

Down to 1797 the French generals had shown singularly little dis- 
position to interfere in civil affairs ; but Bonaparte deviated from this 
Napoleon ^^^^, ^^^5 J^s soon as he had secured his position in Italy, 
Bonaparte, ggj^j^ Augereau to Paris, and carried out a change in the 
directorate favourable to his own views. Already he had probably 
begun to aim at a military despotism ; but perceiving that France was 
not yet ripe for such a development, he accepted the conmiand of an 
expeditionary force designed to occupy Malta and Egypt, and possibly, 
in the imagination of its commander, to be the nucleus of an army to be 
created in the East, and directed either against India or Turkey in 
Europe. At first, singular good luck attended the enterprise. Nelson 
was blockading Toulon ; but a storm drove him to refit in one of the 
harbours of Sardinia, and the French fleet, taking advantage of the same 



1798 



Pitt 



871 



wind, made its escape, nnd reached Mnlfa on May 9. That island had 
l)een held by the knights of St. John since 1526! It had 
been strongly fortified, and might have held out for months ; fxpedilion 
but its gates were opened by treachery, and after a four *° ^^^P*" 
days' siege Bonaparte was admitted. From Malta the French arma- 
ment sailed for Egypt. 

The escape of the French fleet offered a great opportunity to Nelson. 
This great man, born in 1758, and son of a Norfolk rector, had seen much 
service, and had long been recognised as one of the best of the British 



N.W.WiND 




Battle of the NILE. 

AUGUST IfS 1798. 

English shi/>s £> 

French sh/J>s captured or simk—.-i-^ 
^/'roluid French ships escaped^ .•• 




•^/^^ Egyptian Coast H^'' 



Scale of F.nglish Miles 



officers, but hitherto he had not had an opportunity of showing his 
qualities in a great field. Now, however, his chance had come ; and, 
divining by a wonderful instinct that the French Avere making for 
Egypt, Nelson made all sail for Alexandria. He was there, however, 
before the French, and, thinking he must have been mistaken, he sailed 
for Sicily, and on his way he passed the French fleet in the night without 
knowing it. Having refitted his ships by the aid of the Neapolitan 
court. Nelson again sailed for Egypt, where he found the shallow harbour 
of Alexandria crowded with transports, and the men-of-war drawn up in 
the deeper water of Aboukir Bay. 



872 George III. 1798 

It is not often that in a naval battle either side has any advantage of 
position except those arising from wind and tide ; but in this case the 

Battle of French admiral, Brueys, had drawn up his vessels across 

the Nile. i\^q entrance of the bay in such a manner, that each wing 
was close to the shore, and was not only defended by the shore batteries, 
but also was so placed that it was difficult for an enemy's ship to 
approach it without imminent danger of running aground. Nelson, 
however, observed that ' Where there was room for a French vessel to 
swing, an English boat might sail ' ; and decided to take the risk. He 
had thirteen ships of the line, and the French had the same number, but 
their ships were, as a rule, larger, and they had also four frigates. 
Accordingly, Nelson at once gave orders to attack, and his fleet sailed in 
single file for the left extremity of the French line. Six of the British 
ships passed between the shore and the French, and attacked them from 
the inside. Nelson, with five others, kept to the outside, and attacked 
the French from there, and one man-of-war went aground on a shoal. 
Placed thus between two fires, the French fought with great bravery. 
Admiral Brueys was killed, and Nelson was wounded. The result, how- 
ever, was decisive. Nine French ships and one frigate were taken ; 
two men-of-war and one frigate were burnt ; two men-of-war and two 
frigates escaped. Had Nelson been provided with frigates, he might 
have destroyed the trans jDorts at Alexandria, but unluckily they had 
been driven away in a storm, and had not rejoined him. Nelson called 
his success not so much a victory as a ' conquest,' and it fully estab- 
lished his reputation as the greatest seaman of his time. The result of 
the battle was not only to destroy the French naval power in the 
Mediterranean, but also to isolate in Egypt the best army and the best 
general the French possessed, and to encourage all Europe to renew the 
war by land. 

In spite, however, of the loss of his fleet, Bonaparte was not diverted 
from his original scheme. In July he had defeated the Mame- 
Bonaparte in lukes in the battle of the Pyramids, and followed up his 
Egypt. victory by depriving both the Mamelukes and the Turks of 

all power, and reinstating the rule of the native Egyptians. The Sultan, 
however, was not prepared to see the French settled in Egypt without a 
struggle, and despatched two armies — one, escorted by the British fleet, to 
Alexandria, the other by land through Syria. Against the latter force 
Bonaparte determined to take the offensive, and, in February 1799, he 
crossed the desert into Syria and advanced by the coast road by way of 
Jaffa and Acre. Jaffa fell easily ; but at Acre he met with a formid- 
able resistance. Here the coast road is completely commanded by the 



1799 Pitt 873 

fortifications of the town, so it was essential that they shoukl be in 
French hands ; and Bonaparte, therefore, undertook a formal siege. 

The town is situated at the extremity of a narrow peninsula, which 
forms one side of the bay of Acre, and Mount Carmel the other. The 
Turks have always distinguished themselves in the defence sie e of 
of fortified places ; and at Acre they had the advantage of Acre, 
the assistance of Sir Sidney Smith with two British ships. The ships were 
so disposed as to command, from either side, the zig-zag line of entrench- 
ments which the French pushed forward along the peninsula ; and when 
a breach was at length made, British sailors were landed to defend it 
against Bonaparte's assault. Again and again the French storming 
parties made their way to the breach, only to be repulsed ; and though 
Bonaparte himself succeeded in defeating the Turkish relieving army at 
the battle of Mount Tabor, he was forced to recognise that Acre, with 
such defenders, was impregnable. Accordingly he raised the siege, and 
hurriedly made his way back to Egypt, just in time to defeat the second 
Turkish army at the battle of Aboukir. Bonaparte always said of 
Sidney Smith, ' That man made me miss my destiny.' 

Meanwhile, Pitt had organised a second coalition between Great 
Britain, Austria, and Russia, which attacked the French in Ital}", 
Switzerland, and Holland. In Italy, after a series of sue- campaign 
cessful engagements, the Austrians and Russians, under the °^ ^799- 
great Suvarov, forced the French to retire into Genoa, which was then 
closely besieged. In Holland, the British and Russians at first met 
with some success, but eventually, through the bad management of the 
duke of York, the allies, after a series of hotly contested but indecisive 
engagements in the neighbourhood of Bergen-op-Zoom, were cajoled into 
an agreement to leave Holland at the price of giving up the French 
prisoners taken since the beginning of the war. This failure, however, 
had no little influence on the war, for the really decisive struggle was in 
Switzerland, where Massena beat the Russians at Ziirich before Suvarov 
could cross the Alps to their assistance. This defeat checked the further 
advance of the allies ; and before the end of the year, the Czar Paul 
had decided to leave the coalition, and the Russian troops were with- 
drawn. Except, therefore, in Italy, the campaign of 1799 had been 
favourable to the French, 

Meanwhile Bonaparte, having learnt from some old newspapers the 
state of affairs in Europe, sailed from Alexandria with some of his best 
officers. For six weeks he ran successfully the gauntlet of Bonaparte's 
the British cruisers ; and on October 9, 1799, a fortnight '"^t"''"- 
after the battle of Ziiricb, he landed in France. He was received with 



874 George III. 1799 

enthusiasm ; and, taking his measures with the aid of Talleyrand, 
Fouche, and Sieyes, he carried out another revolution, by which the 
executive government was vested in three consuls, of whom he himself 
was first. What Burke had foretold had come to pass, and the popular 
general had become master of the state. The new constitution was 
cleverly contrived to place all real power in the hands of the executive 
government. The business of legislation was divided among four bodies : 
a council of state to prepare laws ; a tribunate which discussed measures 
but did not vote ; a legislative body which voted but did not discuss ; 
and, finally, a senate of eighty members, which sat in secret, and inter- 
preted the constitution. In short, the new regime was as autocratic as 
the old. On one side — the creation of a free constitution for France— 
tbe revolutionists had failed ; but on the other they had succeeded, for 
Bonaparte was determined never to permit the return of privilege ; and 
in a short time the publication of the Code Najjolcon, completed under 
his direction, made equality before the law an essential part of the life 
of France. 

Bonaparte's first attention, however, had to be given to military 
affairs. By the foresight of the directors, who had already passed the 
Campaign l^w of conscription, he was provided with plenty of soldiers, 
of 1800. Qf ^Yie old generals of the republic, Joubert and Custine 

had been killed, Hoche had died, Pichegru was distrusted, and Massena 
was commanding at Genoa. Bonaparte, therefore, gave the command 
to Moreau, and directed him to attack the Austrians on the Rhine, 
while he himself crossed the Great St. Bernard pass into Italy, and fell 
on the rear of the Austrians who were besieging Genoa. Both schemes 
were successful. Bonaparte, by an extraordinary piece of good luck, 
had the battle of Marengo won for him on June 14 by Desaix, who fell at 
the moment of victory ; and Moreau carried out a series of slow but 
successful manoeuvres, ending in the victory of Hohenlinden, on Decem- 
ber 3, by which the Austrians were driven down the Danube. Moreau 
advanced within sixty miles of Vienna, and the Austrians, fearing their 
capital would be attacked in the spring, signed the treaty of Luneville. 
The British now remained the sole antagonists of the French ; and 
Bonaparte, recognising their superiority by sea, determined to attack 
The Armed them by indirect means. For this purpose he fell back on 
Neutrality. ^|^g p^^^y ^f ^|^g armed neutrality of 1780. Great Britain, 
having usually command of the sea, had always argued that, if a ship 
belonging to a neutral nation had on board goods coming from or 
consigned to an enemy, such goods might be seized. On the other hand, 
it was contended that ' neutral ships made neutral goods,' and that such 



1802 Pitt — Addington 875 

croods ought not to be seized. In the present war, the neutral nations 
most affected were the Russians, Swedes, and Danes, and, later on, the 
Americans. The Czar Paul, who succeeded his mother, Catherine, in 
1797, was an ardent admirer of Napoleon, and under his influence he 
negotiated the armed neutrality by which the European nations above 
mentioned were to unite together for the defence of the rights of 
neutrals — in other words, against Great Britain, 

As Russia, Sweden, and Denmark all had considerable fleets, the 
British government determined to strike before they could unite ; and, 
in 1801, an expedition was sent to the Baltic under the Attack on 
orders of Sir Hyde Parker, with Nelson second in command. Copenhagen. 
The Danish fleet was lying along the shore, close to Copenhagen, sup- 
ported by the land batteries, and even more effectually defended by the 
intricacy of the navigation, for the coast abounded in shoals, the buoys 
from which had been removed. Nelson, however, volunteered to make 
an attack. Owing to a series of unavoidable accidents, this was not 
made with the full force intended ; and, as the Danes fought with great 
bravery, a terrible slaughter ensued on both sides before the Danish 
fleet was compelled to surrender, on April 2, 1801. This victory, and 
the murder of the Czar Paul, which happened on March 23, broke up the 
league, for the new Czar, Alexander, adopted a difterent policy. 

Within a day or two of the bombardment of Copenhagen, an English 
force, under Sir Ralph Abercrombie, landed in Egypt, and defeated the 
French at the battle of Alexandria. Abercrombie was Battle of 
himself killed ; but his successor, Hutchinson, took Alex- Alexandria, 
andria and Cairo ; and in September the remains of the French army 
evacuated Egypt, and were conveyed to France in British ships. At 
the same time, though too late to be of service. Sir David Baird 
performed the striking service of bringing from India a mixed army of 
British and Sepoys, which landed on the shore of the Red Sea, and, 
marching across the desert to the Nile, arrived at Cairo in boats. In 
1800 Malta surrendered after a long blockade. 

By this time both France and England were tired of war. Without 
allies, Great Britain was powerless to injure France by land ; without 
the command of the sea, France was equally unable to Treaty of 
injure Great Britain. Consequently, both sides were Amiens, 
willing to make peace, were it only to gain time to prepare for more 
effective hostilities in the future. Accordingly, negotiations were 
entered upon at Amiens, which, in March 1802, resulted in the signature 
of a peace. The most important articles in the treaty provided that 
Great Britain should recognise the French republic, and that George in. 



876 George III. 1782 

should cease to style himself king of France, as the English kings had 

done since the time of Edward iii. ; next, that Great Britain should 

restore all her conquests from France, but should keep Trinidad, which 

had been taken from the Spaniards, and Ceylon from the Dutch ; and, 

last, that the island of Malta should be restored to the knights of 

St. John, who were to be reconstituted under the protection of the Czar. 

Before the treaty of Amiens was made, Pitt had ceased to be prime 

minister. The cause of his fall arose out of events in Ireland, and to 

, , , these we must now go back. In 1782 Ireland had received 
Ireland. , , . . , f - 

legislative independence from the Eockingham ministry ; 

but as Protestants only could vote or sit in parliament. Catholics, 
who formed at least seven-tenths of the population, had nothing what- 
ever to do with the government. Moreover, as the officials were still 
appointed by the lord-lieutenant, the executive power was still in 
English hands. In parliament the ministers secured their majority by 
bribery, for the really dominant party in Ireland were the borough- 
mongers, who returned a majority of the Irish members. Nevertheless, 
some progress was made in 1792 and 1793. Some of the worst disabili- 
ties of the Roman Catholics were removed, and, under the influence of 
Pitt, acts were passed permitting Roman Catholics to sit on juries and 
to vote at elections. 

The French Revolution caused much excitement in Ireland. Ever 
since the French had fought in Ireland for James ii., and the Irish 
French Brigade had won laurels under the banner of France, the 

Revolution. Irish had regarded themselves as peculiarly the friends of 
the French nation ; and the spectacle of the French rising against their 
rulers and securing a new constitution naturally roused much enthusiasm 
among a people who had so much to complain of as the Irish. In Ireland 
there were at least three distinct parties — the Roman Catholics, the 
Orangemen, and the United Irishmen. The Roman Catholics, again, 
were divided into two sections — the upper classes, who disliked their 
exclusion from parliament and from the magistrate's bench ; the lower, 
whose chief grievances lay in the heavy rents exacted by their Protestant 
landlords, and the tithes levied for the Protestant clergymen. The 
Orangemen, whose name was taken from William of Orange, came into 
being about 1795, in opposition to the Defenders, an association formed 
by the Roman Catholic peasantry. Politically, the Orangemen, though 
furious at the suggestion of concessions to the Catholics, were themselves 
in favour of parliamentary reform, in order to secure a further represen- 
tation for the Protestants. Lastly, the United Irishmen, or Revolu- 
tionists, founded by Theodore Wolfe Tone in 1791, who combined both 



1798 Pitt 877 

Catholics and Protestants, and who wished to overthrow the English 
government altogether, and to establish a republic under the protection 
of France. 

The difficulties of the situation were much increased in 1795. In 1792 
and 1793 Pitt and Dundas, in opposition to the views of the Irish officials, 
had agreed to the passing of acts by which Eoman Catholics Lord 
were permitted to sit on juries, and to exercise the parlia- FitzwiHiam. 
mentary franchise. Personally, they would have been prepared to go 
much further, and to sweep away the restrictions' which prevented Eoman 
Catholics from sitting in parliament, and also to remove most of their 
other disabilities ; but they were well aware how much opposition this 
would rouse, both in Ireland and Eogland, and were desirous of not 
moving in the matter at present. Unfortunately, the new lord-lieu- 
tenant, Lord Fitzwilliam, a Whig who had joined Pitt along with the 
duke of Portland in 1794, was by no means discreet. Though he had 
agreed to act in Ireland only by the advice of the British cabinet, and 
to keep Pitt's friends in office, he talked largely of his sympathy for the 
Eoman Catholics and on his arrival in Ireland he not only encouraged 
Grattan in bringing forward a motion for the admission of Eoman Catholics 
to jDarliament, but also dismissed some of the ministers in whom Pitt had 
most confidence. Accordingly he was recalled, after holding office only 
six weeks. The incident, however, was most unfortunate, for it gave the 
Irish the wholly false impression that Pitt was against all reform^ and 
so strengthened the ranks of the Eevolutionists. 

It was in these circumstances that the Eevolutionists, through their 
agent, Wolfe Tone, encouraged the French government to despatch 
Hoche's unsuccessful expedition ; and, by no means dis- Roche's 
heartened by its failure, they continued to negotiate for Expedition, 
further assistance. The leaders of the Eevolutionists in Ireland at this 
time were Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a younger brother of the duke of 
Leinster, Arthur O'Connor, nephew of Lord Longueville, and Oliver 
Bond. These men organised a general rising to take place on May 23, 
1798. The government, however, were well-informed as to their 
designs. In February, 1798, Arthur O'Connor and a priest named 
O'Coigley, or Quigley, were arrested at Margate on their way to 
France. On the priest was found a paper addressed to the French 
directorate, asking that England might be invaded in order that no 
soldiers might be available to quell the Irish insurrection. Accord- 
ingly he was hanged, but O'Connor was acquitted of high treason, and 
eventually was allowed to go into exile. Shortly afterwards the whole 
of the plans of the conspirators were revealed, and in May Oliver Bond 



878 George III. 1798 

and Lord Edward Fitzgerald were arrested. The latter fought desperately, 

and the wounds he received eventually proved mortal. In spite, however, 

of the arrest of their leaders, an insurrection took place, as arranged, 

on May 23, but Eoman Catholics alone took part in the movement, and 

Rising in in Ulster, where the United Irishmen were strongest, there 

Wexford. ^^^^ hardly any movement at all. It was most serious in 

Wexford, where the rebels, headed by a priest named John Murphy, 

posted themselves on Vinegar Hill, from which they were driven by 

General Lake with terrible slaughter on June 21. Two months later, 

when the insurrection had been completely put down, a French 

general, Humbert, with nine hundred troops, landed at Killala. At 

Castlebar they put to flight a number of militia ; but Lord Corn- 

wallis, with an army of regulars, surrounded them at Ballinasloe and 

compelled them to surrender. Still later on, another French squadron 

arrived, having on board Wolfe Tone ; but before a landing could be 

effected, the French vessels were attacked by an overwhelming force of 

British ships, and all but one were taken, Tone being among the 

prisoners. Of the rebels, John Murphy was killed in action, three or 

four of his followers were hanged. Tone anticipated his execution by 

suicide, Oliver Bond was pardoned on condition of telling all he knew, 

and Arthur O'Connor was exiled. The putting down of the insurrection 

was accompanied by many atrocities, for the most part perpetrated by 

the Protestant militia regiments, who regarded the Roman Catholics as 

their hereditary foes, and Lord Cornwallis had much ado to keep the 

revenge of the dominant party within bounds. 

This insurrection convinced Pitt that the best solution of the Irish 

problem consisted in a legislative union of the two countries, coupled 

Pitt's with such a series of remedial measures as should compen- 

Scheme. ^.^^^ ^j^^ Irish people for the loss of their national legislature. 

These were the admission of Koman Catholics to parliament, and the 

removal of their other disabilities. The obnoxious tithes were to be 

commuted, and the Eoman Catholic clergy endowed. 

As it was out of the question to pass the latter part of Pitt's scheme 

through the existing Irish parliament, he began with the Union. In 

this he had to encounter the opposition of the borough- 
Opposition ^ ^^ . ^ 

to the mongers, whether opposed to government or not, who saw 

in the scheme a loss of money and influence ; and that of 

the citizens of Dublin, who feared the loss of custom which would follow 

the removal of parliament from Dublin. There was also the national 

feeling which must resent the extinction of a native parliament, and 

which had played such a considerable part in Scotland. Of this Pitt 



1801 Fitt 879 

took little account. His business, both in England and Ireland, was to 
secure a majority in parliament, and as he believed that the passing of 
his measures would be for the good of both countries, he shrank from 
nothing that would secure his end. The only way to get anything 
through the Irish Parliament was to bribe or threaten those who 
controlled the parliamentary majority to support the measures of the 
government. By such means Pitt had secured the passage of his relief 
measures of 1792 and 1793, and it was no secret that he would have to 
have recourse to similar means to pass the Act of Union. In 1799 
resolutions in favour of a Union were placed before the Irish House 
of Commons, but were rejected. Pitt, therefore, by the agency of 
Castlereagh, the chief secretary of the lord-lieutenant, approached the 
borough-mongers, and, by means of wholesale corruption, won such a 
number of them to change their nominees as should secure a majority 
for the act of 1800. Besides this he compensated the borough-mongers 
for their financial loss at the price of £1,260,000, or £7500 per seat. 

The Act of Union, which was thus passed through the Irish parlia- 
ment by a foul though necessary use of corruption, was with some slight 
variations analogous to the Scottish Act of Union. The The Act 
parliaments of the two countries were united. Four bisho]3s, ° U"^°"- 
sitting by rotation, and twenty representative peers, were to sit in the 
House of Lords, and one hundred Irish members in the House of Com- 
mons. The first united parliament of Great Britain and Ireland met in 
February 1801. 

Pitt's next business was to deal with the supplementary measures, to 
which, as healing remedies, he attached far more importance than to the 
Union, regarding the latter measure, indeed, chiefly as a g^ppj^, 
means to an end. If he could bring them before parliament, mentary 

^ i» • II Measures. 

he had a reasonable hope of passmg them ; tor, m all 
dealings with the Roman Catholic question, the British parliament 
had shown itself of late years decidedly more tolerant than the average 
opinion of the country. His first difficulty, however, lay with the king. 
In making his arrangements for the session of 1801, Pitt seems to have 
shown less sagacity than usual, for he did not officially bring the 
Catholic Disabilities Bill before George till January 29 ; and on Feb- 
ruary 2 parliament was to meet. Meanwhile Lord Loughborough, 
hoping to displace Pitt, and yet retain his place as lord-chancellor, had 
told George what the ministers had in view. Against Q^^^gg m 
' Catholic emancipation ' George had an aversion founded on and Catholic 

. j-T, u T, 1 Reliei. 

a conscientious prejudice. In his coronation oath tie Had 

sworn ' to maintain the Protestant religion as established by law,' and 



880 George III. isoi 

' to maintain to the bishops and clergy of the realm and the churches 
committed to their charge all such rights and privileges as by law do 
and shall appertain to them or any of them.' This, in spite of the opinions 
of the best lawyers of the time, he persisted in interpreting as a bar to 
his agreeing to any act of Roman Catholic emancipation, and when 
Dundas tried to explain to him the dift'erence between his legislative and 
his executive capacities, he replied : ' None of your Scotch metaphysics, 
Mr. Dundas ' ; and described the measure as * the most Jacobinical thing 
of which he had ever heard.' Worse than all, the excitement of the 
king produced symptoms of the recurrence of the madness of 1788. 

In these circumstances Pitt was on the horns of a dilemma. If he 
persevered with the measure, in spite of George's opposition, there was 
Pitt's every chance that it would be defeated in the House of 

Position. Lords, to say nothing of the odium which he was certain 
to encounter if, in consequence of his action, the king's malady was 
renewed. If he gave up the measure, he not only spoilt a great scheme of 
healing legislation, but might be accused of playing false to those Roman 
Catholics who had favoured, or, at any rate, not resisted, the Act of 
Union, on the understanding that it would be accompanied by remedial 
„. . measures. In these circumstances he resigned, and his 

Pitt resigns. ® ' 

place was taken by Addington, the speaker of the House of 
Commons, who formed an anti-Catholic administration, of which Lord 
Eldon was chancellor. Pitt's resignation was fatal to his scheme. Roman 
Catholic emancipation was not granted till 1829 ; tithe commutation till 
1838 ; and though the Irish Church was disestablished and disendowed 
in 1869, no attempt was ever made to endow the Roman Catholic and 
Nonconforming clergy. Had Pitt's enlightened and far-reaching scheme 
been carried out — above all, had succeeding British ministries imitated 
Walpole's Scottish policy, and appointed viceroys and chief secretaries 
who were in sympathy with the people they had to govern — the Union 
might have been associated in the minds of the Irish people with the 
dawn of a new and better era in Irish history. As it was, the natural 
consequence of the mutilation of Pitt's scheme was to ruin all chance of 
a favourable reception being given to the Union by the Irish people, 
who, unlike the Scots, had comparatively little to gain from the opening 
of trade. (See p. 718.) 

In 1803 a fresh outbreak occurred. This was organised by Robert 

Emmett, a barrister, and Thomas Russell, a half-pay officer. In 

Emmett's Dublin, though a large mob was collected and armed 

Rebellion. ^^^]^ pikes, they showed themselves quite unable even to 

attempt an attack on the castle, to which they were urged by Emmett, 



1803 Addington 881 

but disgraced themselves by the murder of Lord Kilwarden, the chief- 
justice, before the eyes of his daughter, and fled at the first approach of 
the soldiers. In Ulster Eussell utterly failed to raise a following, and the 
whole attempt proved a miserable failure. Emmett and Russell were 
both captured and hanged ; their followers were treated with mercy, and 
no further rebellious outbreak occurred in Ireland for nearly half a 
century. 

The Treaty of Amiens was little better than a truce, and Napoleon 
had no intention of allowing it to be any more. He hurried on the 
restoration of the French navy, reorganised Switzerland 
under French influence, and in violation of the treaty an- of the Treaty 
nexed Piedmont and Elba to France. Moreover, he excited °f ^'"'^"s. 
suspicion by the use he made of the consular agents who were despatched 
to the chief towns of the United Kingdom. These agents were selected 
from the best engineer officers of France, and their real, though secret, 
business was to make themselves acquainted with the military character 
of the neighbouring country, the soundings of harbours, and anything 
else that could be useful for an invasion. Yet while he was enffiiired in 
these intrigues he loudly complained that he was libelled by the English 
press, and eventually, to remove all possible cause for complaint, one of 
the libellers was prosecuted. This was a French refugee 

. . . . , Peltier. 

named Jean Joseph Peltier, who conducted an insignificant 
print named L'Ainbigu, chiefly read by refugees like himself, in which 
the first consul and his court were bitterly ridiculed both in verse and 
prose, and suggestions made which distinctly pointed to assassination. 
The prosecutions were conducted by Perceval as attorney-general, and 
Peltier was defended by Sir James Mackintosh. The libels were so 
obvious that Peltier was found guilty, but the expenses of his trial were 
paid by subscription, and Mackintosh's defence, being translated into 
French by Madame de Stael and published on the continent, did 
Bonaparte a great deal of harm. 

The real question, however, on which war broke out was that of 
Malta. Great Britain positively refused to give it up to the knights of St. 
John, under the protectorate of the Czar Alexander, which Renewal of 
would for all practical purposes make it a dependency of *^^ ^^'■• 
France. As Bonaparte denounced this refusal as a violation of the 
Treaty of Amiens, the British ministers retaliated by pointing to the 
annexation of Piedmont and Elba ; and as neither side expected to pro- 
long the peace, the two nations steadily drifted into war. The English 
cruisers began to seize French merchant vessels, and Bonaparte retali- 
ated by seizing all English travellers and merchants whom he could find 

3 K 



882 George III. 1803 

in France. The war, which broke out in 1803 and lasted till 1814, was 
distinctly different in character from that which began in 1792. The 
former was, in its origin, directed against the French republic with a 
view to the restoration of the monarchy. The latter was a defensive 
war, Avhich aimed at checking the ambition of Bonaparte. In the case 
of Great Britain this was specially the case, for Bonaparte regarded 
her as his gi'eatest antagonist, and wished to destroy not only her power 
in the Mediterranean, but her colonial empire as well. 

When war began the nation naturally looked to Pitt as its leader, the 
man who, in the words of Canning, was 'the pilot who weathered the 
Weakness of storiu ' ; but Addington had no thought of making way for 
Addington. h^^^ When he left office, Pitt did so with the distinct idea 
that so far as he took part in public business at all, it was his duty to 
support the new administration. To this plan he adhered till the close 
of 1 803, rarely attending parliament, but when he did so, supporting the 
ministers. He also sent a private message to George that he would not, 
during the king's lifetime, revive the Koman Catholic question. Never- 
theless, Addington grew more uncomfortable in his place. To quote 
Canning again : ' What London was to Paddington, so Pitt was to 
Addington,' and he gradually became aware that this was the opinion of 
the country. He first endeavoured to win over Pitt by a proposal that they 
should act as joint secretaries of state under the premiership of Pitt's 
brother. Lord Chatham ; but the proposal was scornfully rejected by 
Pitt, who, speaking of it afterwards, said : ' Eeally I had not the 
curiosity to inquire what I was to be.' After this rebuff, Addington 
clung more closely to office ; but in 1804 a coalition between Pitt and 
Fox in the Commons so reduced his majority, that he resigned. 

The ordinary course was for Pitt and Fox to come into office, and Pitt 

drew up the draft of a government in which he himself was to be 

. , premier, while Fox and Fitzwilliam were to be the two chief 

Second secretaries of state, and Grey (afterwards Lord Howick and 

mis ry. -g^^j Grey) was to be secretary at war. Lord Grenville, 

Pitt's former secretary for foreign affiiirs, was to be lord-president. Pitt, 

however, felt that he could not press this arrangement against the wishes 

of the king, who had just been troubled with a third return of his 

malady ; and on George's objecting to Fox, Pitt at once gave way. 

Seeing the difficulty of the situation. Fox nobly advised his followers 

to take office ; but Pitt's old colleague, Grenville, not only baulked Pitt 

by refusing to take office himself, but went out of his way to persuade 

Fox's followers to do the same. The result was that Pitt, instead of 

coming back to power at the head of an administration that would have 



1804 Addington — Pitt 883 

displayed all politicians united and party feeling thrown aside in face of 
the foreign foe, had to take office at the head of his own followers merely, 
after a miserable display of party feeling. Weak, however, as Pitt's 
government was, it contained many remarkable men. In the Commons 
his chief supporters were Castlereagh and Canning ; in the Lords the 
duke of Rutland, Lord Hawkesbury (afterwards earl of Liverpool), Lord 
Melville (formerly Dundas), and Lord Harrowby ; but as a ministry, 
Pitt's second administration was weak ; and Pitt, though he returned to 
office, cannot be said to have come back to power. 

Shortly after Pitt took office, Bonaparte, who had already been de- 
clared consul for life, took a further step towards absolute power. A 
series of royalist plots had come to light, in which Georges French 
Cadoudal, a Vendean peasant, was the chief mover, and Affairs, 
had received some assistance from Addington's ministry. Bonaparte 
detected these, and arrested Cadoudal, along with Moreau, the old repub- 
lican general, and Pichegru, who, so early as the time of the directorate, 
had been suspected of monarchical leanings. Cadoudal was executed ; 
Pichegru died in prison, probably strangled by his jailers ; and Moreau 
was Ixmished. At the same time Bonaparte sent a party of troops into 
the territory of the duke of Wiirtemburg, and at Ettenheim arrested the 
Duke d'Enghien, a son of the prince of Conde, on a charge of plotting 
against his life. The duke was hurried to Paris and there tried and shot. 
The whole affair is very obscure, and has been related in many different 
ways hj the friends and enemies of Bonaparte ; but it is certain that it 
created a profound disgust in Europe, and went far to ruin the character 
of Bonaparte with many who had hitherto believed in him. 

In France, however, Bonaparte's policy was successful. Machiavelli 
remarks that the best way to institute a tyranny is to create a belief in 
plots, and in December 1804 Bonaparte abandoned the B^j^^p^^te 
republican forms, w^hich had hitherto been preserved in becomes 
France, by taking for himself the title of emperor. Such an 
empire as he set up is generally styled an ' Imperial Democracy', because 
the emperor professes to act as the representative of the democracy, and 
to carry out the will of the people by despotic means. Henceforward 
Bonaparte dropped his surname and styled himself Napoleon. 

When the war began, the first plan of the French was to invade 
England. For this purpose a large army, amounting to 167,000 men, was 
collected at Boulogne, and carefully drilled to embark in the ^^ invasion 
shortest possible time, in case the French fleet could secure "[^^^^""^ 
the command of the sea for even a few hours. This, how- 
ever, he found impossible, for the ports of Toulon and Brest were closely 



884 George III. 1804 

watched by the British fleet. In these circumstances he entered into an 
alliance with Spain, and devised an elaborate scheme for the union of the 
French and Spanish fleets. While Nelson, who was blockading Toulon, 
was in Corsica, the French fleet sailed out in January 18, 1805 ; and 
though Nelson's frigates brought him intelligence of their sailing, he was 
for some time ignorant of their destination, and thought they had made 
for the east. In reality, Villeneuve, the French admiral, had slipped 
along the coast of Spain, joined a Spanish fleet at Cadiz, and made for 
the West Indies. As soon as possible, Nelson followed them, and in 
June both fleets were in American waters. Villeneuve's movements, 
however, were simply designed to decoy Nelson from Europe ; and as soon 
as Nelson reached the West Indies, Villeneuve sailed home again. On 
Battle off July 22, the combined fleet was off Cape Finisterre, where it 
Ferroi. ^^^^ with Sir Robert Calder, who was watching the harbour 
of Ferroi. Calder had fifteen sail of the line, the allies twenty-five ; never- 
theless he attacked them, and captured two line-of-battle ships. After 
the battle, the allied fleet brought a Spanish fleet out of Ferroi, and the 
combined force then made for Cadiz. This step completely spoilt 
NajDoleon's plan. Had Villeneuve, with his twenty-five ships, made 
immediately for the Channel, instead of the coast of Spain, it is possible 
that, for a moment, the command of the sea might have passed into their 
hands. As it was, the retreat to Cadiz was simply giving up the game, 
and as such Napoleon took it. 

Meanwhile, Pitt had endeavoured to balance Napoleon's alliance with 
Spain by a coalition with Austria and Eussia. In April, Russia agreed 
The Third to furnish 500,000 men ; in August, Austria joined the 
Coa ition. league. Nothing but the selfishness of Prussia prevented 
her adherence. The result of these preparations to invade France, 
coupled with the failure of Villeneuve, was that Napoleon broke up his 
camp at Boulogne and marched against Austria. 

The danger of invasion was, therefore, removed ; but it still remained 
to destroy the allied fleet at Cadiz. There it was being watched by 
Battle of Admiral CoUingwood and Sir Robert Calder, but Nelson 
Trafalgar. ^^^^^ conmiissioned to do the work of destruction, and on 
September 14 he sailed for Spain. Nelson reached Cadiz on September 
29, but it was not till October 21 that he succeeded in bringing the 
allied fleet to an engagement. However, by judiciously keeping the 
greater part of his fleet out of sight, and concealing his own presence. 
Nelson contrived to decoy Villeneuve out of Cadiz. Nelson had twenty- 
seven ships, and Villeneuve thirty -three. Villeneuve's ships were 
arranged in line ; Nelson — following the method of Rodney against de 



1805 



Pitt 



885 



Grasse, and Duncan against de Winter— formed his ships in two lines of 
fourteen and thirteen respectively, about one mile distant from each other. 
These, led by Nelson and CoUingwood, sailed down on the enemy's line 
at right angles, cutting it into three divisions. Of these, one being to 
leeward was unable to get into action ; the others were fully engaged by 
the British vessels, and no less than twenty were sunk or captured. Unfor- 
tunately Nelson, whose brilliant uniform made him a conspicuous object, 
was mortally wounded by a bullet fired from the tops of the Redonbtahle, 
a French ship, alongside which his own ship, the Victory, was lying. 




Nelson was a typical English sailor of his time. The son of a clergy- 
man, as Jervis of a merchant, and CoUingwood of a country lawyer, he 
represented the popular element in the British navy. Enter- character 
ing the service at twelve, he had made himself a thorough 
master of every branch of his profession, and had pushed his;,way by sheer 



886 George III. i805 

merit from one post to another. But to say that Nelson was an admir- 
able seaman is very inadequate praise. He possessed also the insight 
into men's motives, and the conduct of affairs on a large scale, which con- 
stitute a statesman. No one understood more thoroughly than he the 
conditions of the contest in which Great Britain w^as then engaged. In 
his profession, strict observance of duty was the keynote, not only of his 
own conduct, but of what he required from others ; and his last signal, 
' England expects every man to do his duty,' has become proverbial as a 
rule of public conduct. Fortunately, death did not come to Nelson till 
his work was done. Trafalgar destroyed the last fleet which Napoleon 
was able to place upon the ocean ; and after its destruction, not only 
were Enfdaud and her colonies safe from invasion, but her merchants 
were able to traffic with fair security on every sea. 

War with France had, as usual, been followed by difficulties in India. 
Since the retirement of Warren Hastings, the most notable rulers of 
India had been Lord Cornwallis and Lord Mornington, after- 
wards Marquess Wellesley. The rule of Lord Cornwallis 
(1786-1793) is chiefly memorable for the settlement of the Bengal land 
Lord Corn- question. For a long time it had been doubtful who were 
waihs. ^|-^g pg.^j owners of land in Bengal — the Zemindars, who 

collected the revenue, or the Ryots, who cultivated the soil. The 
Cornwallis settlement was a compromise. The Zemindars were to be 
reo-arded as owners ; the Eyots were not to be dispossessed so long as 
they paid the small fixed dues assessed upon them. This arrangement 
is known as the ' Permanent Settlement.' 

Lord Mornington arrived in India in 1798, a year after his more cele- 
brated brother, Arthur Wellesley, had landed there in command of the 
Lord Morn- Thirty-third Foot, now 1st Battalion West Riding. The 
ington. time was critical, for Napoleon was in Egypt, bent on 

destroying British influence in India, and most of the Indian chiefs — 
such as Tippoo Sahib of Mysore, son of Hyder Ali, the Nizam of 
Hyderabad, and the Mahratta chiefs, Scindia and Holkar — had French 
soldiers in their pay, by whom their armies were trained in European 
discipline. Trouble first arose with Tippoo, who refused to receive a 
Seringa- British mission. War, accordingly, was declared, and an 
patam. army, commanded by General Harris, was sent against 

him. On this, Tippoo retired into his strong capital, Seringapatam. 
The conduct of the siege was entrusted to Sir David Baird, and the 
town was taken by assault. Tippoo was slain, and the greater part 
of his territory restored to the rightful Hindoo heir, whose ancestor 
had been displaced by Hyder Ali. Lord Wellesley then devised 



1805 Pitt 887 

a system of subsidiary alliances by which the native powers were to 
agree to receive a Resident named by the company, and to regulate their 
alliances in accordance with his advice ; while domestic affairs were left 
in their own hands. The attempt led to war with the Mahratta chiefs, 
who ruled over an immense tract of territory stretching from the Deccan, 
in Southern India, to Delhi, on the Ganges. The head of the Mahrattas 
was the Eajah of Sattara ; nominally, they were ruled by his Peishwah, 
or hereditary vizier, who lived at Poona ; in reality, each chief was inde- 
pendent. In 1802 Lord Wellesley concluded a subsidiary treaty with 
the Peishwah. This roused the indignation of the two great chiefs, 
Scindia and Holkar, and war broke out. 

The conduct of the war was entrusted by Wellesley to General Lake, 
the victor of Vinegar Hill, and to his own younger brother, Arthur 
Wellesley, of whose abilities he had a very high opinion. Arthur 
Arthur Wellesley was born in 1769, and, after being edu- Wellesley. 
cated at Eton, and at a French military school at Angers, entered the army 
at the age of seventeen. At that time commissions in the army were 
obtained by purchase, and his elder brother. Lord Mornington, helped 
him to secure one rank after another till, at the early age of twenty-four, 
he was colonel of the Thirty-third Foot. With this regiment he took part 
in the duke of York's retreat through Holland, and distinguished him- 
self by the courage and presence of mind with which, at a critical 
moment, he threw his regiment across a road by which the enemy was 
advancing, and covered the retreat. He was then aide-de-camp to the 
lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and sailed for India in 1796. There he had 
distinguished himself by the efficiency in which he kept his regiment, by 
his conduct at the siege of Seriugapatam, and by the successful pursuit of 
a robber chief who was the terror of Southern India. He also organised 
the expedition which General Baird led to Egypt. 

When the Mahratta war broke out in 1803, Colonel Wellesley was 
put in command of an army which advanced against Scindia from the 
south, and General Lake of another force, which was to Mahratta 
advance along the Ganges. Both were successful. Wei- ^^"^^ 
lesley increased his reputation by the brilliant victories of Assaye and 
Argaum ; and General Lake, marching from Cawnpore, took Delhi, and 
placed the Mogul under British influence. Then making his way east, 
he defeated the Mahrattas in the great battle of Laswaree. For these 
exploits Lake was made a peer, and Wellesley a knight. In 1805 
Wellesley returned home. He was in time to have several interviews 
with Pitt, who said of him that 'he had never met with any military 
officer with whom it was so satisfactory to converse,' and to hear Pitt 



888 George III. 1805 

make the Guildhall speech, in which he said that ' Britain has saved 
herself by her courage, and will save Europe by her example.' 

But if Great Britain could carry all before her at sea, Napoleon showed 

that he was still irresistible on land. On August 21, 1805, Villeneuve 

had put into Cadiz, and on the 28th the camp at Boulogne 

paign of was broken up, and the Grand Army marched in five 
divisions for the Rhine. In September Napoleon left Paris 
and took the command in person. The Austrians had foolishly placed 
in command of their army on the upper Danube the incompetent 
Mack, who in 1799, when in command of the Neapolitan troops, had 
amused Nelson at Naples by getting his own army surrounded at a sham 
fight. Now he did the same thing in earnest ; and on October 20, the 
day before the battle of Trafalgar, was compelled to surrender at Ulm 
with 30,000 excellent troops. This disaster opened the road to Vienna, 
which the French occupied without a battle ; and then pushing forward 
into Moravia, they defeated the combined forces of the Emperor and the 
Czar at the great battle of Austerlitz. In consequence of this defeat, the 
Emperor Francis Joseph was comj)elled to make peace, and left Russia 
and Great Britain to continue the struggle alone. 

The news of this series of disasters reached Pitt when he was in the 
last state of decline. His health had never been very good, and since 

Death of 1799 there had been a rapid diminution in his strength. 

Pitt. Moreover, his present ministry had given him little but dis- 

appointment. He was compelled to act with men who had opposed him, 
and some of his old colleagues, such as Grenville, were in opposition. 
Still more grievous to him was the attack made upon his old friend and 
colleague, Dundas, now Lord Melville. In the session of 1805 he was 
accused of allowing the money which passed through his hands as 
treasurer of the navy to be used for private purposes ; and although no 
loss had been sufi'ered by the public, still even such a good friend of Pitt 
as Wilberforce felt that some notice must be taken of the irregularity. 
At the end of October came the news of Ulm, and though that of the 
victory of Trafalgar soon followed, the death of Nelson overshadowed 
the national rejoicing. During the autumn Pitt sunk rapidly. His last 
public appearance was at the lord-mayor's banquet in November. When 
the news of Austerlitz reached him he w^as at Bath, but struggled up 
to London for the meeting of parliament. He was, however, fated never 
to appear again on the scene of his great oratorical triumphs, for he died 

Pitt's on the day of meeting, January 23, 1806. In judging of 

Career. Pitt's character, it is well to remember that his career was 
more than ordinarily subject to the caprice of fortune. The only part 



1806 Pitt — Grenville 889 

which he himself probably regarded with satisfaction, the peaceful 
administration from 1783 to 1792, is almost forgotten by the side of more 
stirring events. Of the other parts, the war with the French Republic 
was imdertaken sorely against his will, and was so conducted as to 
give grave cause for criticism ; while his scheme for the settlement of the 
Irish question was so mutilated as to deprive it of everything on which 
he based his hopes of success. Nevertheless, if not great in all he 
undertook, Pitt was really a great man, and his end is one of the most 
pathetic scenes in the history of this country. 

On Pitt's death, George would have been glad to have the adminis- 
tration carried on by one of his colleagues, but none was willing to 
undertake the work, and he had now to do what two 

IP 111 -1 T, fii •., Ministry of 

years beiore he had said was more distasteful than civil ' au the 
war — namely, call in the assistance of Fox. Accordingly ^ ^"^^' 
Grenville became prime minister, with an administration described as 
' All the Talents.' Fox was secretary of state for foreign affairs ; Grey 
(afterwards Lord Howick) was first lord of the admiralty ; Addington 
(now Lord Sidmouth) was privy seal. The most remarkable of the 
appointments was that of Chief-Justice Lord EUenborough Lord Elien- 
to a seat in the cabinet. Such an appointment, which might borough, 
result in the cabinet ordering some one to be tried on a criminal charge 
before one of its own members, was sharply criticised ; and though 
approved by a majority of both Houses of Parliament, it has never been 
drawn into a precedent. 

The first attention of the new ministers was given to foreign aff;iirs. 
For fourteen years Fox had been asserting that war with France was 
unnecessary, and he endeavoured to demonstrate the truth Negotiations 
of his assertion by opening negotiations with Napoleon. A 
little experience, however, soon showed Fox how much easier it is to 
criticise in opposition than to carry out one's views in office. Napoleon 
was bent on attacking Prussia, and made use of Fox's overtures to give 
the impression that Russia would soon be left to fight single-handed. He 
refused to make a joint peace with both Great Britain and Russia, coolly 
offered to guarantee England in the possession of the Cape of Good Hope, 
which we had taken from the Dutch ; Malta, which he had taken from 
the knights of St. John, and of which we were then in full posses- 
sion ; and Hanover, which was an hereditary possession of the British 
king. Such off'ers were obviously designed merely to waste time, for 
Napoleon was bent on putting everything to the arbitrament of the sword, 
and even Fox was convinced that peace could not be obtained with 
honour. Unfortunately this discovery came to Fox when it was too late 



890 ^ George III. I8O6 

to act upon it. His health had long been failing, and was further 
impaired by the long debates to which the policy of the ' Talents ' gave 

Death of rise in parliament. In the summer he ceased to attend the 

Fox. House, and in September 1806 he died. The political capa- 

city of Fox is not easy to gauge. With the exception of two insignificant 
periods he spent his whole life in opposition, and as a man of action has left 
no record at all. As an orator, he is admitted to have been admirable ; 
but with all his gifts, he left little mark on the history of his country. 

The most satisfactory work of the Grenville ministry down to the 
death of Fox was the abolition of the slave trade. This was due in 
Slave Trade reality to the exertions of Wilberforce and Clarkson, and 
prohibited. ^|^g policy of abolition was never accepted by the cabinet. 
Nevertheless Fox gave his support to the proposal, and propositions 
abolishing it were moved in either House by Fox and Grenville respec- 
tively, and carried ; and next year, 1807, an act founded on these resolu- 
tions was carried through both Houses. From this time the trade in 
slaves became illegal, but the actual abolition of slavery did not take 
place for nearly thirty years. 

During the same session Lord Melville was impeached, but the trial 

excited comparatively little interest. It was thought that he was a 

somewhat hardly used public servant, and he was accordingly 
Impeach- . 

ment of acquitted. His is the last impeachment that has occurred 
Melville. . ^ , , 
in Iiingland. 

Fox was succeeded as foreign secretary by Lord Howick (formerly 
Grey), who met with no better success than his predecessor in his attempt 
Napoleon's to come to terms with Napoleon. On the contrary, Napo- 
Successes. Icon's great successes made him confident that in the end he 
would get the better of the struggle. On October 14 the two battles of 
Jena and Auerstadt broke the power of Prussia; and in 1807, in spite of 
the doubtful battle of Eylau, the great victory of Friedland compelled 
the Czar to come to terms. Not only did Alexander make peace with 
Nai)oleon but even entered into an intimate alliance with him, and the 
Treaty of Tilsit left Great Britain to carry on the contest single-handed. 

Meanwhile, Napoleon had devised a scheme which he hoped to find 
more effective than invasion in bringing Great Britain to her knees. 
The Berlin Though he could hardly send a man-of-war to sea for fear of 
Decrees. ^]^g British cruisers, he determined to declare the British 
Isles in a state of blockade. To effect this he issued the Berlin Decrees. 
By these he declared (1) that the British Isles were in a state of 
blockade ; (2) that France and all her allies were forbidden to trade with 
them ; (3) that in a state occupied by French troops all British property 



1807 Grenville 891 

was forfeited, and all British subjects prisoners of war. These Decrees 
were issued on November 21, 1806. As Napoleon had no fleet by which 
he could enforce his Decrees, it is not likely that they would have had 
much effect ; but without waiting to see this, the Grenville orders in 
ministry issued the Orders in Council on January 7, 1807. Council. 
By these orders neutrals were forbidden to trade between one port in 
France and another, or one in possession of her allies ; and in November 
this was supplemented by a further order forbidding trade with all ports 
and places belonging to France and her allies. The Decrees and Orders 
constituted a commercial war. The object of the Orders was partly 
retaliatory, partly designed to compel all commerce between the con- 
tinental and neutral states to pass through British ports. As it has been 
well put : ' The French soldiers were turned into coast-guard men to shut 
out Great Britain from her markets ; the British ships became revenue 
cutters to prohibit the trade of France,' The chief sufierers from the 
system were, first, the consumers of British and colonial goods on the con- 
tinent, and second, the neutral countries Avhich wanted to trade with one 
or both of the belligerent countries. The sufierers naturally became 
bitterly hostile to the belligerent from whose action they immediately 
suffered. In Europe the Berlin Decrees created a profound dislike for 
the Napoleonic system among all who wished to trade with England ; 
among the neutrals, the bitterest feeling against Great Britain was 
excited in the United States. 

In 1807, besides passing the act which gave effect to the resolutions 
against the slave trade passed the previous session, ministers also brought 

forward a biU to remove some of the disabilities of Koman 

Army and 

Catholics and Nonconformists who served in the army and Navy 
navy. By an act passed in 1793 in the Irish Parliament, 
Roman Catholics were permitted to hold any rank in the Irish army up 
to that of colonel ; but in the English establishment no such right 
existed. This was such an obvious injustice that the ministers induced 
George iii. to agree to a measure extending the Irish Act to England. 
In the end, however, they extended the scope of the bill so as to include 
both the army and navy, and to throw open all ranks, not only to Roman 
Catholics, but also to Nonconformists. In this form the bill passed its 
second reading ; but the king, having become alarmed at its provisions, 
declared that he never meant to go further than to assimilate the law in 
England and Ireland, and that the present bill must be limited to that. 
Then, going a step further, he demanded a iDledge from the Grenville 
ministers that the subject should not be brought forward dismissed, 
again, and on ministers refusing this, they were at once dismissed. 



892 George III. I807 

The place of the retiring ministers was taken by an anti-Catholic 
administration, under the premiership of the duke of Portland. As a 
The Portland jo^^ng man Portland had been the prime minister of the 
Ministry. Coalition Ministry, but in 1794 he had led over into Pitt's 
camp a body of moderate Whigs who had been alarmed by the excesses 
of the French Kevolution. He was now both a Tory and an opponent of 
the claims of the Eonian Catholics. The leading members of his ministry 
were Eldon, the chancellor, Perceval, chancellor of the exchequer, 
Canning, the foreign secretary, Lord Hawkesbury — afterwards Lord 
Liverpool — home secretary. Lord Castlereagh, war and colonial secretary ; 
and among the others were Sir Arthur Wellesley, chief secretary to the 
lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and Huskisson, secretary to the treasury. As 
it was thought that the new ministers must have given a pledge to the 
king not to revive the Roman Catholic claims, motions were introduced 
by the opposition that ' ministers ought not to bind themselves by any 
pledge as to what advice they should give the king ' ; and also ' that it is 
impossible for the king to act without advice ' ; but the motions were 
lost. A dissolution of parliament followed, and the electors showed 
clearly that the king had their aj)proval in resisting the Roman Catholic 
claims, by returning a large anti-Catholic majority. In fact, the ' whole 
spirit of the country was with the king,' and the Roman Catholics had 
far fewer friends in proportion outside the House of Commons than 
they had inside. 

In spite of the abortive negotiations of Fox and Howick, the war was 

still carried on. In 1806 an expedition, ordered by Pitt, landed in 

Calabria, under Sir John Stuart, to aid the peasants in an 
The 'War 

insurrection against the French. It was met by General 

Regnier with a French force at Maida. There a battle was fought, 

Battle of which, though insignificant compared to the mighty contests 

Maida. q£ Austerlitz and Jena, was decisive as to the merits of the 

troops engaged. The fighting was almost entirely with the bayonet, and 

the result was a complete victory for the British troops. In 1807 it was 

learned that the French were about to seize the Danish fleet, consisting of 

eighteen sail of the line ; and though we had no pretext for war with 

Denmark, the Portland administration sent twenty-five ships of the line, 

under Admiral Gambler, and 27,000 troops under Lord 

Seizure of > / a. 

the Danish Catlicart, to couipcl the Danes to hand over their fleet to 
Great Britain, on condition that it was restored at the 
close of the war. To this demand they returned a refusal ; upon which 
Copenhagen was bombarded from both land and sea, and after four days 
the ships and stores were given up. We also took Heligoland, which was 



1808 Portland 893 

then considered a valuable naval station for watching the mouth of the 
Elbe, and useful as a centre for smuggling goods into North Germany. 
In 1806, pursuing our usual policy, we took Cape Colony from the Dutch. 
The ministry were then led by Sir Home Popham, the commander of 
the naval forces at the Cape, into an attack on Buenos Ayres, a colony of 
Spain, with which we were still at war. This proved a 
failure, for General Whitelock, who was chosen to command to South 
the military forces, knew nothing of war, and though he "^^■■*^3- 
took Monte Video, contrived to entangle his forces in the streets of 
Buenos Ayres, and was compelled to enter into a disgraceful arrange- 
ment for evacuating the whole country. Three years later, in 1810, we 
took from the French the island of Mauritius, which had hitherto been a 
centre of privateering attacks on our Indian commerce. 

Far more important, however, than these small expeditions was the 
outbreak of the war in the Spanish peninsula, which arose directly from 
Napoleon's commercial system. Portugal still opened her The French 
ports to British ships ; and so long as this was the case, ^" Portugal. 
Napoleon found it impossible to keep British goods out of south-western 
Europe, for they were smuggled by the Portuguese across the Spanish 
frontier, and by the Spaniards into France. Accordingly, in 1807, he 
formed a scheme in conjunction with Spain for conquering Portugal, 
and Junot, one of his favourite generals, was sent through the north of 
Spain to occupy that country. When Junot reached Lisbon he found 
that the Portuguese royal family had taken refuge on board their fleet, 
and sailed for their colony of Brazil. By this flight Napoleon's plan of 
seizing the Portuguese fleet was frustrated; but the French treated 
Portugal as a conquered country, and disgraced themselves by plunder- 
ing monasteries and appropriating works of art. 

However, it soon became apparent that Napoleon's intentions with 
regard to the peninsula were by no means confined to the conquest of 
Portugal. Under the pretence of reinforcing Junot, he The French 
contrived that French troops should be in practical posses- '" ^P^'"" 
sion of the fortresses of San Sebastian, Burgos, Ciudad Kodrigo, and 
other fortresses in the north of Spain. His next step was to set on foot 
a course of intrigues with a view to displacing the reigning fiimily of 
Spain. Charles iv., the king, was under the influence of his wife, who, 
in her turn, was ruled by her favourite Godoy, who had acquired the 
title of Prince of the Peace from having negotiated the treaty of 1795 
between France and Spain. To Godoy was bitterly opposed Charles' 
eldest son Ferdinand, prince of the Asturias, and their quarrels gave 
Napoleon an opportunity for interference. Eiots broke out in Madrid 



894 George III. 1808 

and other Spanish towns, which resulted in the abdication of Charles and 
the accession of Ferdinand. On this the French troops occupied Madrid, 
and Napoleon induced both Charles and Ferdinand to come to Bayonne 
for the purpose of conferring with him. Both were persuaded to abdicate, 
and then Napoleon named his brother Joseph Bonaparte king of Spain, 
and had him recognised by what purported to be a body of Spanish 
notables in June 1808. 

Joseph had been king of Naples since 1806, and had shown himself an 
excellent sovereign. By his accession the Spaniards were offered the 
Spanish advantages of the French Revolution, and were invited to 

Resistance, ^hrow over the systems of feudalism, priestcraft, and corrup- 
tion which had long been dominant in Spain. Nevertheless, the majority 
of the people refused to accept Joseph, even under these conditions, 
partly because the intelligence of the people was not sufl&ciently aroused 
to the evils of the existing state of affairs, and also because the Spaniards, 
being intensely patriotic, resented interference by the French. Hitherto 
Napoleon, in all his campaigns, had had to deal with monarchs and 
armies of regular soldiers, and had been accustomed to see whole peoples 
submit without a blow when their professional defenders had been 
vanquished. He was now for the first time confronted by a national 
resistance. In the open field, and against equal numbers, the Spaniards 
had no chance with the French, and their troops were disgracefully 
beaten by Bessieres at the battle of Eio Seco ; but the town of Saragossa 
defied all efforts of the French to capture it, and Dupont, one of the 
French generals, having advanced too far from his supports, was sur- 
rounded by an overwhehning force and compelled to surrender at 
Baylen. The whole Spanish population rose, and commenced a guerilla 
warfare against the invaders. Confronted with this, Joseph, who was no 
soldier, evacuated Madrid, and withdrew his armies to the entrance of 
the road from Bayonne into Spain. 

Meanwhile, the British government had determined to assist the 

Portuguese, and for this purpose a body of troops under Sir Arthur 

Wellesley, which had been designed for South America, 

Sir Arthur i mi i i i • 

\Veiiesley were ordered to proceed to Portugal. They landed m 
in Portugal. j^j^j^^^gQ gj^y^ ^^^ ^^ August 17 defeated a division of the 

French army under Laborde at Rori^a. He then marched south and took 

up a position at Vimiero, a little north of Lisbon, to await reinforcements. 

While these were landing, he was attacked on the 21st by the whole 
Battle of French army under Junot himself. After hard fighting the 
Vimiero. J'rench were beaten ; and as it was still noon, Wellesley wished 

to drive Junot into the valley of the Tagus, and, by cutting him off from 



896 George III. I8O8 

Lisbon, to compel him to surrender. Wellesley, however, was superseded 
in turn by two senior officers, Sir Harry Burrard and Sir Hew Dal- 
ryniple. They gave up his plan, and accepted the overtures for an armis- 
tice which were made by the French. Accordingly a convention was 
signed at Cintra, by which the French agreed to evacuate Portugal, 
taking with them their arms and private property — which turned out to 
include their plunder — on condition that they were conveyed in British 
ships to France. From a military point of view the convention was 
ridiculous, as there is no doubt that a little energy would have compelled 
Junot to surrender at discretion ; but politically, by giving Portugal to 
the British as a safe base of operations, it secured a great advantage. In 
England, however, it was received with the greatest indignation, and of 
the three generals responsible for it, only Sir Arthur Wellesley was 
employed again. 

The French troops had now been expelled from the whole of the 
peninsula, except where the road to France entered Spain ; but in 
Napoleon November Napoleon himself took the command, de- 
in Spain. feated the Spaniards at the battles of Esj^inosa and 
Tudela, and entered Madrid on the 4th of December, Meanwhile the 
British army in Portugal, which was now under the command of Sir 
John Moore, had crossed the Spanish frontier to Salamanca, and there 
Moore heard of the defeat of the Spaniards, Kecognising that it was 
impossible for him to fight Napoleon with any chance of success, Moore 
Moore's determined to march on Burgos in such a way as to threaten 
Advance. Napoleon's communications with France ; this he hoped 
would compel NajDoleon to concentrate his forces, and so give time to 
the Spanish fugitives to recover from their defeat. As Moore expected, 
the news of his advance caused the concentration of the French on 
Burgos ; and as soon as he knew this was in progress, his object being 
now accomplished, Moore retreated towards Corunna, where the trans- 
ports from Lisbon were ordered to meet him. For some time the British 
were pursued by Napoleon in person, and suflfered terrible hardshij)S in 
their forced winter march through the mountains of the Asturias ; but 
before they reached the coast Napoleon returned to France, leaving 
Soult and Ney to complete the destruction of the British. On reaching 
Corunna the transports were not in sight, but Moore turned at bay on 
Battle of the outskirts of the town and inflicted, on January 16, such 
Corunna. .^ decisive defeat on the French that the embarkation of the 
British was conducted without interference. Moore himself was mortally 
wounded, and died before the troops embarked. 

Althourdi durinff the war the British had never fought the French on 



1809 Portland 897 

a large scale, they had now won a series of pitched battles, usually 
against odds, and this encouraged the government to undertake the war 
on a larger scale. Accordingly, in April, 1809, Sir Arthur 
Wellesley was again sent to Lisbon to take the command of Surnl\^o 
the British and Portuguese forces. On his arrival he found ^^'^^^e^'- 
the country threatened with invasion, both from the north and east. 
Soult was at Oporto, and Victor was in the valley of the Tagus threaten- 
ing to assault the capital. Seeing that if he advanced upon Victor a 
southern march by Soult might cut him off from the sea, the natural 
basis of a British force, Wellesley determined to attack Soult first, and, 
marching north, he sent a force up the river Douro to threaten Soult's 
communications with Spain, while he himself, with the main body, 
contrived unperceived to cross the river at Oporto itself. The result was 
that on May 12, Soult, taken by surprise, was compelled to 
evacuate the town with considerable loss, and was only of the 
able to make his way into Spain at the price of abandoning ^°"''°- 
all his guns and ammunition, Soult being thus disposed of, Wellesley 
advanced up the valley of the Tagus and entered Spain, where he had 
received lavish promises of support from the Spaniards. Little real 
assistance, however, was forthcoming ; but in conjunction with Cuesta, the 
Spanish general, he occupied a position at Talavera, and there, on the 
27th and 28th of July, he was attacked by the French under Battle of 
Victor and Joseph. As the Spaniards were placed in an Talavera. 
almost impregnable position, the brunt of the fighting fell on the British, 
who maintained their post with much loss. Three days afterwards 
Wellesley heard that Soult had reorganised his army with unexpected 
celerity, and had forced the Pass of Baiios, between the valleys of the 
Douro and the Tagus, and was now in his rear. Upon this, Wellesley 
crossed the Tagus, and made his way back to Portugal by way of 
Badajos. The result of the campaign was to again clear the French out of 
Portugal, and for this Wellesley received the title of Viscount Wellington. 
Though successful on the whole i]i Portugal, the British experienced 
in 1809 a disaster which, being near home, created a great impression on 
the public mind. This was the notorious Walcheren ^^^ 
Expedition. Taking advantage of Napoleon's troubles in Walcheren 
the Spanish peninsula, Austria, for the fifth time, declared ""^^ '*'°"" 
war against France, and it was thought that if a British expedition were 
to proceed to the Scheldt Antwerp might be taken, and troops detained 
in Belgium which would otherwise be despatched against Austria. The 
expedition was put under the command of Lord Chatham, Pitt's elder 
brother, who, though a valuable counsellor in the cabinet, had no 

3l 



898 George III. 1809 

qualification for the field ; and the naval force was commanded by Sir 
Richard Strachan. The whole afi'air was grossly mismanaged. The 
naval and military authorities failed to work harmoniously together. 
No proper preparations had been made to counteract the malarious 
climate of the low-lying flats in which the operations had to be conducted. 
The troops never reached Antwerp, but wasted their time in operations 
on the isle of Walcheren. Flushing, indeed, was taken, but the troops 
died by thousands of fever ; and when it was known that the French 
had made Antwerp impregnable, the expedition returned home. 

The minister chiefly responsible for this disaster was Castlereagh, war 
and colonial secretary. Canning, the foreign secretary, had long been of 
Castlereagh opinion that Castlereagh was unfitted for his present post, 
and Canning, .^^^^ their mutual recriminations led to a duel in December 
1809. This was followed by the resignation of both. Other causes had 
combined to injure the Portland administration ; the duke of York, who 
was commander-in-chief of the army, and had justified his appointment 
by showing great ability for organisation, was accused of gTanting 
commissions through the corrupt influence of his mistress, Anne Clark. 
Though the charge of corruption against the duke was not made out, the 
scandalous nature of the charge compelled him to resign. In the same 
session, Lord Castlereagh and Perceval were accused of using improper 
influence in a parliamentary election, and though they were acquitted, 
the affair threw much light upon the system of parliamentary election, 
and helped to revive the movement in favour of parliamentary reform. 
Portland's health was not equal to coping with such an accumulation of 
difficulties, and he accordingly resigned. There was then some negotia- 
tion for a Whig administration, but Grenville's awkwardness and asperity 
were a bar to any satisfactory arrangement. Indeed, he and Grey 
(formerly Lord Howick) did not take the trouble to come up to town for 
Percivai's tlie negotiations. Accordingly, Perceval became j^rime 
Ministry, minister and Lord Wellesley became minister for foreign 
affairs in order to support his brother. Lord LiverjDool, formerly Lord 
Hawkesbury, took the war and colonial office, with Robert Peel as 
his under secretary, and. Lord Palmerston as secretary at war. 

The year 1810 promised to be a critical year in the history of the 
Peninsula. Napoleon had crushed the Austrians in the great Imttle of 
Campaign Wagram, and was able to send an excellent army under 
of 1810. Massena, one of his best generals, to drive Wellington out 

of Portugal. To meet this, Wellington had devised an elaborate scheme 
of defence. Lisbon lies at the extremity of a peninsula, formed by the 
estuary of the Tagus and the sea. Across this he prepared three lines 



1811 Portlaifid — Perceval 899 

of defences, which he hoped, with the assistance of the British gunboats, 
to hold against any attack, and having secretly made these preparations, 
he stationed his troops to guard the northern road by Ciudad Eodrigo 
and Almeida. His hope was to retard the French advance till harvest 
was over, and then, by compelling the Portuguese to bring all their stores 
within his lines, to make the country untenable for an army like the 
French, which trusted to supplying itself from the country through which 
it marched. Ciudad Eodrigo and Almeida fell on July 1, and, in spite of 
Crauford's brave attempt to check the French advance at the combat of 
the Coa, they advanced down the valley of the Mondego. The Portu- 
guese government had been somewhat slack in carrying out Wellino-ton's 
directions for the removal or destruction of provisions ; so to gain a little 
more time, and to encourage the Portuguese troops, he drew up the allied 
army on the steep ridge of Busaco, which compelled Massena Battle of 
either to fight or to make a considerable detour. The ^"saco. 
attack was made on the 27th of September, and was repulsed at all 
points ; and then Wellington, withdrawing his men down the valley, 
took up his position behind the famous lines of Torres 
Vedras. So well had their secret been kept, that Massena of Torres 
was within two days' march of them before he heard of their ^ ^^^' 
existence. From October to March Massena remained before the lines 
looking in vain for a place to break through, and at length, weary of 
waiting, and utterly unable to find provisions for his large force, Massena 
retreated. The movement was admirably managed, chiefly by Marshal 
Ney ; but at the end of March Massena was compelled to cross the 
Spanish frontier, having lost thirty thousand men in the campaign, and 
every action in which he had been engaged. The lines of Torres Vedras 
formed a turning-point, not only in the history of the war, but in that of 
Wellington himself. Up to that date his genius for war had hardly been 
appreciated in England, or even in the army ; but no one could mistake 
the ability with which, during twelve months, he and his chief engineer. 
Colonel Fletcher, had prepared an obstacle which not only secured the 
British troops from disaster, but had baffled the genius of some of the 
greatest marshals of France. His reputation rose accordingly. 

Wellington's next business was to carry the war into Spain, and for 
this it was necessary to have command of the frontier fortresses Ciudad 
Eodrigo and Almeida in the north, and Badajos and Elvas campaign 
in the south, and also to have a free passage over the river °f ^^n. 
Tagus. Of these fortresses all except Elvas were in the hands of the 
French. Had Wellington been opposed to a single chief, success would 
have been almost impossible ; but his advantage lay in the fact that the 



900 George III. isii 

French troops were under the command of a number of marshals, able 
men but jealous of one another, who never co-operated heartily. He 
had also a great advantage over the French in the commissariat depart- 
ment, for the French troops, accustomed to live on the country, could 
never be kept together in large masses for more than a few weeks, while 
the British troops, having the command of the sea and of the great navi- 
gable rivers, were fed from England, and what supplies they got from 
the natives were regularly paid for. 

The first fortress to be attacked was Almeida. It was known to be 
slenderly provisioned, and a blockade was therefore formed. To raise 

this Massena and Bessieres advanced with their whole force 
Siege of 

Almeida. and attacked Wellington at Fuentes De Oiioro on May 3. 
_ , ^ The fight was the least decisive battle fought during the 

Battle of *= . , . 

Fuentes Peninsular war. Wellington's position was not good, and 

had Bessieres backed up Massena he would have been very 
near defeat. As it was, he succeeded in holding his own ; and, during the 
battle, the garrison of Almeida evacuated the fortress after making it 
for a time untenable. The remainder of the year was chiefly occupied 
in the siege of Badajos. The siege of this fortress had been formed by 
the allies under Beresford, and the covering army was posted at Albuera, 
Battle of where it was attacked by Soult. The key of the position 
Albuera. ^g^g r^ \^{\\ q^i the right flank of the allies, from which their 
whole line could be commanded by artillery. This was lost by the 
Spaniards, and the allies were on the point of retreat, when the hill was 
retaken by the British under the direction of Colonel Hardinge, after- 
wards governor-general of India. This action was the most fiercely con- 
tested of the war ; out of six thousand British infantry who attacked the 
hill only eighteen hundred remained unwounded ; but their valour made 
an enormous impression on the French, and, perhaps, the saying that 
' the British never understood when they were beaten ' was never more 
applicable than to this terrible battle. 

Two great successes marked the opening of the year 1812. On 
January 24 Ciudad Kodrigo was stormed with terrible loss, including that 
Campaign of Robert Crauford, the leader of the light division. On 
ofi8i2. April 6 Badajos was stormed. These successes opened the 

storming road into Spain, and were completed when Hill destroyed 
Roddgo tnd the bridge of Alcantara over the Tagus, and repaired that 
Badajos. ^f Almarez near the frontier, by which the southern and 
northern divisions of Wellington's army were able to communicate with 
one another. Accordingly, in June, Wellington advanced along the 
Salamanca and Burgos road with a general view to compelling the 



1812 



Perceval 



901 



French to evacuate Southern Spain. His task, however, was a hard one, 
for Marmont, the commander of the forces opposed to him, was an ex- 
cellent general with whom no liberties could be taken. The two armies 
mamuuvred against one another till July 21,— Marmont, perhaps, having 
the advantage. On that day, however, the French and the Battle of 
allies were moving, roughly speaking, along parallel lines in Salamanca, 
a westerly direction, when the French left, having pressed on too rapidly, 
Wellington sent Pic ton's division to attack it in front while he threw the 



Battle of 
SALAMANCA 

JULY 22'7f' 1812. 



Scale of Miles 

4 




British attack on the French left, 
■when the French ccnt7'e;not having 
marched into fosition.is unable to aid it. 

French BHI 

English ' ' 



main body of his army under Pakenham upon its flank. The result was the 
complete rout of the French army ; Marmont himself was wounded, and 
had it not been for an error of the Spaniards, who failed to hold a ford as 
Wellington had expected, the whole French army would have been annihi- 
lated. From Salamanca Wellington pushed forward to Madrid, and then 
formed the siege of Burgos. For this, however, his means were inadequate, 
and the French troops concentrating from the south forced him to retreat. 
This movement was only efTected with great loss ; but though Wellington 
himself, at the end of the campaign, stood where he had been at the 
beginning, the French were never able to reoccupy the south of Spain. 



902 George III. 1812 

The same year, events at home also tended to strengthen his position. 

Perceval was shot in the lobby of the House of Commons by a merchant 

Death of named Bellingham, who regarded his private ruin as in some 

Perceval. ^^,^j ^^^ ^^ ^.j^g government. In 1810 the old king had 

become hopelessly insane, and his place had been taken by the Prince 

of Wales under an act modelled on Pitt's Kegency Bill of 1788. For the 

The greater part of his life the Prince Kegent had professed to 

Regency. \^q j^ friend of Fox and the Whigs, but he now made no 

Liverpool's attempt to form a Whig administration, but called on Lord 

Ministry. -, r> mi-i titt 

Liverpool to lorm a government. This he accordingly did, 
with Castlereagh as secretary for foreign affairs, and Sidmouth home 
secretary. Both Liverpool and Castlereagh believed in Wellington's 
genius, and gave him a hearty support. Neither of them was a great man ; 
but Liverpool's tact contrived to hold the government together for twelve 
years, and to Castlereagh's dogged determination must certainly be attri- 
buted a large share of the credit for bringing the war against Napoleon 
to a successful conclusion. Equally favourable to Wellington were events 
in EurojDe. In 1812 Napoleon made his great expedition to Eussia, the 
Napoleon disastrous result of which ruined the Grand Army, and 
in Russia, compelled Napoleon to enter upon an unequal contest in 
Germany with Russia, Prussia, and eventually Austria. For the impend- 
ing struggle Napoleon withdrew some of his best troops from Spain, and 
replaced them by raw levies, so that the advantage both in numbers and 
in efficiency passed to the side of the allies. 

Accordingly, in 1813, AVellington began a concerted movement against 
the French. Graham in the north pressed forward along the line of the 
Campaign L^ouro ; Wellington, with the centre a little in his rear, 
of 1813. followed the great road by Salamanca and Burgos, while 

Hill, again, a little in the rear, marched along the valley of the Tagus. In 
this way the French were being constantly outflanked, and were compelled 
in turn to evacuate Valladolid, Madrid, and Burgos. In June Welling- 
ton's three armies caught up the retreating French at Vittoria. Keeping 
Battle of the same direction as that in which they had marched, Hill 
Vittona. attacked the French left and Wellington the centre, while 
Graham worked round on their extreme right to seize the road in rear of 
their position. The plan was completely successful. The French were 
utterly routed, and of the hundred and fifty-two guns which they took into 
action only two escaped. Treasure worth ^1,000,000 was captured, and 
most of the plunder which the French were trying to carry with them. 

Immediately after the battle Wellington pushed forward, and formed 
the sieges of San Sebastian and Pampeluna, the two fortresses which 



1814 Liverpool 903 

barred the road into France through the western Pyrenees. In these de- 
sperate circumstances Napoleon called on Soult to reorganise his beaten 
armies ; and so well did he fulfil his task that he was able to 

Battles 

take the offensive, and almost defeated Wellington in an of the 
attempt made to pierce through the mountains to the aid of ^y^^"^^^- 
Pampeluna, known as the battles of the Pyrenees. His plan, however, 
was unsuccessful, and both fortresses fell into Wellington's hands. In 
September San Sebastian was stormed with terrible carnage. Fall of San 
and Pampeluna capitulated in October. Meanwhile Napoleon f nd^Pam" 
himself, after making a splendid stand in Germany at the peluna. 
battles of Liitzen, Bautzen, and Dresden, had been utterly defeated in 
the great battle of Leipzig, and compelled to fall back across the Ehine. 
Wellington, therefore, prepared to join in a general invasion invasion 
of France, and, in January 1814, forced the passage of the of France. 
Bidasoa and established himself on French soil. The south-west of 
France is defended by a series of rivers, the chief of which are the Adour 
and the Garonne, which run in a north-westerly direction into the Bay of 
Biscay. Soult attempted to hold these. Wellington's general plan was 
to throw forward his right wing, thus threatening to block Soult in 
between the river and the sea, as at the battle of Oporto. In this 
way he drove him across the Nive, the Nivelle, and the Adour ; and, 
eventually, Soult making more and more to the eastward, was defeated 
by Wellington at the battle of Toulouse on April 10. Meanwhile, the 
allied forces in the north, in spite of a most brilliant campaign on the 
part of Napoleon, had driven him back by sheer weight of numbers. On 
March 31 Paris was captured, and Napoleon compelled to abdicate. 
This event brought the war to a conclusion, but, unfortunately, the news 
of it did not reach Toulouse in time to prevent a battle. 

During Wellington's operations in the peninsula, we had been engaged 
in a miserable war with the United States. This quarrel arose out of the 
annoyance caused to the Americans by the Orders in Councd ; ^^^ ^.^j^ 
and though these had been repealed before the actual tg^jUnh^^ 
declaration of war, hostilities were still permitted to go on. 
During 1812 and 1813 the chief of the fighting was done at sea, and took 
' the form of contests between single ships. In these the Americans were, 
as a rule, successful, for their ships were better found than British vessels 
of the same class. They carried more and heavier guns, and they had 
better-trained seamen, owing to the relatively small number of their ships, 
compared to the vast fleets which the British had to man. In some fights, 
however, where the vessels were practically on an equality, the British 
won-notably in that between the Shannon and the Chesapeake, fought 



904 Gem-ge III. 1813 

in Boston harbour on June 1, 1813, when the British boarded and took 

their antagonist after a fight of fifteen minutes. There was also a good 

deal of fighting on a small scale along the Canadian frontier, and on the 

great lakes. In this the Americans, partly because of their superior 

flotilla on the lakes, and partly because they had to meet in Sir George 

Prevost a very inferior commander, got the advantage. No great results 

came of fighting on this scale ; and when the war in France ended, the 

British government sent some of the best regiments of Wellington's army 

to America, under the command of General Ross and Sir John Pakenham. 

The former directed his efi'orts against Washington, the site of the 

American government, and making his way up the Chesa- 
Battle of ^ . 

Bladens- peake, defeated the Americans at Bladensburg. Washing- 

^^^' ton was then occupied ; and by an act of vandalism, for 

which the home government was responsible, the Capitol, where congress 
met, the White House, or president's official residence, and other govern- 
ment offices were burnt to the ground. After this the troops retreated 

to their ships. New Orleans was the obiect of Sir John 
Failure ^ . . , "^ 

at New Pakenham's oj^erations. This city, which was the emporium 

of the American cotton and sugar trade, is situated on the 
Mississijjpi, 110 miles from the coast. The approaches were extremely 
difficult, and the Americans, under General Jackson, afterwards president, 
had blocked Pakenham's road with ramparts of cotton-bales and sugar- 
casks. Behind these they fired in safety, and after a terrible loss of 
life, including that of Pakenham himself, the British were compelled 
to retreat. Had modern facilities for communication existed, the attack 
on New Orleans would never have been made ; for a week before the 
assault, peace between Great Britain and the United States had been 
signed at Ghent. This miserable war decided nothing. The Orders in 
Council hnd been withdrawn before it began, and the question of the 
right of search was left unsettled by the peace. 

So soon as Napoleon had abdicated, the allied sovereigns recognised 

Louis xvi.'s brother as king of France, by the title of Louis xviii. Until 

the abdication of Napoleon, the idea of a Restoration had 

Restoration ^ i • n i i -t 

of Louis not been openly mooted ; and in all probability was first put 

XVIII . 

forward by Talleyrand, the clever and versatile minister for 
foreign affairs. On the whole, a Restoration of the Bourbons seemed the 
simplest solution, for there was no one to take Napoleon's position as 
emperor ; and the crowned heads of Europe were hardly prepared to super- 
intend a reconstitution of the Republic. Louis xviii., therefore, returned 
to Paris, and France again took her place among the great monarchies of 
Europe. This was to her immediate advantage, as in the Congress of 



1815 Liverpool 905 

Vienna,, which met to reconstitute the European system, after the disorder 
into which it had been thrown by the wars, she was able to appear among 
the other powers as an equal, and to exercise great influence on its 
deliberations. 

The Congress of Vienna sat for about a year, and dealt in the most 
careful and deliberate manner with the very difticult problems which 
came before it. In general, it acted on these principles, — (1) 
that some sort of equality should be preserved in the real gress of 
power of the great European states ; (2) that the country most ^*^""^- 
dangerous to the peace of Europe was France ; (3) that in making the 
regulations and changes needful to carry out the above principles, 
nationality might be ignored. Accordingly, Russia received a larger 
share of Poland. Austria gave up the Netherlands, but received in 
exchange the dominions of Venice. Prussia was strengthened at the 
expense of Saxony, and of lands on the left bank of the Rhine that had 
been French since 1793 or 1794. This made her a stronger opponent of 
France on the Rhine ; and for the same end, Belgium and Holland were 
joined together under the rule of the Prince of Orange, who was made 
King of the Netherlands. The kingdom of Sardinia was strengthened 
by the annexation of the republic of Genoa. To punish Denmark for her 
adhesion to France, Norway was taken from her and made independent, 
but with the same king as Sweden. Great Britain was strengthened in 
the Mediterranean by the possession of Malta and the Ionian Islands, 
and in the North Sea by that of Heligoland. In the West Indies she 
kept Trinidad and Tobago ; and in the East, the Cape of Good Hope, 
Mauritius, and Ceylon. On the other hand she restored Minorca to Spain, 
and the other West Indian islands which had been taken during the war 
to their former owners. She was represented at the Congress, first by 
Lord Castlereagh, and then by the duke of Wellington, who maintained 
h6r character for disinterestedness, especially by their considerate treat- 
ment of France. On one subject, the abolition of the slave trade, they 
strove hard to secure a general agreement, and were so successful that 
France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, the only countries really 
concerned, agreed virtually to abolish the odious traffic. The labours of 
the Congress were not concluded when news arrived that, in Return of 
March, 1815, Napoleon had escaped from Elba, landed in Napoleon. 
France, and been received with enthusiasm by the army, and by the bulk 
of his former subjects. 

This disastrous intelligence caused the revival of the coalition, for the 
possibility of giving Napoleon time to show whether he would assume his 
old ambitious policy, or would begin a reign of peace, was not entertained 



906 George III. 1815 

for a moment. It was determined to invade France on all sides, and 
Napoleon was therefore compelled, whether he like it or no, to resort to 

arms. He determined to begin the campaign by an attack 
paign in upon Belgium. This country was defended by a mixed 
e gium. g^j.jjjy Qf British, Hanoverians, Dutch and Belgians, under 
Wellington, whose cantonments extended from the neighbourhood of 
Charleroi to the sea, with a reserve at Brussels ; and another army of 
Prussians under Bliicher, whose cantonments extended from Charleroi to 
the German frontier. Wellington's forces numbered about 106,000 men, 
but with the exception of his old peninsular troops, were of very inferior 
material. The Prussians numbered 114,000 ; while Napoleon had under 
his command 124,000. Napoleon's plan was to strike at Charleroi, and 
then to bring his main force to bear upon the Prussians while he held 
the British in check, and then, having separated the two armies, to bring 
his whole force to bear upon Wellington. In this scheme he was at first 
successful ; his arrangements were made with such secrecy, that on June 
15 he quite unexpectedly crossed the frontier, and drove the Prussians 
and Belgians before him. In event of Napoleon's advance by the 
Charleroi road, Bliicher and Wellington had arranged to concentrate at 
Ligny and at Quatre Bras respectively, about eight miles from each 
other ; but Napoleon's movements were so quick that Wellington's army 
was not concentrated in time, and the Prussians had to bear the shock of 
NajDoleon's onset without any assistance from their allies. 

Accordingly, on June 16, Napoleon, with two-thirds of his army, 
attacked the Prussians at Ligny, while Ney, with the other one-third, 

tried to force the position at Quatre Bras. Unluckily for 
Ligny and Napoleon, through a series of contradictory orders, D'Erlon's 
re ras. ^^^^^ gAYQ no effective assistance to either side. The result 
was that though Napoleon drove back the Prussians, he did not destroy 
their army as he had calculated ; while Ney, weakened at the critical 
moment, was unable to force Wellington's position, which was better 
defended hour by hour, as fresh troops came up. During the night of 
the 16th, Bliicher fell back towards Wavre, leaving Wellington for the 
moment isolated at Quatre Bras ; and had Napoleon attacked him with 
vigour in the early hours of the 17th, the result must have been most 
disastrous. As soon, however, as Wellington knew that Bliicher was 
making for Wavre, he gave orders for a retreat on Waterloo, which lay 
towards Wavre much as Quatre Bras did to Ligny, but was fifteen miles ofl\ 
The retreat was admirably carried out, and in the evening Wellington's 
army was in position at Waterloo ; while Bliicher, whose honourable 
fidelity to his engagement with Wellington can never be spoken of too 
highly, was ready to march to the assistance of his allies first thing in the 



1815 



Liverpool 



907 



morning. These facts, however, were not known to Napoleon. He was 
under the impression that the main part of the Prussian army had 
retreated to Namur, and that only a division was at Wavre, and he 
considered that he had amply provided for that by detaching Grouchy 
with 35,000 men to prevent its conjunction with Wellington. 




The battle of Waterloo was fought on an undulation which crosses the 
two roads from Charleroi and Mons to Brussels, just before their junction 
at the village of Mont St. Jean. Along the northern ridge ^he Field of 
ran the road to Wavre. On the slope of the hollow lay, on Waterloo, 
the west, the chateau of Hougomont, which, with its orchard and gardens, 
occupied a space of about three hundred and fifty yards long, and a 
hundred broad ; the little farm of La Haye Sainte on the Charleroi road, 
and some more farm buildings at La Haye and Papelotte, further to the 
east. The strength of the position lay in the fact that Wellingtoii was 
able to strongly garrison these three outposts, while he kept the main ))ody 
of his men out of sight behind the ridge. The cross-road also enabled 
him to move troops very easily from one point to another. The slope on 
his side was longer than that on the French, and enabled his artillery to 
be used with great effect on troops attacking the position. Wellington 



908 Qem-ge TIL 1815 

had 01,000 men, of whom 24,000 were British ; Napoleon had 71,000, and 
the main lines of each army extended for about a mile east and west of 
the Charleroi road. 

The battle began about noon. An attack was made on Hougomont ; 
but though the buildings were set on fire, the courtyard and walled orchard 
The Battle were SO well capable of being defended, that the position was 
of Waterloo, maintained the whole day, and Wellington's right wing 
made perfectly secure. At 2 p.m. an attack was made on the left centre, 
but was repulsed with loss, though General Picton fell, and General William 
Ponsonby was killed. By this time Napoleon was aware that a body of 
troops was coming upon his right flank. At first these were believed to 
be Grouchy's men, but it was soon found that they Avere Prussians ; and 
by four o'clock Napoleon had had to hand over the attack upon Wellington 
to Ney, while he gave his main attention to defend his own right against 
the Prussians. To do this he had to form a new line of battle at right 
angles to his old position. After Napoleon had left for Planchenoit, Ney 
managed badly ; for between 4 and 6 p.m. he foolishly wasted the French 
cavalry in a series of attacks upon the unbroken allied squares, which 
practically destroyed it. About six o'clock La Haye Sainte, which had 
been inadequately prepared for defence, and which was short of ammuni- 
tion, was abandoned. This enabled the French to advance in the form of 
a wedge against the very centre of Wellington's army, and about the same 
time Napoleon, having driven back the Prussians by a most brilliant 
defence of Planchenoit, returned to the scene. Complete victory was now 
out of the question ; but if Napoleon could drive in Wellington's centre, 
he would secure his retreat, and thus the means of continuing the war. 
Instead, however, of pushing his advantage at La Haye Sainte, he sent 
forward two columns of the guard to strike at Wellington's line between 
that place and Hougomont. Wellington, however, was well prepared, for 
the arrival of the Prussians enabled him to bring up troops from his flanks 
to the centre. Accordingly the French attack was completely defeated, 
the right column by a charge of the guards under General Maitland, the 
left by the 52nd regiment (now the 2nd battalion Oxfordshire) under 
Colborne, who drew up his regiment on the flank of the French advance, 
and, after a sustained fire of musketry, pushed on with the bayonet. Just 
as the repulse of the guard destroyed Napoleon's hopes of breaking 
Wellington's line, the Prussians dashed forward and seized Planchenoit 
and the Charleroi road. Napoleon's troops were thus placed between 
two fires, his line of retreat was cut ofi", his guns and ammunition were 
all captured, and few of his troops ever appeared in arms again. 

On reaching Paris, Napoleon abdicated in favour of his son ; but it was 



BATTLE OF 
WATERLOO. 

June 18.1815. 




910 George III. I8I6 

felt that a return of the Bourbons was inevitable, and Louis xviii. again 
entered Paris under the protection of the allied bayonets. Napoleon 
The second himself then fled to Rochefort, where he came aboard a 
Restoration gj-itish man-of-war, the Bellerophon, casting himself upon 

of Louis ' T^ TT P 1 • 

XVIII. the generosity of the Prmce Regent. However, after his 

escape from Elba, generosity would have been misplaced, and the de- 
throned emperor was exiled to the beautiful and healthy island of St. 
Helena, where he was carefully guarded, and died there in 1821. After 
Waterloo, it was generally recognised that some punishment was 
deserved by France for having willingly restored Napoleon. Accord- 
ingly it was decided that for five years the northern departments of 
France should be occupied by an allied army of 150,000 men under the 
command of the duke of Wellington, but paid and provisioned at the 
expense of France. A war indemnity was to be paid, amounting to 
J28,000,000. Various rectifications of frontier were made, especially on 
the north, designed to decrease her power of offensive warfare. Above 
all, the French were compelled to return to their proper owners the 
works of art which had been stolen during the Napoleonic wars from 
almost every capital of Europe, and of which the restoration was probably 
more galling to the French than all the other conditions jjut together. 

It was while the allies were encamped at Paris that the Emperor 
Alexander hit upon the idea of a Holy Alliance. This was formed 
The Holy between the sovereigns of Russia, Prussia, Austria. The con- 
Alliance, tracting parties declared their intention of conducting their 
domestic administration and foreign relations according to the precepts of 
Christianity, and bound themselves to observe three points : (1) to give 
mutual assistance for the protection of religion, peace, and juritice ; (2) to 
regard themselves as delegated by Providence to govern three branches of 
one Christian nation ; (3) to admit any other powers which should declare 
their adherence to the same principles. Under these specious terms was 
really concealed a league to prevent the spread of the ideas of the French 
Revolution, and to guarantee despotic sovereigns against insurrectionary 
movements on the part of their subjects. France subsequently joined 
the alliance ; but the duke of Wellington said he believed that the 
British parliament would like 'something more precise,' and Lord 
Castlereagh refused to have anything to do with it. 

Before entering on the years of peace, it is well to note a naval action 

fought in 1816. This was the celebrated bombardment of 

ment of Algiers by a combined British and Dutch squadron under 

A giers. ^-^^ command of Lord Exmouth. Algiers had long been a 

nest of piracy, and the Algerines were known to be in possession of a 



1816 Liverpool 911 

number of Christian slaves. It was determined to compel their release, and 
in August 1816 Lord Exmouth made the demand. As it was refused, 
the town was bombarded. Before night fell, much damage was done on 
both sides, and it is doubtful whether the ships could have maiatained 
the contest much longer. The Algerines, however, ignorant of the 
damage they had inflicted, and terrified by the intensity of the fire from 
the fleet, agreed to come to terms. In all 1211 prisoners were released. 
This lesson served to keep the Algerine pirates in awe, until that 
country passed into the hands of the French in 1830 and the following 
years. 

The conclusion of the Napoleonic wars off'ers a favourable oppor- 
tunity for reviewing the state of the British Empire in 1815. At 
the commencement of the wars of the French Eevolution the British 
held only Gibraltar, Sierra Leone, a few small settlements on the coast 
of Africa, Canada, Jamaica, and other West Indian islands, some dis- 
tricts in India, and a small settlement in New South Wales. More- 
over, our command of the sea, which was essential in time of war both 

for our commerce and our communication with our outlvincf 

S£3 Power 
states, was jeopardised by the fact that the other colonising and 

states— France, Holland, and Spain — possessed powerful ° omsation. 

navies. During the war all these were destroyed, and those of Holland 

and Spain have practically never been restored. The immediate result 

of their destruction was that Great Britain was able to annex such of 

their colonies as she desired, and to establish herself at such strategical 

points as seemed valuable. In the Mediterranean she took Malta ; and, 

if her statesmen had seen its value, might have had Minorca with its 

splendid harbour of Port Mahon. In Africa she took the Cape Colony 

and Mauritius. In Asia she made large annexations of territory, and 

fought several successful wars, unhampered, as in 1778-82, by the 

presence on the coast of a French fleet. 

The war being concluded, the ministry had now to give its attention 

to peace ; and the strife of parties in parliament, which had to some 

extent been hushed by the war, was again resumed. In the party 

House of Lords the leading figures were Lords Liverpool, Warfare. 

Eldon, Grenville, and Grey. The earl of Liverpool, the prime minister, 

was a discreet and careful person, with more tact than ^^.^^^ ^^^ 

eloquence, and more knowledge than statesmanship ; but 

owed his success to his honesty and his skill in the art of getting other 

men to work together. Lord Eldon, the favourite chancellor 

of George iii., is generally regarded as typical of the Tory 

feeling of his day, which regarded all reforms as in some way dangerous 



912 George in. 1815 

to the constitution, and therefore to be opposed. It was said of him 
that 'he never proposed anything himself, and opposed everything that any- 
body else proposed.' He was an excellent lawyer, but held the narrowest 
views of politics. Lord Grenville, who had been Pitt's right-hand 
man in foreign affairs, but who was now almost estranged from any 
party, was a proud, cold man, quite wanting in tact, and exercising 
little influence. Lord Grey was the successor of Fox, and without 
much originality was recognised as the official leader of the Whig party. 

In the House of Commons the most notable figures were 
Castlereagh. 

Castlereagh, Canning, Brougham, Horner, Sir Samuel 
Romilly, and among the younger men. Lord John Russell and Lord Palmer- 
ston. Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, born in 1769, was decidedly the 
most powerful man in the House. His recent achievements in foreign 
politics, when he had sat in deliberation with the greatest crowned heads 
in Europe, and by mere force of character had done more than any other 
civilian to secure the downfall of Napoleon, gave him an immense 
prestige, and he enjoyed the respect of the House for personal in- 
tegrity and patriotism. Though no orator, his speeches were always 
listened to, because he meant what he said. In private life he 
was the most genial and kindly of men ; but he had little sympathy 
with popular ideas, and, though compared with those with whom 
lie had acted on the continent, he was a decided Liberal, in England 

he was regarded as typical of the proud and aristo- 
Canning. . * "^ ^ ^ 

cratic Tory. In contrast to Castlereagh was Canning. 
Born in 1770, after a distinguished career at Eton and Oxford he was 
introduced into political life, and did his patron much service, not only 
in the House and in office, but by his satirical attacks on the opposi- 
tion in the Anti-Jacobin. Clever, eloquent, witty, his strong points were 
those where Castlereagh was weak ; but in the House he never succeeded 
in shaking oft' the idea that he was an adventurer, and that his clever 
speeches were wanting in reality. In the country, however, he was 
stronger, for he was regarded as more in sympathy than his rival with 

Liberal ideas. The work of opposition was mainly carried on 
Brougham. . ^'^ '' 

by Henry Brougham. This remarkable politician, who had 

the reputation of being the most learned and versatile statesman of his 

time, had made his parliamentary reputation by his resistance to the 

Orders in Council, against which, as an advocate, he had spoken at the bar 

of the House in 1807, and he now took a prominent part in opposition to 

government measures. With Brougham was Francis Horner, 

Horner. '^ ^ ' 

who, though never in office, made a reputation as the most 

skilful financier of his time, and whose death in 1817 at the age of thirty- 



1816 Liverpool 913 

seven, was a serious loss to his country. Sir Samuel Romilly had been 

solicitor-general to the Grenville ministry. He had entered parliament as 

an independent member, and soon commanded the respect of 

all parties. His chief attention was given to the repeal of °"^* ^' 

the most severe punishments of the penal code, but in other matters 

he spoke with great weight on the side of the Whigs. 

The official leader of the Whigs was George Ponsonby, who ° ^°" ^' 

had at one time been chancellor of Ireland ; but Brougham and Horner 

and Romilly were the leading spirits of the party. 

The problems which the Liverpool ministry found before it on the 
conclusion of the war were sufficient to try the abilities of any adminis- 
tration. Peace, far from being associated — as in the Questions of 
hackneyed phrase — with plenty, proved to be a time of ^^^ ^^'^' 
increased distress, and there was no industry in the country which was 
not complaining of bad times. This depression of trade was due mainly 
to six causes. First, the cessation of the demand for military and naval 
stores, especially the former ; second, the reduction of the demand for 
British goods on the continent, due partly to the resumption of manu- 
factures on the continent, partly to the impoverishment caused by war, 
which diminished the purchasing power of the continental nations; 
third, the confusion in the money market caused by the stoppage of 
cash payments by the Bank of England, and the uncertainty when they 
would be resumed ; fourth, the transition from hand labour to machinery, 
which, though it increased the demand for new workmen, was for the 
time disastrous to those who had been brought up to earn their living in 
the old way ; fifth, the unhealthy condition into which the corn trade had 
come since the war ; and sixth, heavy taxation. Of these causes the first and 
second were obviously beyond the power of legislation ; the third might 
be expected to right itself in time, whenever it appeared desirable to go 
back to cash payments ; the fourth was the efi'ect of ignorance, and 
could only be combated by the difi'usion of greater knowledge ; the 
fifth, in the minds of politicians, seemed capable of legislative treatment. 

The mania for breaking machinery had broken out as far back as 
1811. It was difficult for those whose livelihood was obtained by 
knitting stockings by hand to understand that in the long The _^^^ 
run it was for the good of the nation that machinery should 
be substituted for hand labour. In the first instance it was obviously 
bad for themselves ; and, acting on what appeared to them adequate 
grounds, the hand-knitters of Nottinghamshire began an organised 
attempt to destroy all the stocking-frames that had been introduced. 
After a half-witted lad named Ludd, who had once broken a frame m a 

3 M 



914 George III. 1815 

fit of passion, they called themselves Luddites. The frames could be 
rendered useless with so little noise, and in so little time, that the 
proceedings of the Luddites were most difficult to check. Frames were 
destroyed within a few yards of the military who were guarding them ; 
and a few minutes' undisturbed possession enabled the Luddites to 
destroy every frame in a village. The same arguments obviously applied 
to the thrashing machines, which were the subject of detestation of the 
agricultural labourers, who saw the threshing, which had lasted the 
winter through, performed in a few days by the new machines. Soon 
the introduction of new machinery of all kinds came under the ban, and, 
in 1815, machine-breaking Avas general both in town and country. 

Against such a general movement little could be eifected by force ; 
and it is probable that the first effective check on machine-breaking was 

William Supplied by the homely arguments of William Cobbett. 

Cobbett. This remarkable man, born in 1762, who began life as a 
bird-scarer, and ended it as a member of the House of Commons, had 
seen much of life both in England and America. He was gifted with 
a terse and vigorous command of pure English, which he had improved 
by constant practice ; and in 1815 he was certainly the first journalist 
of his age. In 1802 he had set on foot the Weekly Political Register^ 
in which he vigorously attacked the Tory government. Finding, however, 
that a shilling publication had only a small sale, and no circulation at all 
among the masses, he reduced its price to twopence. The paper 
appeared in its new form in November 1816, and the event was of much 
political importance. Cobbett's great points were that machine 
breaking was no use, but that parliamentary reform was ; and he did all 
he could to wean the labouring classes from violence, to encourage them 
to educate themselves, and to look to parliamentary reform as the first 
step towards an improved order of things. 

Quite apart, however, from the question of machine-breaking, the 

condition of agriculture was such as to cause the gravest anxiety. Since 

1670 a law had always been in operation to prevent the 

ATiculture. 

importation of foreign corn unless English corn had reached 
a very high price. It was worked on the jjrinciple of a sliding scale, 
and allowed no importation at all till the price of wheat was fifty-three 
shillings and fourpence per quarter. The duty was then sixteen shillings, 
and was gradually reduced till the price reached eighty-two shillings, 
when it disappeared altogether. In 1804 the lower limit had been 
raised to sixty-six shillings per quarter. During the war the fluctuations 
in the price of wheat had been very great. Before 1793 the price 
of wheat had rarely exceeded fifty shillings, so that in practice the 



1815 Liverpool 915 

country had lived on its own produce. During the war time, however, 
the price had risen to as much as one hundred and thirty-six shillings, 
and the average price had been about one hundred and twenty shillings. 
This was due partly to bad harvests, partly to the fact that in w^ar time 
bad harvests were not compensated for by importation from abroad ; 
partly to the introduction of paper money ; and much more to the rapid 
increase in the manufacturing population, which caused an increased 
demand for bread. The result of the high prices was to bring into 
cultivation lands which were too poor to yield a profit at the old prices, 
and particularly to stimulate the enclosure of commons. Another was 
to increase the demand for agricultural labourers to till the new lauds 
brought under the plough. When the war closed, it was clear that, 
owing to the renewal of foreign competition, there would naturally be a 
fall in the average price of corn. If this happened, there would be a 
general fall in rent, the newly tilled lands would fall out of cultivation, 
and labourers would be throAVn out of work. 

To check this, a change was made in the corn law, by which it was 
enacted that no colonial corn could be imported till the price of British 
wheat reached sixty-seven shillings, and no foreign corn till The New 
the price had further risen to eighty shillings a quarter. ^°^" Laws. 
From this legislation it was expected that the price of corn would tend 
to be about eighty shillings a quarter, a price midway between the 
prices before and during the war, which was considered reasonable both 
for sellers and consumers ; and also that there would be very little fluc- 
tuation in the price. The new law was vigorously opposed by Brougham 
and Horner, who declared that both these expectations would be 
unfulfilled. Unluckily they proved to be right. The expectation of a 
steady high price encouraged the investment of much capital in agri- 
culture ; and though the price of corn at first rose, it afterwards steadily 
fell. In 1815 the season was good, and the average price of wheat was 
sixty-three shillings a quarter ; in 1817 the season was bad, and the 
average price was ninety-six shillings a quarter, and would have been 
much more had it not been for foreign competition, which began when 
the price reached eighty shillings. The price then steadily fell, till, in 
1822, it reached forty-five shillings. This state of things was bad 
for both farmers and buyers. Farmers suffered, because, while theii 
rent was fixed, the price of their produce was subject to great variations. 
On the other hand, buyers had to pay very much more in bad years than 
they would under free competition. Experience has shown that the 
smaller the area from which supplies are drawn the greater the variation 
in price from one year to another ; while foreign competition, though it 



916 George III. 1815 

keeps the price at a low level, results in its remaining fairly steady. 
Consequently, the new corn law satisfied no one. Landlords could not 
secure impossible rents ; farmers, unable to pay, became bankrupt ; agri- 
cultural labourers were thrown out of work ; and, in bad years, towns- 
people saw the price of food artificially increased. 

Considering how much hardship existed, it would have been wonderful 
had there been no outbreaks of violence directed against the government. 
Popular That these w^ere few and insignificant is strong proof of the 

Outbreaks, orderly habits of the people, and of their reliance on consti- 
tutional methods to attain their ends. It is difiicult to mention these 
outbreaks without exaggerating their importance. The most serious 
riot occurred at Littleport, near Ely, where the labourers, driven to 
frenzy by Avant of work and food, rose in 1816 and destroyed much 
property before they were disj)ersed. Of more direct political significance 
was the Spa Field riot, where half-a-dozen men of no note — among 
whom was Thistlewood, afterwards notorious for the Cato Street 
Conspiracy — led a handful of men to attack the Tower. On their way 
they armed themselves by plundering the gunsmiths' shops ; but being 
met by the lord mayor, Matthew Wood, the sheriif, and half-a-dozen 
constables, they dispersed in flight. In June 1817, a hundred ignorant 
fellows — misled, there is no doubt, by one Oliver, a government spy, 
with stories of one hundred and fifty thousand men, who were to seize 
London, and of the ' Northern Cloud,' which was to sweep all before it — 
set out from Pentridge, near Ambergate, to seize Nottingham, expecting 
to receive one hundred guineas apiece for the business, and to have 
merely a pleasure march. A few miles out of Nottingham they were 
met by Mr. KoUeston, a magistrate, with twenty cavalry soldiers, and at 
once took to flight. Side by side with these movements was a perfectly 
innocent proceeding on the part of some unemployed Lancashire artisans, 
The who proposed to march to London and lay their case before 

Bianketeers. ^t^^ Prince Kegent. They set out from Manchester, carrying 
blankets to cover themselves at night, from Avhicli they derived the name 
of the ' Blauketeers ' ; but none got farther than Derbyshire. Similarly, 
a body of Loughborough workmen marched to Barnet with a waggon of 
coal. There they were met ; and, their coal being bought, the poor 
fellows made their way home. 

The scale on which all these movements were conducted ought to have 
shown an indiff'erent observer that though there might be much discon- 
tent there was no danger of revolution. But so short a time after the 
French Eevolution the Tory government was not capable of seeing facts 
exactly as they were, and was open to all sorts of suspicions of plots and 



1819 Liverpool 917 

conspiracies. Accordingly, in 1817, when the Prince Regent's carriage 
was surrounded by a howling mob on the occasion of his opening par- 
liament, Sidmouth, under the lead of the home secretary, 
who was firmly convinced of the imminent danger of the time, the*GSv°em- 
decided to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act. This was "^^"*- 
followed by the issue of a circular authorising magistrates to apprehend 
persons whom they considered guilty of disseminating libellous publica- 
tions, by which were meant all writings against the government. The 
suspension of Habeas Corpus was, of course, opposed by the Whigs, but 
unsuccessfully. They had, however, no difficulty in showing that Lord 
Sidmouth's circular was illegal, and it had to be withdrawn. The 
government was also defeated in a prosecution instituted against William 
Hone, a bookseller, who had written and printed several attacks on the 
government, in the form of parodies on well-known religious writings, 
such as the Lord's Prayer and the Litany. He was prosecuted for 
bringing the Christian religion into disrepute, but as he had no difficulty 
in showing that exactly the same thing had been done by Canning and 
other persons of repute without blame being attached, he was acquitted. 
Had it not been for Fox's Libel Act (see page 863), the jury must have 
convicted him of publication, and the judges would have declared his 
publication libellous. Among the persons arrested under the suspension 
of Habeas Corpus was Samuel Bamford, well known in after years for his 
Autobiography of a Radical. Nothing, however, was proved against him, 
and his examination before the privy council, where he saw and spoke to 
Lords Castlereagh and Sidmouth, seems to have convinced him that 
the ministers were not such terrible tyrants as they were believed in 
Lancashire to be. 

Meanwhile, the question of parliamentary reform was coming to be 
recognised as the question of the day. It was heartily advocated by Sir 
Francis Burdett in parliament, and by Cobbett outside. The p^j.j;^ 
large unrepresented towns, such as Manchester, Birmingham, mentary 

. , . 1 1 • J.T, Reform. 

and Leeds, began to seriously mterest themselves in the 
question. Their antipathy to the corn laws, especially, made them loudly 
demand a voice in the government of the country ; anddarge meetings often 
attended with riots were held from time to time, sometimes with a view 
to the election of delegates to take part in smaller meetings. The election 
of these delegates suggested the idea of a convention— a name ren- 
dered formidable to the timid by its French associations ^^^ 

— and when it was known that a meeting for this purpose Peterloo 

, , . , „ , r ' Massacre.' 

was to be held in St. Peter's Fields on the outskirts of Man- 
chester, there was much question among the local magistrates as to what 



918 George III. 1819 

course to take. On the appointed day, August 26, the ' Radicals ' marched 
in procession to Manchester from all the neighbouring villages, carrying 
flags, and accompanied by their wives and children. They met in St. 
Peter's Fields, an open space of two or three acres. They numbered some 
forty thousand persons, and were to be addressed by Henry Hunt, an 
Essex squire and notable orator, whose emptiness had not yet been 
discovered by his followers. Meanwhile the magistrates, who had plenty 
of troops at their disposal, adopted the foolish resolution of arresting 
Hunt after the meeting had begun. For this purpose the chief constable 
was escorted towards the platform by forty men of the Manchester 
Yeomanry. These advancing, without much order, were soon lost in the 
crowd, and the magistrates, who were watching from a distant house, 
thinking they were being attacked, ordered the crowd to be dispersed by 
the charge of a regiment of cavalry. The result was a scene of indescrib- 
able confusion. As the hussars, for the most part, used the flats of their 
swords, only three 'Eadicals' were killed, with one constable and one 
yeoman, but, perhaps, one hundred persons all told were injured more or 
less by sword-cuts, stones, and crushing. The blame of this unfortunate 
occurrence — long-remembered as the ' battle of Peterloo ' — was clearly to 
be laid to the incapacity of the local magistrates ; but the government 
was unwise enough, without further inquiry, to praise their conduct and 
sanction w^hat had been done. This mistake roused much indignation in 
the country, and confirmed the bad opinion held of the government. 
Hunt and other prominent 'Radicals' were arrested, and sentenced to 
various terms of imprisonment for conspiring to alter the law by force 
and threats. 

The events at Manchester appeared to the minister to give a suitable 
pretext for strengthening the law. Accordingly parliament met in Nov- 
The Six ember, and before the end of the year passed a series of acts 
Acts. known collectively as the ' Six Acts.' These were of varied 

importance. The first made it easier to prevent out-of-door meetings for 
political purposes, and was to be in force for five years. The second 
enabled trials for misdemeanour, which was the usual charge under which 
political agitators were prosecuted, to be held with less delay. The third, 
very properly, forbade private persons to engage in military drill, a pro- 
ceeding tolerated in no civilised state. The fourth was for the more 
effectual prevention and punishment of blasphemous and seditious libels. 
The fifth authorised magistrates to seize arms in sixteen counties said to 
be disturbed, and was to be in force for three years. The sixth was a 
distinct check on the liberty of the press, for it required all publishers of 
newspapers to give security in advance for any fines they might incur by 



1820 Liverpool 9j9 

uttering blasphemy or sedition. Such an enactment made it harder for 
a poor man to start a newspaper, and, as it stood, was an insult to the 
press at large. All these Acts were stoutly opposed by the Whigs, and, 
with the exception of the third, were sooner or later repealed. 

Though unsuccessful in effecting nuich, the labours of Sir Samuel 
Eomilly towards making the criminal code more lenient require notice as 
the first step to an inunense reform. In the early growth The Crim- 
of civilisation, as in England before the Conquest, reparation ^"^^ ^°'^^- 
rather than punishment was the object of the criminal code. As property 
increases in value, the tendency is to defend it by more stringent 
enactments, and as the prolonged imprisonment of numerous convicts is 
a serious difficulty, the tendency is to allot the punishment of death to 
all offences as the simplest way of dealing with the criminal. Under 
such a system an immense number of persons were hanged, and 
as time went on, though the moral sense of the community revolted 
against such wholesale massacre, a mistaken view of the best way 
to secure respect for the law led to one offence after another 
being made capital. Accordingly, between 1660 and 1820, no less 
than 160 new offences were made punishable by death. This severity, 
however, defeated itself. Sufferers refused to prosecute, juries to convict, 
and judges to hang ; so that not one sentence in twenty was actually 
carried into effect. Such uncertainty was fatal to the deterrent effect of the 
law, to say nothing of its brutalising results on the community at large. 
No serious attempt, however, Avas made to remove the evil till 1 808, when 
Sir Samuel Romilly carried a law to exempt the crime of picking pockets 
from capital punishment. This was carried ; but the upper House, led by 
Eldon, threw out a bill for remitting the death sentence on shop-lifting 
to the value of five shillings ; and though, till his death in 1819, Romilly 
was indefatigable in his exertions, he only succeeded in removing stealing 
from bleach-yards from the death category. Though in practice he 
effected so little, Romilly was successful in awakening public opinion, and 
within a generation a complete change was eff'ected in our criminal code. 

Within a month of the passing of the Six Acts, in January 1820, 
George in. passed away, and his eldest son, George, became in name, as 
well as in fact, the ruler of the country. 

CHIEF DA TES. 

A.D. 

War against the French Republic, . . 1793-1802 

Battle of the Nile, 1798 

War against Napoleon, .... 1803-1814 

Battle of Trafalgar, 1805 

Battle of Waterloo, 1815 



CHAPTEE V 

GEORGE IV. : 1820-1830 
Born, 1762; married 1795, Caroline of Brunswick. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 

France. 
Louis XVIII., d. 1824. 
Charles x., expelled 1830. 

The Queen's Trial — Signs of Progress— Death of Castlereagh — Policy of Canning 
and Huskisson — Aftairs of Greece — Eoman Catholic Emancipation. 

George iv.'s short reign of ten years forms one of the turning-points 
in English history, for it is a transition period between the Toryism 

The which prevailed nnder the regency and the Whig policy 

Accession, -^jjjc}! prevailed under William iv. 

The first event of the new reign was the discovery of a conspiracy 
more real and more sanguinary than anything the last reign had pro- 
Cato Street duced. This was the Cato Street Plot, devised by Thistle- 
Conspiracy, wood, who had formerly held a commission in the army, and 
had already been tried but acquitted for his share in the Spa Field Riots, 
He associated with himself some dozen desperate characters of no social 
position or influence, and proposed to get admission to the earl of Har- 
rowby's house while the cabinet ministers were dining, and to murder 
them all. The heads of Sidmouth and Castlereagh were to be exhibited 
to the mob ; the Tower was to be seized, the soldiers overpowered, and 
a provisional government set up. The plan was as absurd as it was cruel ; 
but fortunately the government were warned by a man named Edwards, 
who is suspected of having urged on the unhappy men whom he 
intended to betray. The conspirators were left unmolested till the very 
day, February 22, which had been fixed for their attempt, and were 
attacked by the police as they were arming themselves in a hayloft 
connected with some stables in Cato Street, ofl:' the Edgware Road. 

920 



1820 Liverpool 921 

The arrest was not well managed ; one of the police-officers was killed, 
and Thistle wood himself escaped. He was, however, captured next day, 
and, being tried and convicted of treason, suffered the extreme penalty of 
the law with four of his accomplices. The cruelty and absurdity of such 
a plot were sufficient to disgust the strongest opponents of the existing 
government. Fortunately the policy of parliamentary reform began to 
form a rallying-point for both Whigs and Radicals. The alliance stimu- 
lated the one, while it moderated the other ; while the rapid revival of 
trade — now that the special causes of depression produced by the war had 
disappeared — removed some, at any rate, of the hardships of the labourers 
and artisans. 

One effect of his change of title from regent to king was to bring into most 
unpleasant notoriety the family life of the new sovereign. In 1787 George 
had contracted a marriage with a Roman Catholic lady named George's 
Mrs. Fitzherbert. The sole ground of the illegality of the "tarried life, 
marriage was that the prince had not the consent of his father, as required 
by the Royal Marriage Act of 1772. Had the marriage been fully legal 
the prince would have been excluded from the succession by the Bill of 
Rights of 1689. At the time of the marriage the prince was hopelessly 
burdened with debts — most of them contracted at the card-table — and in 
asking parliament to pay them he actually authorised Fox to deny the 
marriage, at the same time expressing to Mrs. Fitzherbert his surprise 
that Fox had done so. Such conduct forfeited the prince's rej)utation as 
a man of honour ; but in spite of it. Fox and some of the Whig leaders 
allowed themselves to be still called his friends. His debts were paid, 
but others were soon contracted, and in 1795 his position was as embar- 
rassed as before. In these circumstances, he was approached by his 
father with a proposition that if he would contract a legal marriage his 
debts should again be paid. To this proposal he reluctantly agreed, and 
allowed his father to name his future wife. The young lady chosen was 
Caroline of Brunswick, daughter of the duke and of the sister of George 
III. The prince had never seen her till three days before the marriage, 
which took place in 1795. One daughter, the Princess Charlotte, was 
born ; and three months afterwards, George left his young wife and 
returned to Mrs. Fitzherbert. Such abominable conduct on the part of 
her husband would have been hard for any woman to bear ; and, unfor- 
tunately, Caroline's character was not such as to dignify her anger. She 
had been badly trained and ill educated, and appears to have been 
extremely frivolous. Her home at Blackheath soon began to l)e the 
subject of gossip ; and, in 1806, urged on by the prince and his brothers, 
the ministry conducted a secret inquiry, known as the ' Delicate Investi- 



922 Ge(yrge IV. 1820 

gation,' into the conduct of the princess. The result was her complete 

exoneration from any serious charge. For years no more was heard of 

the matter ; but in 1814 the princess went ahroad, and rumours soon 

reached England that, taking advantage of the freedom of her new life, 

she had allowed herself to be led into frivolity and dissipation. 

Meanwhile, the Princess Charlotte was growing up. Since the age of 

eight she had been for the most part removed from the charge of her 

mother, and since 1814 had never seen her at all. The 
The ' 

Princess greatest pains had been taken with her education. The 

result was eminently satisfactory ; and the nation learned 
with thankfulness how good, fearless, and witty the future sovereign was 
likely to be. In 1816 she was married to Prince Leopold of Saxe- 
Coburg, who was exceedingly well fitted to make a suitable husband. 
All seemed to be going well, when, in November, 1817, the princess 
died after giving birth to a still-born child. This disaster filled the 
country with consternation. Of the king's children, the duke of York, 
his second son, was married but had no children ; the dukes of Clarence, 
Kent, and Cambridge were unmarried ; while the duke of Cumberland, 
who was married and had children, was intensely uni)opular. In these 
circumstances, the dukes of Clarence, Kent, and Cambridge hastened to 

marry. However, the only daughter of the duke of Clarence 

Birth of ■^ 1 J ^ 

Princess died directly after birth, so the hope of eventually succeed- 
ing to the crown fell to the Princess Victoria, daughter of 
the duke of Kent, born May 24, 1819, who stood next in the line of 
succession after her uncles George and William. 

When George iv. became king, in spite of the notoriously evil nature 
of his own life, he immediately applied to his ministers to procure 
The Divorce lii'^'i ^ divorce. On this, ministers entered into negotia- 
Question. tions with the queen with a view to her staying abroad, and 
promised the king that if she returned to England they would accede 
to his request. Probably the negotiations would have been successful 
had not the name of the queen been omitted from the Liturgy of the 
Established Church. This insult, which seemed to proclaim her guilty in 
every parish in England, was more than she could bear. In June she 
broke off all negotiations, and landed in England, where she was well 
received by the middle and lower classes ; the aristocracy held aloof 
Her arrival compelled the ministers to proceed with their bargain. 
Canning alone resigned his place at the Board of Control ; and a Bill of 
Pains and Penalties, amounting to an Act of Divorce, was brought forward 
in the Upper House. To the great scandal of the whole nation a series 
of It;dian witnesses were publicly examined as to the minutest details of 



1820 Liverpool 923 

the queen's life. This evidence was printed in the newspapers, and 
became the daily talk of all classes. As evidence, however, on which 
to found a divorce, it was quite inconclusive, and was unmercifully 
discredited under the cross-examination of Brougham and Denman, who 
conducted the case for the queen. The second reading of the bill was 
only passed by 28 ; the third reading by only 9. In these circumstances 
ministers saw that there was not the remotest chance of the bill passing 
the House of Commons, and it was accordingly abandoned. While it 
was possible that the bill might pass, the feeling of the nation had been 
strongly in the queen's favour ; but a reaction now took place. The 
evidence, though inconclusive, was most discreditable to her fair ftime, 
and the number of her supporters rapidly diminished. Foolishly enough, 
she claimed in November to be crowned with her husband. She was, 
of course, rejected ; and, after a painful scene at the door of Westminster 
Abbey, where she was refused admittance, she returned home only to die 
of a fever brought on by excitement and vexation. Her death removed 
a most serious danger to the country, for it is doubtful whether anything 
had ever placed the monarchy in greater danger than the Bill of Pains 
and Penalties. 

When the excitement caused by the Gato Street Plot and the queen's 
trial was over, it became evident that the terror of reform caused 
by the French Revolution had died away, and that a new indications 
period of progress had commenced. In 1820 Brougham, of progress. 
wdio since Horner's death had been the most conspicuous figure among 
the opposition, brought forward a scheme for national education. Few 
could speak with greater authority than he on this subject. Though a 
Westmorland man by descent, Henry Brougham had been born in 
Edinburgh, where his father had married the niece of Robertson, the 
historian. He had been educated at the High School and University of 
Edinburgh, and was well acquainted with the admirable Scottish system 
of education. Horner had been trained in the same school, and he, 
Jeffrey, Brougham, and Sydney Smith had, in 1802, set on foot the 
famous Edinhurcjh Review, which did so much for the dissemination of 
Whig principles that Canning started the Quarterly to counteract it. 
Brougham advocated the introduction of the Scottish system National 
of village schools ; but as he proposed that all the school- 
masters should be members of the Established Church, his scheme found 
no favour with dissenters, and their opposition was fatal to ^^^ 
the measure. Some years later Brougham performed a work U"j^^e^'J>t^y 
of permanent value in starting the movement which resulted 
in the foundation of the University of London, which has since exer- 



924 George IV. 1820 

cised an important influence on the higher education of this country. 
With this movement must be coupled the idea of mechanics' institutes, 
desioned to be clubs for the moral and intellectual improvement of 
Mechanics' the artisan class — first carried out by Dr. Birkbeck, but in 
Institutes. which a keen interest was taken by Brougham— and the 
formation of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, with a 
view of supplying poor readers with cheap and good works on science and 
literature. At the same time that practical men were engaged in such 
Byron and work as this, poets like Byron and Shelley were stirring 
Shelley. ^Y\q intellectual world with the new ideas of liberty and life, 

and, following up the work of Burns, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, Avere 
breathing into poetry a vigour, reality, and earnestness of purpose which 
had been wanting during the classical eighteenth century. 

In 1821 Sir James Mackintosh effected a change in the criminal law, 
which Romilly had never been able to do, by removing shop-lifting to 
The Criminal ^^^ value of five shillings from the list of capital ofiences. 
Code. From this time forward, though progress was slow, the 

policy advocated by Romilly and Mackintosh steadily gained supporters, 
and in 1837, on the report of a Commission on Criminal Law, a large 
number of remissions were made. This was carried still further in 1845, 
when it was enacted that the penalty of death should be restricted to 
treason, murder, and attempted murder ; and since that date, the last 
has been also omitted. The efi^ect of these changes is seen by the com- 
putation that, between 1810 and 1845, no less than fourteen hundred 
persons were put to death for crimes which have since ceased to be 
capital. 

Some progress was also made in the direction of parliamentary reform. 

On this subject, Brougham, who had always sat for nomination boroughs, 

was tongue-tied : but it was taken up by Lord John Eussell, 

Parlia- & ' l j i 

mentary a younger son of the duke of Bedford, a man of indomitable 
Reform. energy. In 1821 the borough of Grampound, in Cornwall, 
was disfranchised for corruption, and the question arose to whom the 
members should be allotted. By the House of Commons it was voted 
that they should be given to Leeds, a proposal which embodied the 
principle of gradually disfranchising the nomination boroughs, and trans- 
ferring their members to large towns. However, the House of Lords 
amended the bill by allotting the members to the whole county of York, 
and in this stage the Commons acquiesced. 

The movement for the emancipation of the Roman Catholics made a 
further step. Of late years this measure had been chiefly in the hands 
of Grattan, who, in 1813, 1816, and 1819 had brought forward motions 



1822 Liverpool 925 

on the subject, but had been defeated by small majorities. The govern- 
ment itself was divided ; for Castlereagh had always been true to the 
Koman Catholic claims, and they had also received a con- 
stant support from Canning. The feeling in favour of the Emancf- 
Koman Catholics was, however, steadily rising, and in p^'^'""- 
1821 Plunket introduced a bill for the repeal of the Koman Catholic 
disabilities, and carried it through the Commons by a good majority. It 
was, however, thrown out by the Lords. 

These above-mentioned measures were all brought forward by the 
opposition ; but so obvious was the change going forward in the feeling 
of parliament and the country, that the ministry attempted Ministerial 
to strengthen itself by the introduction of more popular Changes, 
members. In 1822 it entered into an alliance with the Grenville party, and 
though Grenville considered himself to be past ministerial work, several 
of his followers, headed by his nephew, the duke of Buckingham, entered 
the government. At the same time, the marquess Wellesley, a friend to 
the Eoman Catholic claims, became lord-lieutenant of Ireland. More 
important still was the retirement of Lord Sidmouth, who considered his 
work in detecting conspiracies to be done, and his replacement by Robert 
Peel. This statesman was the son of a Lancashire manu- Robert 
facturer, and had been educated at Eton and Christ Church. ^^^'• 
He took a double first at Oxford, and on his entering parliament, his 
father is reputed to have said to him : ' Bob, if you are not prime 
minister, I '11 cut you off with a shilling.' As a man who had himself 
sprung from their ranks. Peel, though a strong Tory, was in sympathy 
with the ideas of the rising manufacturing population. As home secretary, 
his best-known achievement was the organisation of the London police 
force, his connection with which is still remembered by several popular 
nicknames for the force, founded on his Christian and surname re- 
spectively. 

These changes considerably altered the tone of Lord Liverpool's ad- 
ministration ; but the greatest change of all was made by the suicide of 
Lord Castlereagh in 1822, at the age of fifty-three. Lord ^^^^^j^ ^^ 
Castlereagh, who, in 1821, had succeeded his father as Castle- 
marquess of Londonderry, embodied in the popular mind the 
spirit of the old Toryism. Though a most genial and kindly man in private 
life, he had, in public, the character of being an unsympathetic opponent 
of new ideas ; and he had done himself harm by some injudicious speeches. 
He had certainly little sympathy with popular or national movements as 
such ; but, on the other hand, he had acted as a decided check on the 
vagaries of the Holy Alliance. Such a man— whose narrowness of view had 



926 George IF. 1822 

been, as is often the case, accompanied with great force of character — had 

been an admirable foreign minister when dogged determination had been 

needed to bring to a successful end the struggle with Napoleon. In times 

of peace, when greater breadth of view and a more delicate tact were 

needed, he was less successful. In home affairs he was, except in the 

matter of Roman Catholic emancipation, a decided reactionary, and his 

death probably removed a bar to progress. In the end his mind failed 

him, and he committed suicide. His death was received with indecent 

expressions of joy, which showed the unpopularity of the system with 

which the Lord Castlereagh of popular imagination was closely identified. 

Lord Londonderry's place as foreign secretary was taken by Canning. 

That statesman, who, in 1812, preferred not to be in office at all if he 

were not to be the head, had found himself eclipsed by the 
Canning. . . ' . 

glory of his rival Castlereagh ; and after taking, for a time, 

the jDost of ambassador at Lisbon, had, in 1817, joined the ministry as 
president of the Board of Control, He had then confined his attention 
to Indian affairs till 1820, when his disapproval of the Bill of Pains and 
Penalties led to his resignation. He then contemplated going out to 
India as governor-general, and had been elected by the board of 
directors, when his plans were completely changed by the news of his 
rival's death. Lord Liverpool immediately oftered him the foreign office, 
with the leadership of the House of Commons, and Canning accepted 
both. 

The moment of his accepting office was critical. Hitherto the Holy 
Alliance had been little more than a name, but an opportunity had lately 
The Holy arisen for putting its principles into practice. This arose 
Alliance, q^^^ ^f r^jj insurrection in Spain. On the return of Ferdin- 
and VII,, after the expulsion of Joseph Bonaparte, he had abolished the 
constitution of 1812, and dissolved the Cortes. Even in Spain this 
return to absolutism caused some dissatisfaction. In 1822 a rebellion 
broke out, the constitution of 1812 was restored, and Ferdinand compelled 
to give his consent. To take into consideration this event, a congress was 
called at Verona, at which the duke of Wellington was to be the British 
representative ; and it was on the verge of meeting when Canning re- 
placed Castlereagh at the foreign office. Canning made no verbal change 
in Londonderry's written instructions to Wellington ; but on receiving 
from the duke a request for further orders, he laid it down distinctly 
that England would be no party to any attempt to coerce the Spaniards. 
Had he not done so, it is certain that the whole weight of the Holy 
Alliance would have been brought to bear on Spain, for the Czar was 
proposing to bring Russian troops to the Rhine, Canning's attitude. 



1822 Liverpool 927 

however, checked this combined movement ; but he was obliged to 
remain neutral when French troops invaded Spain, restored Ferdinand, 
and abolished the constitution. This position was not a very dignified 
one for Great Britain, but Canning defended it on the ground that he 
had prevented a general war, and reduced the matter to one between 
France and Spain. Moreover, the Spaniards shoM^ed themselves so little 
willing to sacrifice themselves in defence of their own liberties, that their 
revolution could not be regarded as a really national movement. In 
form, Canning's action was not very difli'erent from that of Londonderry, 
who, in 1821, had permitted Austria to interfere in Naples ; but the 
spirit of the two men was different, and it was felt all over Europe that 
Canning's policy was fatal to any eff'ective continuance of the Holy 
Alliance. 

Equally important was Canning's attitude towards the Spanish- 
American colonies. These colonies had never accepted the rule of King 
Joseph, who, not having the command of the sea, was quite The Spanish 
incapable of coercing them. During his nominal rule they Colonies, 
had practically enjoyed independence, and on Ferdinand's restoration 
were by no means willing to return to their old position. They were, 
however, obliged to accept his rule ; but at the first opportunity 
insurrections broke out, of which the chief heroes were Miranda, the real 
father of Spanish colonial independence, Bolivar, and the English admiral, 
Cochrane. By the year 1822, practical independence had been secured, 
and to this Canning gave great importance. In his opinion, the situation 
as regards French interference in Spain was changed by the loss of the 
Spanish colonies. As he said himself : ' Contemplating Spain, such as our 
ancestors had known her, I resolved that if France had Spain, it should 
not be Spain " with the Indies." I called the New World into existence to 
redress the balance of the Old.' In accordance with this policy the inde- 
pendence of the colonies was recognised by Great Britain, and Spain was 
reduced to the dimensions of a European, but not a colonial, power. 

With discountenance of the Holy Alliance, and recognition of the new 
American republics. Canning combined a real sympathy with the eff'orts 
which the Greeks were making to win their independ- ^^^ Greeks, 
ence. A revolt of the Greeks against the Turks appealed to 
politicians trained in Greek literature more forcibly than the struggles of 
obscure colonists, and many Englishmen took a most lively interest in the 
success of the insurgents. Turkey, of course, was not a member of the 
Holy Alliance, and therefore could not claim assistance against her 
revolted subjects. On the contrary, Eussia, the leading member of the 
Alliance, had every reason to wish success to the Greeks, whose triumph 



928 George IV. 1822 

would make more easy the Russian advance on Constantinople, The 
position was further complicated by the fears which the western powers 
held of the aggrandisements of Russia. In these circumstances the 
Turks were left to deal Avith the insurrection as best they could, with 
the result that the Greeks, for seven years, maintained themselves in the 
field. 

While Canning was thus breathing new life into the foreign policy of 

this country, his friend Huskisson was carrying out little less than a 

^, , . revolution in its trade and manufactures. Huskisson was 

Huskisson. 

born in 1770, and was the eldest son of a Stafi'ordshire 
squire of small means. In 1790 he became a secretary in the British 
embassy at Paris, and afterwards distinguished himself by the tact and 
courtesy with which he administered Pitt's Alien Act. In 1795 he was 
appointed under-secretary for the colonies ; but his further rise was 
slow, and after 1812 it was retarded by his close friendship with Canning. 
When Canning became foreign secretary in 1822 he procured for 
Huskisson the post of president of the Board of Trade, and in 1823 he 
succeeded Canning as member for Liverpool. Though a Tory in 
politics, Huskisson was distinguished by his broad and liberal views 
on all matters relating to commerce, and his presence at the Board of 
Trade was soon shown by the adoption of the more enlightened policy. 
As Huskisson's changes could not be carried out without alterations 
in taxation, credit must also be given to Frederick John Robinson, 
afterwards Lord Goderich, who, in 1823, succeeded Vansittart as 
chancellor of the exchequer, and who worked with Huskisson in a most 
friendly spirit. 

Their first step was to aid manufacturers by reducing the taxes on 
silk and wool, and shipbuilders by reducing that on foreign timber, so 
Reduction of enabling manufacturers to produce their wares at a less 
matedai'^^^ cost, and shipowners to charge a less freight. At the same 
Navigation *^^^ ^ large modification was made in the Navigation Acts. 
Acts. These acts, which had been first enacted under the Com- 

monwealth, and renewed under Charles ii., had the eflect of prohibiting 
most goods being brought to England except in English ships, or, in the 
case of Europe, the ships of those countries where they were produced. 
Until 1782 the American colonies had been exempt from this law as 
British colonies, but they had since ranked as foreign countries, and 
therefore their ships had been unable to bring goods to Britain. They 
had therefore to come in ballast ; and the Americans had therefore to 
pay a freight which paid the journey both ways. This naturally pro- 
duced retaliation ; and many countries forbade British vessels to bring 



1825 Liverpool 909 

goods to their ports. Such a state of thinc^s was intolerable, now tliat 
we wished to do a large trade with the United States and with the new 
South American republics ; and Huskisson met it by putting these 
states on the same footing as if they had been European countrtes. A 
great outcry was raised that this would be the ruin of British shipping ; 
but experience showed that the shipbuilding trade flourished under 
the new regime, and that the number of British vessels increased rapidly. 
Another interesting piece of legislation concerned the Spitalfields 
silk-weavers. The London silk manufactures had been originally 
set on foot by the Huguenot refugees who fled to England The Silk- 
in the time of James 11. They had then been placed under weavers, 
careful regulations, and the wages of the weavers were fixed from time 
to time by the magistrates. Meanwhile, an unrestricted manufacture of 
silk sprang up in other parts of the country, especially in Cheshire and 
Staffordshire. This competed at an advantage with the Spitalfields 
trade ; and the result was an outcry by the London weavers against the 
restrictions. Accordingly they were repealed by act of parliament. 

Another change was made in the condition of workmen by the repeal 
of all acts which restricted the freedom of workmen to travel about the 
country. These restrictions had grown u]3 out of the Act 
of Settlement of Charles 11., which enabled the overseers of Combina- 
any parish to remove any new arrival who seemed likely to 
become chargeable to the parish. In 1824 and 1825 a most important 
change was made in the laws which dealt with combinations of em- 
ployers or employed with a view to regulating the conditions of labour. 
By a law passed in 1800, all agreements between journeymen and 
workmen for obtaining advancements of wages, reductions of the hours 
of labour, or any other change in the condition of work, were declared 
illegal. This continued to be the law down to 1824, when, on a report 
of a committee of the House of Commons, the whole of the laws 
restricting combinations were repealed. This measure, however, was 
thought, on reflection, to be too sweeping ; so, in 1825, another act was 
passed which attempted to define what was legal and what was not. It 
enacted that combinations of masters and workmen to settle terms about 
wages and hours of labour were legal ; but that combinations for 
controlling employers by moral violence are not. 

Huskisson's legislation met with the less opposition because it was 
passed at a time when trade and manufacture were extremely prosperous. 
This inflation led to much unwarranted speculation, especi- Commercial 
ally in the South American trade, and was followed by ^^"'^• 
commercial depression. Many banks and joint-stock companies failed ; 

3n 



930 George IV. 1825 

numbers of workpeople were thrown out of employment ; with the result 

of reviving much of the disorder that had characterised the years which 

immediately followed the declaration of peace. Much machinery was 

wrecked both in town and country, for the workpeople stiU regarded its 

introduction with aversion, and in times of distress imputed all their 

misfortunes to the new machines. 

Meanwhile, the Catholic question was beginning to occupy more than 

ever the attention of prominent politicians. This was due, to some 

extent, to the action of Irish iournalists, who persisted in 
Catholic ' , . ,.. 

Emancipa- pushmg it to the front, partly to the very serious condition 

of affairs in Ireland. In that country there had been no 
political outbreak since Emmett's rebellion ; but the war against tithes 
and rent had been unremitting ; and the hostility between the Catholics 
and the Orangemen had become, if possible, more violent. However, in 
1823, a remarkable change was brought about by the organisation of the 
Roman Catholic Association, Avhich was joined almost universally by the 
Roman Catholics, and which was supported by contributions collected by 
Daniel the priests. The leader of the new movement was Daniel 
O'Connell. O'Connell, an Irish barrister. He was a man of great 
natural eloquence, and was able to exercise from the platform an almost 
unbounded sway over the passions of his countrymen. The rise of this 
body had a most salutary effect on the condition of the country. By 
concentrating the attention of the people on the repeal of the Roman 
Catholic Disabilities, almost a complete stop was put to the irregular 
outrages that had disgraced the country. At the same time it was diffi- 
cult for the government to look on unmoved at its proceedings. The 
very oath taken by the members savoured of civil war. On his entrance, 
each swore : ' By the hate he bore the Orangemen, who were their natural 
enemies, and by the confidence he reposed in the Catholic Association, 
who were his natural and zealous friends, to abstain from all secret and 
illegal associations and Whiteboy disturbances and outrages.' Accor- 
dingly the Association was, in 1825, dissolved by law ; but it had had 
the effect of forcing the Catholic question to the front, and it became the- 
question of the hour. The friends of the Roman Catholics were desirous 
of showing that, though they disapproved of the Association, they were 
still true to their promises ; and, accordingly. Sir Francis Burdett brought 
forward a Relief Bill, which, besides repealing the disabilities, provided 
for the endowment of the Roman Catholic priests. This bill passed the 
Commons without difficulty, but was thrown out by the Lords ; and the 
debate in that House was made memorable by an announcement by the 
duke of York, who declared that in whatever position he were placed he 



1827 Liverpool — Camiing 931 

should be an opponent of the bill. This announcement determined the 
friends of repeal to carry it, if possible, before the duke came to the 
throne. Their efforts were therefore redoubled ; and the Catholic Asso- 
ciation was virtually reconstructed under another form. 

These events naturally led to difficulties in the cabinet. Under Lord 
Liverpool the Catholic question had been regarded as an open one ; but 
the prominence of the subject tended to divide the cabinet 
into two hostile camps — one led by Canning and Huskisson, of L<frT '°" 
the other by Lord Eldon and the duke of Wellington. l^^^^p°°'- 
Except, indeed, in opposition to parliamentary reform, there was hardly 
any subject on which the cabinet was agreed. Wellington looked with 
suspicion on Canning's foreign policy ; and both Canning and Huskisson 
were disliked by their aristocratic associates. Matters so stood when, 
in 1827, Lord Liverpool was taken suddenly ill, and had to give in his 
resignation. The king wished him to be succeeded by some nobleman 
under whom the rest of the cabinet would agree to work. None such, 
however, could be found ; and, after some delay. Canning became first 
lord of the treasury in April 1827. The result was the Canning's 
resignation of the duke of Wellington, Lord Eldon, Peel, Ministry, 
and three other anti-Catholic members of the cabinet. Canning filled 
their places with men who were favourable to the Roman Catholic claims. 
Huskisson continued at the Board of Trade ; Lord Palmerston continued 
secretary at war ; and Robinson, now Lord Goderich, became war and 
colonial secretary. There was little now to distinguish the transformed 
Tory administration from a Liberal government, except in the matter of 
parliamentary reform, and as such it received the support of Brougham ; 
but it was opposed by Earl Grey and Lord John Russell, and could not 
be regarded as a very stable administration. There was, Death of 
however, hope that before long it would be joined by the Canning, 
leading Whigs, for whom, indeed, places had been kept, when its career 
came to a sudden termination through the death of Canning in 1827. 

During the short time he had been premier Canning's attention had 
been chiefly given to the aff'airs of Greece. The struggle between the 
Greeks and the Turks, if left to themselves, seemed inter- ^^^ Greeks, 
minable, as neither side was capable of gaining a decisive 
advantage over the other ; but, in 1827, the interposition of Mahomet 
AH, tributary pasha of Egypt, seemed likely to be fatal to the Greeks. 
Their strongholds were the islands of the Greek archipelago, which the 
Turks, having no fleet, were unable to attack, but which could make 
little stand against the Egyptian fleet. Accordingly, the islands fell 
fast : Athens was taken ; and Corinth and Napoli alone remained in 



932 George IV. 1827 

Greek hands. Their conquest was merely a question of time ; but it 
seemed to the European powers that the Greeks, by their seven years' 
struggle, had earned a better fate. Canning, therefore, was able to 
negotiate a triple alliance between Great Britain, Russia, and France, 
and to demand from the Porte that Greece should have the same 
position as the Danubian states, Servia and Wallachia — i.e. that she 
should manage her own affairs subject to the suzerainty of the Porte. 
Time was given to the sultan for the consideration of this proposal ; but, 
before anything was settled, large reinforcements were sent to the 
Egyptian fleet. Sir Edward Codrington, the English admiral on the 
station, allowed these to join the rest of the Turkish and Egyptian 
vessels in the harbour of Navarino ; but blockaded them there with 
Battle of ^^^ ^i^ ^^ ^^^ French and Russian squadrons. The 
Navarino. proximity of the rival fleets led to a fight ; and on October 
20, 1827, the Turkish and Egyptian fleets were utterly destroyed, after a 
cannonade of four hours. Had the destruction of the fleets been 
promptly followed up by the appearance of the British and their allies 
off Constantinople, the Turks would probably have brought the war to 
an end by granting the demands of the Greeks ; but the ministry at 
home did not know its own mind, and the favourable opportunity was 
lost. 

Canning had been succeeded as prime minister by his friend Lord 
Goderich. Canning had been both first lord of the treasury and also 
Goderich's chancellor of the exchequer ; and as Lord Goderich, being 
Ministry, j^ the Upper House, could not be chancellor of the ex- 
chequer, that post was given to Herries, a Tory. This led to a difficulty 
in appointing the chairman of a financial committee for the coming 
session. Herries wished to act himself : Huskisson desired to have 
Lord Althorp, the official leader of the Whigs. Both resigned ; and 
Wellington's Coderich, quite at a loss what to, do, resigned also. This 
Ministry. disastrous ending of the Canningite administration enabled 
the king to offer the premiership to the duke of Wellington, by whom it 
was accepted ; and a mixed government was formed, including Huskisson, 
Goderich, Palmerston arid other followers of Canning, and the strong 
Tories who followed the duke, and Peel. 

The first efi'ect of the change was to undo Canning's work in the East. 

His policy had all along been directed to keejD Russia from acting by 

herself for her own agorandisement, and to induce her to 

Independ- . . « , , 

; ence of take part in the common action of the other powers. The 

failure of the allies to follow up the battle of Navarino 

ruined Canning's plan. It seemed as if the British, at any rate, were 



1828 Canning—Goderkh—Wellington 933 

half-ashamed of their victory, which the duke of Wellinoton described as 
' an untoward event.' Disgusted, therefore, with the slackness of their 
allies, the Russians invaded Turkey in 1828, and forced the Turks to 
agree to the Treaty of Adrianople. One of the articles of this secured 
the independence of the Greeks. This was subsequently ratified by the 
other great powers, and Prince Otto of Bavaria was elected first king of 
the Greeks. 

The session of 1828 is chiefly memorable for the repeal of the Test 
and Corporation Acts. This was not a government measure, but was 
brought forward by Lord John Russell. It was not, how- Test and 
ever, seriously opposed, for the Acts had been rendered 9°*'^°'"^*^°" 

Acts 

nugatory for many years by the passing of the annual repealed. 
Indemnity Act for those who had broken their provisions. The repeal of 
the Acts was, however, most irksome to the duke of Wellington, who 
had agreed with Canning in resisting it for many years, and led to 
friction with the more liberal members of his cabinet. This came to a 
head in May, 1828, when Huskisson, having disagreed with Peel about 
the procedure connected with the disfranchisement of Penryn and East 
Retford, sent in a conditional offer to resign. This Wellington eagerly 
seized upon and sent to the king ; and Huskisson's resignation led to 
that of Palmerston, Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne), and the other 
Canningites in the ministry. Their places were taken by Wellington's 
Tory friends, and all seemed to be going smoothly, when suddenly the 
Catholic question reappeared in a form which commanded immediate 
attention. 

Vesey Fitzgerald, whom Wellington had made president of the Board of 
Trade, was the Tory member for Clare, and his acceptance of office necessi- 
tated his re-election. He was a friend of the Roman Catholic The Clare 
claims ; but, nevertheless, the Catholic Association which, on Election, 
the expiration of the act dissolving it, had resumed its old name, deter- 
mined to contest the seat and brought forward as his opponent O'Connell 
himself. To elect a Roman Catholic was legal enough, for it depended on 
the choice of the elected member whether or not he would take the oath 
required from a member of parliament on taking his seat. Accordingly 
the forty-shilling freeholders, directed by their priests, placed O'Connell at 
the head of the poll ; and the contest was therefore transferred to West- 
minster. It was not merely the return of one member. The Associa- 
tion boasted that at the next general election no less than sixty Roman 
Catholic members would be returned ; it showed also how complete was 
its command of Irish life by putting a complete check on crime. During 
the Clare election not a drunken man was to be seen— except O'Connell's 



934 George IV. 1828 

Protestant coachman — and judges on assize were surprised at the 
absence of prisoners. A power, in fact, had arisen in Ireland which was 
more powerful than the government, and the duke of "Wellington made 
up his mind that there was no choice between making way for O'Connell 
and civil war. If O'Connell were prevented from taking his seat, it was the 
opinion of the duke of Wellington that civil war would be inevitable ; and 
when the duke had once decided that it was a choice between emancipat- 
ing the Roman Catholics and civil war, his mind was soon made up. 
As a general it had been one of his strongest points that he was ready to 
fight or retreat exactly as occasion required. He carried the same 
qualities into civil life, defended a position as long as he could, and when 
it was no longer tenable, fell back unconcernedly to the next. 

Accordingly he decided that resistance to the Roman Catholic claims 
would now do more harm than good ; decided to surrender, and carried 
Catholic liis cabinet with him. The statesman who was placed in the 
pation'^^' greatest difficulty by this change of front was Peel, who held 
carried. his seat for Oxford University as an opponent of the Roman 
Catholic claims. Peel felt it his duty to resign. He stood again for the 
seat, but was beaten by Sir R. Inglis, and had to take refuge at West- 
bury. Some difficulty was met with in dealing with the king ; but 
George iv. was a very diflferent man from his father, and the duke of 
Wellington made little of his scruples. As no anti-Catholic ministers 
were forthcoming, a threat to resign soon brought him to his senses, and 
Peel was able to preface his introduction of the Relief Bill by observing 
that it had the full consent of the king. Thus brought forward, the bill 
passed the Commons by large majorities ; and in spite of all the efforts of 
Lord Eldon, Wellington's influence secured its acceptance by the Lords. 
It was preceded and followed by two other bills. By the first the 
Catholic Association was again declared illegal ; but it anticipated the 
blow by dissolving itself. By the second the forty-shilling freeholders of 
Ireland were deprived of their votes, and the franchise limited to those 
possessed of freehold to the value of ten pounds. During the agitation 
against the disabilities, O'Connell had repeatedly declared that their 
abolition would lead to the final pacification of Ireland ; but the bill had 
hardly been passed before he was again at work as an agitator, declaring 
that he would never be satisfied till he had secured the Repeal of the 
Union . 

With parliamentary reform rapidly becoming the question of the day 

Death of in England, and agitation for Repeal on foot in Ireland, the 

George IV. political horizou was anything but peaceful when the death 

of Georoe brought a new actor on the scene. Little good can be said 



1830 



Wellington 



935 



for George iv. As a young man he had dallied with the Whigs ; in his 
old age he had lent himself to the Tories. By neither was he honoured 
or believed to be sincere ; and he left behind him as ill a memory, as a bad 
son, a faithless friend, a cruel husband, as a man could well do. He died 
June 26, 1830. 



CHIEF DATES. 

Death of Londonderry, .... 
Canning becomes Prime Minister, . 

Battle of Navarino, 

Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, 
Repeal of the Roman Catholic Disabilities, 



A.D. 
1822 
1827 
1827 
1828 
1829 



CHAPTER VI 

WILLIAM IV.: 1830-1837 
Born 1765 ; married 1818, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES 

France. 
Louis Philippe, 1830-1848. 

The Great Reform Bill — Period of Active Legislation — The Irish Church — 
Slavery— The Poor Laws — The Municipal Reform — Peel and Conservative 
Reaction— Lord Melbourne's Government. 

The new king had been educated as a sailor, and, till the death of the 
duke of York in 1827, had little expectation of ascending the throne. 
Character of At sea he had learnt such habits of genial good-nature as 
Wiiham IV, corresponded ill with the etiquette of a court. Even after 
he became king he would stop the royal carriage in order to pick up 
a friend in the street, and give bim a lift home ; and Avould willingly sit 
with his back to the horses in order to do so. In politics he was in 
favour of parliamentary reform, was believed to dislike the duke of 
Wellington, and to be extremely desirous of popularity. The reform party, 
therefore, expected much advantage from having the court on their side. 
By his wife, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, whom he married in 1818, he 
had only two daughters, both of whom died in babyhood ; so on his 
death the crown was expected to go to Victoria, daughter of William's 
next brother, the duke of Kent, 

Hardly had William ascended the throne when all Europe was startled 
by the intelligence of a new French Revolution. Louis xviir. had 
The Revoiu- died in 1824, and been succeeded by Charles x,, the Count 
tion of July, (i'^^rtois of the Revolution, Between the characters of the 
two brothers there was much the same dijfference as between those of 
Charles ii. and James ii. Each was desirous of becoming as nearly 

»36 



1830 Wdlington 037 

absolute as he could ; but whereas Louis xviii. and Charles ii. contrived 
to attain much of their wish without alienating their subjects, Charles x. 
and James ii. both lost their thrones, and both were succeeded by a 
junior member of the royal family— the one by Louis Philippe, the other by 
William in. The progress of the new French Revolution was watched in 
England with the greatest interest, and excited an amount of enthusiasm 
which it is now hard to realise ; and it is by no means unlikely that had 
the unpopular George iv. been still on the throne, a serious attempt 
would have been made to effect his expulsion. As it was, the popularity 
of the new sovereign saved the throne from attack. It failed, how- 
ever, to shield his ministers. Invidious comparisons were made between 
the duke of Wellington and the Prince de Polignac, the unpopular 
minister of Charles x. This was most unfair to Wellington ; but it had 
its effect on the country, and, in the general election which followed the 
accession of a new sovereign, was helpful to the opponents of the 
ministry. The Revolution in France was followed by an outbreak in 
Belgium. The Catholics of the old Austrian Netherlands had always 
detested the arrangement made by the Congress of Vienna, by which they 
were iniited with the Protestant Dutch, and encouraged by the hope of aid 
from the new French government, they rose, expelled the Dutch troops, 
and laid siege to Antwerp. This was finally captured with French aid, 
and the Austrian Netherlands were then formed into the kingdom of 
Belgium. Prince Leopold, the widower of the Princess Charlotte, was 
chosen first king of the Belgians, and the integrity of the new state was 
guaranteed by the great powers. 

Before the new parliament met an epoch-making event in the world's 
history had occurred in the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester 
Railway. This was due to the ingenuity of George Stephen- The Liver- 
son, a working pitman in the Durham coalfield, who saw Manchester 
that by using a locomotive engine, driven by steam, to Railway, 
draw the waggons along the old tram lines, much greater speed could be 
attained. The idea was first put into execution near Stockton, and the 
first passenger carriage was made of the body of a coach placed on a 
waggon. The plan was so successful that a company was formed for 
making one of the new lines from Manchester to Liverpool, which had long 
felt road and water carriage to be inadequate to the trade done between 
them. The work was superintended by Stephenson himself, and the 
line was opened in September 1830. The event was felt to be of national 
importance, and the duke of Wellington and many other politicians were 
invited to be present. Among others was Huskisson, and during a 
stoppage of the train he and Wellington had alighted, when a friend 



938 William IV. 1830 

seized the opjjortiinity to bring them together and smooth away the 
coolness that had existed since Hiiskisson's resignation. The two met 
Death of cordially ; but at that moment a passing engine came up 
Huskisson. gucldenly, and before Huskisson, who was both awkward and 
lame, could regain his seat he was knocked down and his leg crushed. 
So bad was his health, that it was not thought wise to attempt 
amputation, and he died the same evening. 

The political and commercial effects of the introduction of railways 
cannot be described in a few sentences ; perhaps the most poetic way is 
to say of the locomotive that ' cities leapt nearer by hundreds of miles 
at the snort of his irop chest.' Whether we regard the event commer- 
cially, as saving the time of the world, and enabling the transport of 
Influence of goods to be carried on a scale never dreamt of before, or as 
Railways. diffusing knowledge, or politically, as knitting together 
widely scattered nationalities, its influence has been enormous. What 
the locomotive has done on land, the steamboat has effected by sea. As 
early as 1788 attempts had been made in Scotland to propel a vessel by 
steam ; but the first effective steamboats were the Claremont^ built by 
Fulton, an American, in 1807, and the Cornet^ launched by Henry Bell of 
Glasgow in 1808. The new means of transit opened a new era in the 
history of nations and the possibilities of political life ; and to no 
country was this event of greater importance than to Great Britain, 
with her island colonies rising up in all parts of the world. 

When parliament met, Brougham, who to his great honour had been 
elected member for Yorkshire, at once brought forward a scheme of his 
Fall of own for parliamentary reform ; but before it could be dis- 

Wellington. ^ussed in parliament, the ministry of the duke of Welling- 
ton had ceased to exist. It is difficult to exaggerate the unpopularity of 
the duke of Wellington's ministry at this moment. In reality the duke 
had acted perfectly fairly towards the new French government, and had 
in no way interfered in Belgium ; but at the opening of parliament the 
king was made to speak disparagingly of both events. The duke also, with 
a foolish excess of caution, advised the king not to attend the Guildhall 
banquet for fear of a hostile demonstration in the streets, and so gave the 
impression that he was in fear of revolution. The Whigs were, of course, 
hostile to him as an anti-reformer ; the old Tories regarded him as little 
better than a renegade on the Eoman Catholic question. His fiiU, there- 
fore, was merely a question of days. Its actual occasion arose out of the 
failure of the government to defeat a motion brought forward in the 
House of Commons by Sir Henry Parnell for a committee on the Civil List. 
This was carried against the government by 29, the majority consisting of 



1830 Wellington — Grey 939 

Whigs and of discontented Tories. The defeat was not very serious 
but the duke chose to resign upon it, probably for the reason that the 
Whigs, by coming in on such a question, were not unlikely to quarrel 
with the king. The duke's sentiments on reform were, however, per- 
fectly well known. In a debate in the House of Lords he had said 
' that he had never read or heard of any measure, up to the present 
moment, which could in any degree satisfy his mind that the state of the 
representation could be improved, or be rendered more satisfactory to 
the country at large, than at the present moment.' This unwise declara- 
tion had the effect of fixing the attention of the country upon reform ; 
and consequently, when the king sent for Earl Grey to succeed Welling- 
ton, it was understood on all hands that parliamentary reform would be 
the question of the day. 

Earl Grey was in every way a most fitting head of the new government. 
Born in 1764, he was the oldest living advocate of parliamentary reform. 
He had struggled for its attainment when to do so exposed a ^arl Grey's 
politician to obloquy and abuse, and even to some risk of im- Ministry. 
prisonment. Moreover, his personal character and position were calculated 
to disj)el much of the alarm which was felt by those who believed that 
parliamentary reform was insej)arably connected with revolution. He was 
a large landed proprietor, a man of courtly manners, absolutely without 
the slightest tinge of a demagogue, and his advocacy of the measure 
was known to be the result of the deepest conviction. Earl Grey's 
chancellor of the exchequer Avas Lord Althorp, the eldest son of Earl 
S])encer. As in the case of his chief, personal character constituted the 
strongest claim to his position. He was no financier, and a very bad 
speaker ; but his sincerity and earnestness were patent to all, and he was 
always listened to with attention. Brougham became lord- chancellor, 
and, in all dealings with the king, Grey and he acted together. The 
other members of the government were Lord Palmerston, foreign secretary, 
Melbourne (formerly Lamb) at the Home Ofiice, and Lord Goderich, 
colonial secretary. Lord John Russell, paymaster-general, and Edward 
Stanley, afterwards earl of Derby, chief secretary to the lord-lieutenant 
of Ireland, were the chief members outside the cabinet. 

Now that parliamentary reform had become the question of the hour, 
society became divided into two camps, for and against it. Those who 
opposed it pointed to the antiquity of the existing arrange- p^^.^.^ 
ment, to its long success in carrying on the affairs of the mentary 

' ^ I/O 1 1 1 T Keiorm. 

nation, to the number of illustrious men who had dis- 
tinguished it, and objected to the new system as untried. Much stress 
was laid on the number of distinguished men who had first found their 



940 William, IV. 1830 

way into parliament by means of nomination boroughs — among whom were 
reckoned the two Pitts, Burke, Canning, Huskisson, and Brougham — and 
it was asked how could such men have recommended themselves, in the 
first instance, to the larger constituencies who were afterwards glad to 
elect them. On the other hand, those who were in favour of reform 
denied the success of the old system, and pointed to the ignorance of the 
lower classes as a convincing proof that it had not done what it might for 
the ' greatest happiness of the greatest number,' a phrase which Jeremy 
Bentham, the great Kadical philosopher, had brought into vogue. It was 
also pointed out that a system which gave the great majority of members 
to the south of the country was an anachronism now that, through the 
new manufacturing industry, the Midlands and the North had become, 
next to London, the most populous parts of the country. The anomaly of 
giving as many county members to Rutland as to either Middlesex or 
Lancashire, and two members each to Gatton and Old Sarum, while none 
were given to Leeds, Manchester, or Birmingham, was notorious. There 
was no doubt that the arguments of the reformers were those which 
appealed most forcibly to the country, and the chief strength of the new 
ministry lay in the enormous weight of support which they were able to 
command outside the walls of parliament. 

In March the Reform Bill was introduced in the Commons by Lord 
John Russell. It was based on the new princif>le of symmetry. All 
The First boroughs having less than two thousand inhabitants were to 
Reform Bill, jjg disfranchised, and all having less than four thousand were 
to be deprived of one member each. The seats thus placed at the disposal 
of the government were to be allotted to London, to large towns which at 
present returned no member, and to the counties. A uniform franchise 
for boroughs was also proposed instead of the existing anomalous system. 
In towns, all householders who paid a rent of ten pounds were to have a 
vote ; in counties, in addition to the forty-shilling freeholders, all copy- 
holders to the value of ^10, and leaseholders for twenty-one years or over 
of the value of £50. For the future all voters were to be registered, so that 
a man's name being on the register should be sufficient proof of his right 
to vote ; and, instead of the poll being open for a varying time, some- 
times amounting to weeks, the voting was to take place in boroughs on 
one day, in counties on two. This was the outline of the bill which Lord 
John RusseU submitted to the House in a si:)eech well worthy of himself 
Opposition ^nd of the occasion. The bill Avas stoutly opposed jby 
to the Bill. ^Y\Q Tories ; but it passed its second reading by 302 to 301. 
On going into committee, however, the government suffered a defeat. 
By the bill it was proposed that the number of members should be 



1831 Grey 941 

reduced from 658 to 596 ; but General Gascoyne proposed an instruction 
to the committee that the members for England and Wales should not 
be diminished, and carried it against the government by a majority of 
eight ; and three days later the House refused to go into committee of 
supply, which meant that it would vote no money for the existing 
government. 

In these circumstances the ministers had no choice except to resign, or 
to persuade the king to dissolve parliament. They chose the latter, and 
induced William to act with such rapidity as to anticipate 
a petition of parliament, proposed by Lord Wharncliffe, ofPariia-°" 
against a dissolution. The dissolution was extremely '^^"*- 
popular. ' Turn out the rogues, your majesty ! ' shouted the mob as the 
king drove to Westminster. In the city the lord mayor put himself at the 
head of the movement for a general illumination. Some of those who re- 
fused to take part, including the duke of Wellington, had their windows 
broken. All over the country the news of a new election was received 
with joy, and the popularity of the king and his ministers was unbounded. 
The new elections took place amidst great excitement, and were ex- 
tremely favourable to the reformers. In the counties and large towns 
they carried all before them. A hundred of the anti-reformers lost 
their seats, and the leading opponents of the bill had to take refuge in 
the very boroughs which it was proposed to abolish. 

The cry of the reformers everywhere was for ' the bill, the whole bill, 
and nothing but the bill ' ; and when the new parliament met, the old 
bill, with only slight alterations, was again introduced. The Second 
This time it passed the second reading by 136 votes, but in Reform Bill, 
committee it was fought clause by clause, and the fate of each mori- 
bund constituency made the subject of a debate and a division. In this 
struggle the burden of defending the bill lay mainly on Peel, Sir C. 
Wetherell, and J. W. Croker ; the attack was chiefly conducted by Lord 
John Russell, and T. B. afterwards Lord Macaulay. At length the work 
was done, and the bill passed its third reading by 345 to 236. In the 
Lords its fate was different. Though there were very few who ventured 
to go so far as the duke of Wellington and deny the necessity j^^j^^^^^ 
for any reform, the bill was generally regarded as going too by the 
far ; and, in spite of all the efforts of Earl Grey, aided by 
Lord-Chancellor Brougham, was thrown out on the second reading by 
199 to 158. 

The excitement caused by the news that the Lords had rejected the 
bill was intense. Peers were mobbed in the streets, and the bishops, 
whose opposition had been unanimous, were subject on every appearance 



942 William IV. I83i 

to the vilest abuse. At Birmingham the bells were muffled and tolled. 
At Nottingham the mob rose and burnt the castle, which was the pro- 
perty of the duke of Newcastle, one of the most unpopular 

against of the peers. At Bristol, when Sir Charles Wetherell 
arrived to hold the Sessions as Recorder, so violent was 
the attack made on him that he had to escape in disguise as a postillion. 
Then the mob, balked of their prey, and infuriated with drink, set the 
soldiers at defiance, burnt the bishop's palace, the mansion-house, and the 
gaols ; released the prisoners ; and for three days gave themselves over to 
every kind of excess. More serious than these ebullitions of mob violence 
was the formation all over the country of organisations called ' political 
unions,' the object of which was ' to defend the king and his ministers 
against the boroughmongers.' In Birmingham the 'union' numbered 
150,000 persons, including all the most respected inhabitants ; and the 
members were ready, if need were, to march on London in case the govern- 
ment seemed in need of their personal support. Other towns had similar 
organisations, and there could be no doubt that in their efforts to carry 
reform the ministers had the people at their back. 

Encouraged by this support, ministers lost no time in again passing 
the bill through the House of Commons, by a vote of two to one, and 
The Third sending it up to the Lords. It now appeared that the 
■ opposition party in the Lords was divided into two sections — 
one headed by the duke of Wellington, which was opposed to all reform, 
the other under Lords Wharncliffe and Harrowby, known as the ' trim- 
mers ' or ' waverers,' who were willing to allow the second reading to 
pass, but hoped to make large changes in committee. The opposition 
was thus disunited ; and as it was known that the king had agreed to 
create enough peers to secure the passing of the second reading, the bill 
was read a second time by nine votes. However, Avhen the bill reached the 
committee stage, a resolution was passed against the government to take 
the enfranchising clauses first. On the surface, this amendment was not 
very important, but it really involved the question whether the govern- 
ment or the opposition should control the bill in committee, and was 
regarded by the government as fatal to further progress, unless the king 
was prepared to assent to a large creation of new peers. This William 
was not ready to do, though he had been willing to take that course in 
order to pass the second reading ; but his eagerness for the bill had now 

Grey changed into something not far removed from hostility, and 

resigns. -^^ ^^^ much alarmed at the prospects of a revolution with 
which he was continually threatened. Earl Grey therefore resigned, and 
the king sent for the duke. Directly this was known the excitement in 



1832 Grey 943 

the whole country became intense. ' Go for gold and stop the duke ' was 
placarded over London. At Manchester and other towns large sums of 
money were actually withdrawn from the banks. Perhaps more significant 
than anything else was the action of Lord Milton, the eldest son of Earl 
Fitzwilliam, who told a tax-collector to call again. Had Wellino-ton 
really formed a ministry, there seems little doubt that there would have 
been a general move on London ; military officers were ready to take the 
command ; and changes of the most sweeping character would probably 
have been enforced. The need for such a movement, however, never 
came. Wellington, who regarded it as his first duty to aid his sovereign 
under all circumstances, and wished now to save William from what he 
considered the humiliation of creating more peers, was willing to form a 
ministry, and to attempt to carry a modified bill ; but he could get no 
one to join him. Peel positively refused to have anything to do with the 
plan. Sir K. Inglis, representing the old Tories, also refused assistance ; 
and, foiled in every direction, the duke yielded to theinevi- Grey 
table, and advised the king to recall Earl Grey. He did ^e^^ms. 
more ; for, acting at William's request, he withdrew his opposition 
to the bill, and induced so many peers to follow his example 
that the bill passed through its remaining stages without 
difficulty ; and, in June 1832, the Reform Bill passed the Lords by 108 
votes to 22. 

The bill which thus passed into law did not materially differ from that 
brought forward by Lord John Russell. One hundred and forty-three 
members were taken away from small boroughs. Of these, 
sixty-five were given to the counties, two members each to ^cts. ^ °^"^ 
Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, and eighteen other England 
large towns, including some new London constituencies, and 
one member each to twenty-one other towns, none of which had been 
previously directly represented. The right to vote was as previously pro- 
posed ; except that by the Chandos clause, introduced in the Commons 
by the marquess of Chandos, farmers occupying land worth £bQ a year 
as tenants-at-will were enfranchised. Similar bills were passed for 
Scotland and Ireland. In Scotland the need for a Reform 3^.^^,^^^^^^ 
Bill was even greater than in England. Even in the counties 
the right of voting had fallen into the hands of an infinitesimal number 
of voters ; in the towns it was invariably the privilege of a self-electing 
corporation. In the whole country the number of voters did not exceed 
four thousand ; the number of voters for Argyleshire was one hundred 
and fifteen ; for Edinburgh and Glasgow thirty-three each. By the new 
bill the number of members for Scotland was raised from forty-five to 



944 William IV. 1832 

fifty-three ; the franchise in counties was given to all owners of land 

worth i>10, and to some classes of leaseholders ; and in towns to those 

who paid a J 10 rental. In Ireland so many rotten boroughs were 

disfranchised at the Union, that no more was done in this 
Ireland. ,. . -, ^ ^ • ,^ ^ 

direction, and the chief change made was the transference 

of the town franchise from the corporations to the ^10 householders. 

One great result of the Eeform Bill was the introduction of a uniform 

franchise. Till this date each borough had rules of its own ; at Preston 

„ , , every householder had a vote ; in others, those who paid 
Results of *' . . '. ' ^ 

the Reform scot and lot, i.e. parish rates ; in others, the members of 
the corporation. The chief merit of the new plan was 
its simplicity ; its drawback was that it destroyed the differences 
between one town and another, which might be expected to aftect the 
members chosen, and so make the House of Commons to be less a 
reflection of the varieties of English life than it had been. Another 
result was the transference of power from the south and east of England 
to the north and west. If a line be drawn from Hull to Bristol, it may 
roughly be said that, setting the metropolitan district aside, almost all the 
disenfranchised towns lie east and south of it ; almost all the enfran- 
chised north and west. A third was, that in the counties the farmers, in 
the towns the smaller class of shopkeepers, formed the bulk of the new 
voters, and their ideas became the predominant factors in determining 
the drift of public opinion. The period we are about to enter upon, 
therefore, is that of the rule of the middle classes — as that which pre- 
ceded the Eeform Bill is that of the rule of the aristocracy ; and this 
distinction would have been more marked had it not been for the 
influence which the great land-owning families still exerted in the 
counties. 

When the Reformed Parliament met, it was found that the Tories had 
only secured 172 seats, while the Whigs, who had carried all before 
The New them in the new constituencies, had 486. The composition 
Parliament. ^^ ^j-^g ^^^^ parliament excited great interest ; but though 
there was a larger infusion of the commercial and business class than 
before the new members were not found to differ very materially from the 
old. Several interesting elections had taken place. William Cobbett was 
returned for Oldham, but Henry Hunt lost his election at Preston, where 
many of his old Radical friends had been disfranchised. A few constitu- 
encies still remained, which, though they had been saved by the amount of 
the population from disfranchisement, were to all intents and purposes 
pocket boroughs. Among these was Newark, where the iufiuence of the 
duke of Newcastle secured the return of his young Tor}? friend,, William 



1833 Grey 945 

Ewart Gladstone, the son of a Liverpool merchant, and born in 1809 who 
had just completed a brilliant career at Oxford. 

A period of great legislative activity followed the meeting of the 
Eeformed Parliament. The first evil dealt with was slavery, \houo-h 
the slave trade had been abolished in 1807, the practice of si 
both domestic and agricultural slavery still continued in abolished, 
the West Indies and the adjacent settlements on the continent. The 
subject was a most difficult one, for the whole social and commercial 
system of the West Indian colonies was based upon slavery ; but the 
English middle classes, who had been profoundly impressed by the teach- 
ing of Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Zachary Macaulay, father of T. B. 
Macaulay, would hear of no obstacle in the w^ay of its abolition. Accord- 
ingly, an act was passed by which (1) slavery was abohshed ; (2) outdoor 
slaves were to work as apprentices for their present masters for seven 
years and domestic slaves for five years ; (3) a sum of .£20,000,000 was 
voted to compensate the slaveholders for their loss. The period of 
apprenticeship was afterwards reduced to four years. At the same time 
it was agreed that the duty on sugar grown by free labourers should 
always be less than that on sugar grown by slaves — a bargain which has 
not been carried out. 

At home ministers took an important step in making a grant of 
^20,000 in aid of education. Until the close of the eighteenth century, 
the education of the poor, such as it was, had been carried National 
on at ancient endowed grammar-schools and dame schools, Education, 
and a very large proportion of the working classes, both in town and 
country, received no teaching at all. To remedy this, in 1782, Robert 
Raikes established his first Sunday-school, but the first idea of a really 
national system of education was due to Andrew Bell and Joseph Lan- 
caster. From the first a difficulty arose from the rivalry of the church 
and the nonconforming bodies ; and two societies were founded — the 
National Society, consisting of Churchmen, to carry out the ideas of Bell ; 
and the British and Foreign School Society, consisting of Nonconform- 
ists, to carry out those of Lancaster. In 1807 Whitbread proposed a 
scheme for parochial schools, which came to nothing ; but in 1816 
Brougham took up the idea with his usual energy, succeeded in getting 
a committee aj^pointed to inquire into teaching in London, and in 1820 
brought forward a scheme of national education. Brougham's scheme, 
however, was wrecked, as Whitbread's had been, on the rock of religious 
jealousy, and it seemed as if the difficulties in the way of any scheme 
were insurmountable. However, in 1833, the ministers hit upon a way 
of assisting education without raising much jealousy. The sum of 

3o 



946 William IV. 1833 

.£20,000 was devoted to aiding school building, and was allotted in 
special grants on the request of the National Society, the British and 
Foreign School Society, and in Scotland through the minister and kirk- 
session of each parish. The sum of £20,000 was not a large sum for a 
nation to expend on such an important object, but as the germ of the 
great system which now absorbs annually six and a half millions of public 
money, the grant of 1833 was of great importance. 

Another most important piece of legislation dealt with work in 
factories. Since the introduction of the factory system which had 
followed the inventions of Arkwright, Hargreaves, and 
Factory Crompton in spinning, and of Horrocks and Cartwright 
in weaving, a new set of problems had arisen for statesmen 
and philanthropists. The simplicity of much of the work required, and 
its easy character, led to the employment of large numbers of children, 
from whom the avarice of their parents and employers exacted an amount 
of labour destructive of their health, and wholly ruinous to their educa- 
tion. These children were sometimes the children of parents in the neigh- 
bourhood, but were often apprentices brought from a distance, and housed 
in cottages or barracks belonging to the millowner. The hardships 
of the latter class first attracted the attention of the legislature, and in 
1802 an act brought forward by Sir Eobert Peel, the elder — himself a 
large manufacturer — was passed for their benefit. It contained many 
humane and sanitary regulations. The work was not to exceed twelve 
hours a day, and night-work was in general prohibited. There was to 
be instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the working of the 
act was to be superintended .by two visitors appointed by the justices of 
the peace. It was soon found that children living at home but working 
in the mills were almost as much in want of protection as the apprentices ; 
and in 1819 the second Factory Act was passed, applicable only to 
cotton mills, by which it was enacted that children should not work at 
all till they were nine years of age, and between nine and sixteen were 
not to work more than twelve hours a day. The third Factory Act, 
passed in 1833, extended this act to other textile industries, and made a 
distinction between ' children ' from nine to thirteen, and ' young 
persons ' from thirteen to eighteen years of age. Young persons might 
work twelve hours a day, and children nine, but they had to spend 
another two hours in school. Such children are called 'half-timers.' 
The Education Grant and the new Factory Act were attempts to intro- 
The New ^^^^,2 a new system ; the new Poor Law attempted to re- 
Poor Law. organise an old system which had fallen into abuse. Since 
the Poor Laws had been consolidated in 1601, a number of changes had 



1834 Grey 947 

been made. Under the old law the functions of the overseers had been 
to apprentice pauper children, to set able-bodied persons to work, and to 
relieve the impotent poor— that is, the lame, the old, and the blind. In 
1697, at the instance of John Carey, a special act of parliament 
was passed for erecting the first workhouse at Bristol, to which the 
able-bodied paupers were compelled to go. The plan proved so successful 
that it was widely copied, and in 1V22 it was enacted by act of parlia- 
ment that — ' No poor who refused to be lodged and kept in such houses 
should be entitled to ask or receive parochial relief.' This system of a 
' workhouse test ' was found to work well during the pros- The Work 
perous times of the eighteenth century ; but in 1795 it house Test. 
broke down under the stress caused by the war, and the magistrates at 
Speenhamland, near Newbury, in Berkshire, devised a scheme by which 
relief was given to able-bodied men and their families at a scale which 
varied with the price of bread. If the price of a gallon of bread was Is., 
a single man received 3s., a man and his wife 4s. 6d., and out-door 
every child up to seven Is. 6d. ; the whole for the family Relief, 
amounting to 15s. In 1796 this plan received the sanction of parlia- 
ment, and was generally adoj^ted. The result was completely disastrous. 
Instead of wages rising, farmers contrived to throw more and more charge 
on the rates. The honest labourer, who prided himself on not being 
a pauper, found himself worse off than the man who took parish pay. 
The poor ratepayer found himself gradually drawn down into the gulf of 
pauperism. Paupers married paupers, and received the more as their 
families increased. In some parishes the rates outweighed the rental 
and the tithes, and the land went out of cultivation. In 1817 it was 
found that the relief amounted to close on eight million pounds, in a 
population of eleven millions. Such a state of affairs required a drastic 
remedy ; but it needed some courage to apply one. However, Earl 
Grey's government appointed a strong commission, whose report showed 
a state of affairs worse even than had been anticipated. On its sugges- 
tions, a new Poor Law was founded, and received the consent of parlia- 
ment in 1834. By its chief provisions, 'All relief to able-bodied persons 
except in well-regulated workhouses,' was declared illegal. This enact- 
ment, therefore, re-enacted the ' workhouse test,' and was coupled with 
other salutary provisions for the better dealing with vagrants, parish 
apprentices, and workhouse children. In the past, one of the chief 
causes of abuse had arisen from each parish, or each union of parishes, 
being a law unto itself ; for the future, the working of the Poor Law was 
given over to a department of government called the Poor Law Board. 
These changes had a most salutary efiect on the country ; but it was 



948 William IV. 1834 

many years before the demoralising influence of the old state of things 
was eradicated. 

During these English reforms, ministers had been compelled to give 

much attention to Ireland. There a great cause of grievance was the 

Irish Episcopal Church. In Ireland, the Reformation had 

Ireland. , ^ ^ ^^ ^ . T . 1 

never taken any real hold among the native Irish popula- 
tion, and since the time of Strafford the condition of the Protestant 
Church had been a source of scandal. It had, however, in its hands all 
the property of the ancient Irish Church, and in parishes where there was 
scarcely a single Protestant, the tithe was still paid to the Protestant 
rector. Of late years, however, the collection of the tithe had become 
almost impossible, and though the whole civil and military force of the 
government was at the back of the tithe proctors, the amount collected 
did not pay the cost of collection. The criminal statistics of the country 
were terrible. In 1832 no less than nine thousand crimes, of which two 
hundred and forty -two were murders, were committed. The government 
accordingly passed a severe act, by which the lord-lieutenant of Ireland 
was authorised to prohibit political meetings in proclaimed districts, and 
to change the venue of trial for political crimes. To be out of doors be- 
tween sunset and sunrise without due cause was made punishable, and 
the Habeas Corpus Act was virtually suspended. At the same time, the 
Protestant Episcopal Church was reorganised. The number of archbishops 
was reduced from four to two, and of bishops from twenty-two to twelve. 
The reform of the Irish Church would probably have gone fiu'ther, had 
ministers been able to agree about the destination of the funds set at 
liberty by a reduction of the church establishment. As it was, the more 
liberal section of the cabinet were in favour of applying the surplus to 
general philanthropic purposes ; the so-called friends of the church were 
desirous of reserving it for strictly ecclesiastical purposes. Accordingly 
on this question, the duke of Richmond, the earl of Ripon (formerly Lord 
Goderich), Edward Stanley, and Sir James Graham left the government. 
Their places, however, were soon filled up, and the ministry appointed a 
commission to inquire into the whole question of the Irish Church. 

Hardly, however, had Lord Grey's ministry tided over this difficulty 
when another appeared. In 1834 the Irish Crimes Act was to be 
Resienation renewed, and ministers were not agreed whether the clause 
of Earl Grey, about political meetings should be re-enacted. Earl Grey 
was for it. Lord Althorp against it. Littleton, the Irish secretary, very 
foolishly told O'Connell that it would not be re-enacted ; and when the 
cabinet, influenced by Earl Grey, decided that it should, O'ConneU 
declared that he had been tricked. Lord Althorp insisted on resigning ; 



1834 Grey — Melbourne 949 

on which, Earl Grey, who had long been weary of the toils of office, seized 
the opportunity to resign too. On this Lord Melbourne became prime 
minister. Lord Althorp most reluctantly remained in 
office, and the Crimes Act was toned down to meet the First Minis- 
views of O'Connell. The appointment of William Lamb, ^^^' 
Viscount Melbourne, to be prime minister was somewhat of a surprise 
to the country. As a follower of Canning he had not shown any 
marked enthusiasm for reform ; in private life he was frivolous and 
inconstant ; and though he had shown decided ability in the various 
offices he had held, especially in the Home Office, and a diligence far 
beyond his repute, few thought him equal to the difficult task of leading 
the Liberal party, and his accession to power probably diminished the 
reputation of the ministry. 

The appointment of Melbourne may be taken as a convenient date for 
noting an important change which was taking place in the political con- 
dition of the country. Ever since the passing of the Keform state of 
Bill a natural reaction had been setting in, partly owing to Parties, 
the bill satisfying the moderate requirements of many of its supporters, 
partly owing to the violent demands of the extreme Radicals, who wished 
to make the Bill a starting-point for a series of constitutional changes. 
The result was to divide off the moderate and extreme sections of the 
Whig party. To describe the new state of parties, new names were 
needed ; and instead of the general appellation of Whig, the party became 
divided into the Liberals and the Radicals — the former of whom accepted 
the Reform Bill as, for the present at any rate, final, and wished to carry 
on the social and political reforms which had occupied parliament since 
1832 ; the latter of whom wished to push forward the ballot and other 
changes, for which the bulk of the party was as yet unprepared. A 
similar change had been taking place in the old Tory party. Men like 
Sir Robert Peel, who were in touch with the ideas of the middle classes, 
saw that the old Tory role of opposition, pure and simple, would secure 
no support in the new constituencies. He therefore declared his adhesion 
to the new order of things, and advocated a well-considered and orderly 
progress within the lines of the existing constitution. For this policy a 
new name was needed, and he and his followers began to call themselves 
Conservatives, as distinguished from the old Tories of the type of Lord 
Eldon. The result was decidedly favourable to the Conservative party. 
They began to gain in elections, especially in the counties where the 
'Chandos Clause,' by giving votes to the farmers, had helped to re- 
establish the influence of the county families. 

This state of aflairs had great influence on the mind of the king, whose 



950 William IV. 1834 

friendship for the Whigs had been decidedly on the wane. In June he 
took an opportnnity to express to the Irish bishops in the strongest 
Melbourne terms the obligation under which he felt himself to defend 
dismissed. ^}^Q\y. churcli and the Protestant religion — a clear menace to 
the Whigs ; and, in November 1835, he took the distinctly unconstitu- 
tional step of dismissing Melbourne and his colleagues. All the usual 
o-rounds for dismissal were absent. The ministers had neither been 
defeated in parliament nor quarrelled on any particular point with the 
king, and they were perfectly agreed among themselves. The king, 
however, was encouraged by the symptoms of a Conservative reaction, 
the extent of which he exaggerated, to seize the first opportunity of 
getting rid of his Whig advisers ; and when the death of Earl Spencer 
necessitated the removal of Lord Althorp to the Upper House, and his 
resignation of the post of chancellor of the exchequer, he summarily 
dismissed his ministers, and sent for the duke of Wellington. 

Wellington, in his turn, advised the king to send for Sir Eobert Peel ; 
but, as that statesman was at Rome, he consented, till his arrival, to 
Peel's First himself fill the posts of the three secretaries of state. Of 
Ministry. course he transacted nothing but routine business, so an 
outcry that was raised against him for aspiring to a dictatorship was 
rather absurd ; and as soon as Peel arrived in England, the ministry 
was constituted as usual, with Peel as first lord of the treasury and 
chancellor of the exchequer, Lyndhurst chancellor, the duke of 
Wellington foreign secretary. Among the junior members of the 
government was W. E. Gladstone, who was first made a lord of the 
treasury, and was then promoted to be junior secretary for the colonies, 
his chief there being Lord Aberdeen. 

Before meeting parliament, Peel decided to appeal to the country ; and 
took the opportunity, in addressing the electors of Tamworth, to define 
Peel's t.he policy of the new Conservative party. ' Our object,' 

Policy. j^g wrote, ' will be the maintenance of peace, the scru- 
pulous and honourable fulfilment, without reference to their original 
policy, of all engagements with foreign powers, the support of public 
credit, the enforcement of strict economy, and the just and impartial 
consideration of what is due to all interests, agricultural, manu- 
facturing, and commercial.' The elections gave a decided proof of 
the reality of the Conservative reaction in the increase of his party 
by more than one hundred members. The numbers, however, still 
stood — Conservatives two hundred and seventy-three. Liberals three 
hundred and eighty ; so that Peel was in a minority by one hundred 
and seven in the House of Commons. Peel's difficulties soon 



1835 Melbourne — Feel— Melbourne 951 

thickened. The duke of Wellington did him great harm by ap- 
pointing Castlereagh's brother, now marquess of Londonderry, to be 
the British ambassador at St. Petersburg. Though Lord Londonderry 
had shown himself an excellent ambassador, he had in the House of 
Lords spoken of the Poles as the Czar's rebellious subjects. As most 
Englishmen sympathised with the Poles, there was an outburst of 
indignation when his appointment was known ; and Peel and the duke 
were only saved from the condemnation of parliament by the magna- 
nimity of Londonderry, who chivalrously declined the post. Peel, too, 
was little more fortunate. In vain he brought forward a series of 
reforming measures. His opponents scouted them as mere imitations 
of those of the Whigs. He was uniformly beaten ; and when Lord 
John Kussell succeeded in carrying a motion for the appropriation of the 
surplus revenues of the Irish Church to general moral and religious 
purposes, he was forced to resign, after holding office four months. 

On this William, much to his disgust, was compelled to recall the 
Whigs ; and Lord Melbourne again came into power. The only im- 
portant changes in this ministry were that Spring Eice ^ „ 
became chancellor of the excheciuer in place of Lord Althorp, Second 

-. , , 1 \ T • • • mi- Ministry. 

and that the great seal was placed m commission. Ihis 
was a heavy blow to Brougham. No one doubted his ability ; but his 
violence, indiscretion, and, above all, his insufferable egotism, had made 
him a most undesirable colleague, and Lord Melbourne was glad of an 
opportunity to quietly shelve him. After a year. Sir Charles Pepys 
became the Liberal lord-chancellor, under the title of Lord Cottenham. 

The principal achievement of Lord Melbourne's second administration 
was the passing of the Municipal Reform Act. The condition of the 
Encrlish boroughs was as anomalous as had been that of Municipal 
the parliamentary constituencies. As a rule, however, the 
corporation of each town filled up its own vacancies, and its members 
held their places for life ; it appointed the freemen of the town, often 
for a money consideration ; and its proceedings were conducted in 
secret. In such a state of affairs it was inevitable that corruption and 
malversation should exist on a large scale ; and in 1833 a commission 
was appointed to go into the whole matter. Its report conclusively 
showed that, in the vast majority of cases, the corporation existed 
solely for the good of its own members, and that the rest of the popula- 
tion had lost all confidence and respect for the local government under 
which they lived. It was, therefore, determined to put municipal 
government once for all on a popular basis. The towns were divided 
into wards, and the ratepayers of each ward were to elect one or more 



952 William IF. 1835 

members to form a town council, which was to be the governing body of 
the town. The town council was to have in its hands the ultimate 
appointment of all corporate officers ; all trading privileges were 
abolished ; and the town councillors ceased to be magistrates. Thus the 
bill stood as it passed the Commons. In the Lords a clause was added, 
and ultimately accepted by the Commons, by which aldermen were to 
be elected by the councillors for six years, during which they were to 
have the same rights and privileges as the elected councillors. The 
effect of this addition was to strengthen the hands of the majority 
of the council for the time being, and to make it more difficult for any 
change in popular opinion to have effect on the policy of the corporation. 
The Municipal Corporation Bill created quite a revolution in town life. 
It not only improved the government of the boroughs, but introduced a 
most important educative influence in the art of local self-government, 
and prepared the way for the application of the same principles in rural 
districts. It was designed to deal with the ancient corporation of 
the city of London in a separate act, but for some reason this was post- 
poned, and the corporation of London still remains unaltered. 

Next year the ministers were successful in carrying a measure which 
removed a fruitful source of ill-feeling between churchmen and Non- 
conformists. Hitherto rectors and vicars had been in the 

Tithes 

Commuta- habit of Collecting their tithe in kind — for example, mark- 
ing every tenth sheaf, and removing it to the tithe barn. 
This process was most exasperating to farmers, and particularly to 
Nonconformists ; so an act was passed called the Tithes Commutation Act, 
which provided for the commutation of tithes in kind into a rent-charge 
upon the land, payable in money, and reckoned according to the average 
price of corn for the seven preceding years. A similar act was passed 
by the Commons for Ireland, but the Lords refused to pass a clause by 
which surplus revenue was to be applicable to general purposes, and the 
bill was, therefore, allowed to drop. 

Two changes made in 1836 had much influence on the political 

education of the people. Since 1712, when Harley's government laid a 

dutv on new-spapers of one penny a sheet, and one shilling 

The Duty on "^ , , . , i i , 

Newspapers on each advertisement, the tax on news had been an 
owere . important source of revenue. North increased it ; and 

under Pitt it was regularly raised to meet the exigencies of the war, 
reaching eventually in 1816 the rate of fourpence a sheet, and three 
shillings and sixpence for each advertisement. This was slightly lowered 
in 1826 ; and in 1833 Lord Althorp lowered the duty on advertisements 
to eighteenpence. The tax on news, however, continued at 4d. a sheet 



1837 Melbourne 953 

till 183G, when Spring Eice lowered the duty to one penny. This reduc- 
tion forms an epoch in the development of the press. For a time the o-ross 
amount of the duty fell ; but the circulation increased so rapidly that 
in 1854 the proceeds of the tax were as nnich as at the old rate. This 
was caused not only by an increase in circidation of the old newspapers 
but by the springing up of a number of others, especially daily papers, 
with a corresponding diffusion of interest and information about political 
ideas. 

The other event was the publication by parliament of its own division 
lists. Hitherto these had been published on hearsay, and without 
parliamentary authority, and the right to keep them 

• 111 -11 Till T Division 

private had been jealously guarded by the members. It Lists pub- 
was felt, however, that, as in practice it was always known 
how members had voted, it was better to publish an authentic list ; and 
authority was now given for the purpose. The result was not only that 
a member's constituents knew for certain how he had voted, but were 
also aware in what divisions he had taken part, so that a valuable check 
was established on the attendance of members ; and the duties of 
members became better fulfilled than before. 

In 1837 no act of importance was passed through parliament ; and in 
June the session was interrupted by the death of the old king, which 
created the necessity for a general election. As sovereign Death of 
of the United Kingdom William was succeeded by his 'VViiham IV. 
niece, Victoria, the daughter of the late duke of Kent ; but as the Salic 
law prevailed in Hanover, the duke of Kent's next brother, the duke of 
Cumberland, became king of that country ; and the separation between 
the crowns was viewed by Englishmen without regret. 



CHIEF DA TES 

A.D. 

The Reform Bill passed, . . - . . 1832 



Slavery abolished, 
Irish Church reformed, 
New Factory Act passed, . 
New Poor Law Act passed, 
Municipal Corporation Act, 



1833 
1833 
1833 
1834 
1835 



CHAPTER VII 

victoria: 1837-1865 

Born 1819 ; married 1840, Albert of Saxe-Coburg. 
PART I 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES AND GOVERNMENTS TO 1865 



France. 


Riissia. 


Prussia. 


Sardinia. 


Louis Philippe, 


Nicholas, 


William I. 


Victor Emmanuel, 


deposed 1848. 


d. 1855. 


1861. 


1849. 


Republic, 1848-1852. 


Alexauder ii.. 




Becomes King of ltalj% 


Napoleou ill.. 


d. 1881. 




1861. 


Emperor, 1852-1870. 









Canada — The Chartists — The Corn Law Agitation — The Afghan, Scinde, and 
Sikh Wars — O'Connell— Repeal of the Corn Laws — The Year of Revolutions 
— The Russian War — Indian Mutiny— Parliamentary Reform — Foreign 
Affairs— Death of Palmerston. 

The new queen had only come of legal age on the twenty-fourth of May 
before the death of King William, and was little known to her subjects. 
The Queen's Her mother, the duchess of Kent, had with great judgment 
Education. j^^p^. j^^j, ^g much as possible from mixing in the society of 
her uncle's court, which was not desirable for a young girl. In her 
seclusion, however, at Kensington Palace nothing had been omitted by 
the duchess wliich could help to fit her daughter for the high place she 
was to occupy. Her intellect and her heart had been alike carefully 
trained. She had been brought up in habits of self-reliance, regularity 
and economy, and when she was called to the duties of her high office, 
she astonished all who had to deal with her by the way in which she 
performed her part. From the very beginning of her reign she showed 
herself determined to reign as a constitutional sovereign, and to make no 
distinction between parties. Such conduct marked a new departure in 
the conduct of the sovereign. George iii. had claimed the right to 
name his ministers, and George iv. and William had barely concealed 
their preferences ; but though the duke of Wellington foretold the 

954 



1837 Melbourne 955 

extinction of the Tories, on the ground that 'he had no small talk, and Peel 
had no manners,' he found that the new sovereign was swayed by no such 
petty considerations, and made the wishes of the House of Commons the 
sole factor in deciding which party should hold office during her reio-n. 
Some of the credit for this should certainly be given to Lord Melbourne 
for it was he who instructed the young queen in the principles and 
practice of constitutional government. The queen was crowned on June 
28, 1838 ; and, on February 10, 1840, she married her cousin, Albert of 
Saxe-Coburg. The marriage was one of affection. Prince Albert was 
a handsome man, of the highest character, distinguished bv tu r, • 

" ' o J 1 ne r^rince 

his devotion to art, music and literature. He made her Consort, 
an excellent husband, doing all he could to aid his wife in performing the 
duties of royalty, and in promoting the moral and intellectual well-being 
of the people among whom he came to live, till his early death in 1861. 

The separation of Hanover from the English crown had been received 
by all classes with relief ; but a much more serious loss than that of 
Hanover threatened to couple with disaster the accession of xhe state 
the new queen. Canada was thoroughly disaffected. Since °^ Canada. 
1774, when Lord North's government had secured the French Catholics 
in the exercise of their laws and religion, the condition of the colony had 
been changed by the influx of large bodies of Englishmen and Scots- 
men, and of Loyalists from the United States, who left that country 
after its declaration of independence. These men were very different in 
character and objects from the old French settlers ; and to deal with the 
new state of affairs Pitt had, in 1791, passed the Canada Bill, by which 
Canada was divided into two parts — Upper and Lower. Lower Canada 
lay along the lower part of the river St. Lawrence, contained the towns 
of Montreal and Quebec, and was inhabited for the most part by a 
French population ; Upper Canada lay along the great lakes, and was 
inhabited exclusively by a British population. This arrangement was poli- 
tically bad, because it prevented any amalgamation between the French 
and English races, and was on that ground condemned by Fox ; and 
commercially unsound, because all the produce of Upper Canada passed 
through the ports of Lower Canada on its way to the sea. Besides this, 
there were constant difficulties in each colony between the governor and 
his executive council, and the legislative assembly which was elected by 
the colonists. In these circumstances the people of Lower Canada, and 
some of Upper Canada, were ready to revolt, and when the queen came 
to the throne many congregations showed their disaffection by leavmg 
the churches when her name was heard in the liturgy. Shortly after, 
armed rebellions broke out, headed in Lower Canada by Papineau, a 



956 Victoria 1837 

French Canadian, and in Upper Canada by M'Kenzie. Both outbreaks 
were put down without difficulty — in Lower Canada by Sir John 
Colborne, supported by the regular troops, and in Upper Canada by 
Major Head, with the assistance only of the local militia. 

It was, however, clear to all parties that a radical change was 

necessary in the government of Canada. Accordingly, the Melbourne 

ministry sent out the earl of Durham to effect a reconstruc- 

Durham's tion of the colouy. Lord Durham was an enthusiastic 
believer in constitutional principles, who had exercised great 
influence over Earl Grey, but had recently withdrawn from Lord 
Melbourne's ministry on the ground that it wanted energy. At first he 
was entrusted almost with a dictatorship in Canada, and used his power 
to the fullest extent. In accordance with Fox's views, he reversed the 
act of 1791, united the two colonies into one, and proposed a scheme of 
ministerial responsibility with a system of local government throughout 
the colony. These parts of his scheme were accepted and acted upon, and 
form the foundation of the present constitution of Canada proper ; and 
Lord Durham's scheme even prepared the way for such a federal union 
of the British North American colonies as has since been carried out. 
On the other hand, his method of dealing with the prisoners who had 
been arrested after the rebellions gave an opportunity of attacking him, 
of which the opposition in the Lower House, and his personal opponents 
in the Upper, were not slow to avail themselves. Had these prisoners 
been tried in Lower Canada, any ordinary jury would have been certain 
to have acquitted them. Some of them, however, had already confessed 
their guilt, and Lord Durham adopted the unconstitutional course of 
condemnina; them to exile in Bermuda, and denouncing death ao-ainst 
them in case they returned to Canada. Such action was clearly illegal, 
for Lord Durham had no authority over Bermuda ; and though it was 
approved in the colony, it was fiercely attacked in the British Parlia- 
ment, especially by Lord Brougham, who took this opportunity of 
revenging himself on Lord Melbourne for not having made him chancellor 
on his return to office in 1836. So weak was Lord Melbourne, that he 
threw over his high commissioner, and cancelled the ordinance of exile. 
Of course. Lord Durham resigned. On his return home he was coldly 
received by the government, but had some consolation in the friendly 
reception accorded to him by the mass of the Liberal party. Disappoint- 
ment, however, certainly injured his health, and though he lived long 
enough to know that his plans for the future of Canada would be carried 
into effect, he died in 1840, at the age of forty-eight. 

The weakness shown by the government in the case of Lord Durham 



1838 , Melbourne 957 

was characteristic of the Melbourne administration. Several causes 
combined to weaken their position. In the general election which fol- 
lowed the queen's accession, they lost a number of seats in weakness of 
England, and, had it not been for the successes of their sup- Melbourne, 
porter O'Connell in Ireland, would have been placed in a minority ; while 
the fact that the government was kept in power by Irish votes did them 
a great deal of harm in England. Another cause of the weakness of the 
government lay in the character of Lord Melbourne himself, who cared 
little about reforms of any kind ; and the impression gained ground 
in the country that little more progress was to be expected under his 
government than under a Conservative administration. This state of 
things was most exasperating to the ardent reformers, and resulted in 
the growth of agitation in the country. This agitation had two objects, 
and was conducted by two quite different classes of men — the manu- 
facturers, who wished to abolish the Corn Laws, and the Radicals, who 
wished for constitutional reform. 

The Radicals and the Whigs had looked on the Reform Bill of 1832 in 
very different lights. The official Whigs, by whom it had been passed, 
regarded it as a final measure of reform — at any rate for 
their time — and Lord John Russell had used language to People's 

Charter 

this eflect ; while the Radicals had regarded it as a mere 
instalment, which would pave the way for further constitutional changes. 
This was specially the feeling among the industrial classes, who saw 
votes given to the small shop-keeping class of o£10 householders, but 
denied to themselves ; and the feeling was specially bitter at places like 
Preston, where the artisans had actually been deprived of their votes by 
the new franchise. Accordingly, an agitation was got up for further 
constitutional changes, and the wishes of its leaders were embodied in 
the following demands : (1) Universal suffrage, on the ground that every 
grown-up man had a right to a vote ; (2) vote by ballot, to secure the 
voter from intimidation ; (3) annual parliaments, to secure the depend- 
ence of members on the wishes of their constituents ; (4) payment of 
members, in order to enable poor men to leave their work if elected ; 
(5) the abolition of the property qualification, by which no one could sit 
in parliament unless he had a certain amount of property (this rule, as a 
matter of fact, had long been evaded) ; and (6) equal electoral districts, 
in order to make the value of each man's vote as nearly equal as possible. 
This set of demands received the popular title of the People's Charter, 
and the demand for it received the support of O'Connell who said : 
' There is your charter ; agitate for it, and never be content with anything 
less.' 



958 Victoria 1838 

The advocates of these changes, who were called Chartists, were of two 
kinds : the moral force Chartists, and the physical force Chartists ; the 
The former of whom were in favour of constitutional agitation 

Chartists, ^j^jy^ ^j^g latter of a resort to force. The chief leader 
of the former were a member of parliament, Feargus O'Connor, a man of 
great natural eloquence and energy, whose position gave him the greatest 
prominence in the eyes of outsiders ; Stephens, a Nonconformist minister ; 
and Henry Hetherington, Henry Vincent, and Lovett, all working men. 
They endeavoured to spread their views by means of public meetings 
and by newspapers, the chief of which was The Northern Star, owned by 
Feargus O'Connor. The physical force Chartists were composed of the 
most ignorant of O'Connor's followers ; they were regarded as dangerous 
to the cause by the leaders, and their only attempt at insurrection was a 
complete failure. This rising took place at Newport, the centre of the 
mining district of South Wales, and was headed by Mr. Frost, formerly a 
magistrate. It was arranged that the miners should march upon the 
town in three bodies, capture the town-hall, and stop the mail to Birming- 
ham, whose non-arrival was to be the signal for a general rising. The 
plan, however, was badly carried out ; Mr. Phillips, the mayor of 
Newport, defended the town-hall with resolution, and the attempt was a 
complete failure. Frost and other ringleaders were arrested, and 
sentenced to transportation. This had the effect of completely crushing 
the hopes of the physical force Chartists ; but the other branch of the 
agitation was continued for years, and roused great enthusiasm among 
the unrepresented classes. 

Of the Anti-Corn Law agitation the centre was Manchester. Between 

1826 and 1836 little attention had been given to the Corn Laws, but in 

that year the depression of trade recalled attention to the 

The Anti- „ , , • ,. , -, • . • n • i i 

Corn Law fact that the price of bread was artihcially raised, and an 

eague. association was formed in London for the purpose of 

agitating against the Corn Laws. The agitation was soon transferred to 

Lancashire where great distress existed, and the lead in this movement 

was then taken up by Kichard Cobden, who had hitherto 

been chiefly known as a successful calico printer. Cobden, 

however, soon showed that he was much more than this. In the way of 

his business he had visited all European countries, the East, and even 

Canada and the United States ; and wherever he had gone, he had shown a 

wonderful capacity for gaining information as to the political and social 

condition of the countries which he visited. The information thus 

gained, Cobden employed to form and illustrate his political ideas ; and 

when he entered on the Anti- Corn Law acritation he brought to bear on 



1839 Melbourne 959 

it an amount of political and economic knowledge, and a wealth of illus- 
tration, which, combined with a lucid and persuasive style, placed him in 
the front rank of the movement either as a writer or a speaker. His chief 
colleague was John Bright, a Rochdale manufacturer, and a 
member of the Society of Friends, who brought to the aid of ^^^^^*- 
the Anti-Corn Law agitation not, indeed, so much information as Cobden, 
but a marvellous command of the English language, and a capacity for 
moving the hearts of his hearers which made him, for many years, one of 
the greatest political forces in the country. It was not, however, till 
1841 that Cobden made his way into parliament, and John Bright was 
not elected a member till 1843. Under Lord Melbourne the Anti-Corn 
Law agitation was represented in parliament by Charles Villiers, who, 
year after year, brought up a motion for the abolition of the Corn Laws, 
and whose importance increased in proportion to the development of the 
agitation which Cobden and Bright were conducting in the country. 

While the country was thus being agitated by Chartism on the one 
hand and the Anti-Corn Law movement on the other, the Melbourne 
ministry, coldly supported by its friends, and attacked 
with renewed vigour by its opponents, became weaker than Jamaica 
ever. At last matters came to a crisis over the Jamaica 
Bill. Since the abolition of slavery the management of the West Indian 
Islands had been a matter of great difficulty. This was especially the 
case in Jamaica, which possessed a legislative assembly and the form of 
constitutional government. The planters would not tamely submit to 
allow their emancipated slaves to become their political equals, and did 
all they could to defeat the spirit of the recent legislation. The governor 
and his council supported the law, while the legislative assembly sup- 
ported the planters. The only way out of the difficulty appeared to the 
Melbourne government to be to suspend the constitution of Jamaica for 
five years, and a bill for this purpose was brought into parliament. For 
a Liberal government to suspend the constitution of a self-governing 
colony was obviously to expose itself to a great deal of invidious criticism. 
The bill was attacked both by the Tories and by the Radicals, and 
eventually the second reading was only carried by five votes. 

On this Lord Melbourne sent in his resignation, and Sir Robert Peel 
attempted to form a ministry, but was met by an unexpected difficulty. 
For many years it had been the practice that the personal ^^^ ^^^ 
attendants of the king— the members of his household— chamber 

^ 1 • • . J? question. 

should be of the same way of thinking as the nunistry ot 

the day, and so when a minister resigned the household resigned too. 

This practice had presented no difficulty in the case of a king, but it 



960 Victoria 1839 

was not so easy in the case of a young queen, who naturally objected 
to the breaking up of her family circle. Lord Melbourne had given 
the most confidential places in the household to ladies closely connected 
with his government — such as the marchioness of Normanby, wife 
of the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and a sister of Lord Morpeth, his 
chief secretary — and these ladies were in the closest attendance on 
the queen. As Sir Robert Peel proposed to change the Irish policy 
of the government, he felt it very awkward that they should have the 
ear of the queen, but had not sufficient tact to make clear to her the real 
object of his wishes. As the queen objected to a complete change of the 
household, Peel declined to go on with the negotiations, and Lord 
Melbourne resumed office. As, however, he was said to have crept back 
to power 'behind the petticoats of the ladies of the bedchamber,' he 
gained little advantage for his party, and though he held office for two 
more years, the Whigs were weaker than ever. 

Several events of importance, however, occurred during the latter part 
of the Melbourne administration. First of these was the war with China. 
The First This contest, into which the ministry were ignominiously 
China War. (dragged by the activity of the Indian opium merchants and 
of the commissioner in China, Captain Elliott, was really fought to 
compel the Chinese to admit the free entry of opium into their ports. 
As the Chinese authorities wished, for reasons of health and morality, to 
check the use of opium, the action of our officials in forcing it upon them 
was perfectly inexcusable ; and the ministry laid down the right principle 
in declaring that ' Her Majesty's government could not interfere for the 
purpose of enabling British subjects to violate the laws of the country 
with which they trade.' Unfortunately the distance between England 
and China prevented the ministry from giving practical effect to its 
excellent principles ; and when hostilities had once begun there seemed 
no alternative but to go on. The Chinese were easily defeated, and 
were forced to grant the demands of the British government, the chief of 
which were the cession of the island of Hong-Kong in perpetuity, the 
opening of five ports to our traders, and the payment of four and a half 
million pounds for our expenses and losses. 

Much more creditable to the government was the adoption of Rowland 
Hill's scheme of a penny postage. Though great progress had been made 

The Penny in the delivery of the mails since Pitt's time, the condition 

Postage. pf ^YiQ post was far behind the requirements of the country. 
The cost of a letter sent from London to Reading was 7d. ; to Brighton, 
8d. ; to Aberdeen, Is. 3kl. ; and to Belfast, Is. 4d. This was paid by 
the receiver of the letter. The result of this system was, first, to put a 



1839 Melbourne 



961 



heavy fine on correspondence, for the cost of transmitting letters was 
nothing like that charged by the post-office ; and also to cause a large 
part of the correspondence of the country to be conducted through 
private hands, or to be smuggled through the post-office by various 
devices. Rowland Hill showed that the cost of transmitting letters did 
not vary with the distance, and proposed to charge a uniform rate of Id., 
to be paid for in advance by a stamp. The plan was investigated by a 
parliamentary committee ; and, in 1839, adopted by the government in 
spite of the opposition of the post-office officials, who feared that the work 
of the post-office would be rendered overwhelming by the increase in the 
number of letters, and of some politicians who feared to face the loss to the 
revenue owing to the diminished charges. Both proved to be wrong. The 
post-office was equal to the new^ demands. The revenue derived from 
the transmission of letters, though at first diminished, soon recovered 
itself ; while the enormous increase in the number of letters sent showed 
what a boon had been conferred on the community by the change. 
Especially great was the boon conferred on business men who wished to 
advertise their goods, and on politicians who desired to disseminate their 
ideas ; and such movements as the Anti-Corn Law agitation gained 
enormously by the facilities for communication aiibrded by Sir Rowland 
Hill's scheme. 

In 1839 the Melbourne ministry made a very important change in the 
administration of the Education Grant. Until that year the J20,000 voted 
in 1833 had been administered by the treasury ; but now National 
the government raised the grant to £30,000 and created an Education. 
Education Department, consisting of the president of the council, the 
vice-president, and four other members. This body, of whom the vice- 
president was the working member and practically minister for educa- 
tion, established a system of inspection of all schools receiving government 
grants, and thus laid the foundation of the existing system of elementary 
education. The establishment of this committee was stoutly opposed by 
Peel, Lord Stanley, and Mr. Gladstone, who was then regarded as the 
' hope of the stern, unbending Tories.' On the other hand, it was sup- 
ported by O'Connell. 

Considering how important is the growth of the British Colonial 
Empire, it is'unfortunate that there are so few striking events in the 
history of the colonies. For the most part their progress has Cohjnial 
been due to the efforts of individuals, the results of which '^ ^''y- 
have been from time to time recognised by the government. Neverthe- 
less, during these years steady progress was being made in occupymg 
the lands which had been secured to us. In 1836 South Australia was 

3 p 



962 Victoria 1839 

first colonised, its capital taking the name of Adelaide from the queen of 
William iv. The next year Natal was founded by Dutch settlers, who 
had made their way north from the Cape of Good Hope. At first they 
were independent ; but in 1841 Natal was placed under English rule. 
In 1839 we occupied Aden, which is to the entrance to the Red Sea 
what Gibraltar is to the Mediterranean. The same year New Zealand 
was first permanently colonised. 

The principal act of parliament passed during Lord Melbourne's 

second administration was the Irish Municipal Reform Bill. This 

measure, which had for six years been a bone of contention 

Municipal between the Upper and Lower Houses, was eventually 
e orm. ^jased upon a compromise. Fifty-eight corporations were 
abolished, and ten were reconstituted. Besides this, parliament was 
engaged in a most important struggle for the right of printing what it 
chose in parliamentary reports. In 1840 the firm of Stockdale brought 
stockd ale's ^^ action for libel against Messrs. Hansard, the parlia- 
^^^^- mentary printers, and obtained a verdict for libel in the 

Court of Queen's Bench. Parliament supported their printers ; and, after 
a long contest, the law court was compelled to give Avay. An act of 
parliament was then passed to prevent such actions being brought for 
the future. The principle at stake was most important, for the publica- 
tion of full parliamentary papers was the great means of educating the 
public as to the merits of any controversy in which parliament was 
engaged, and the position was well stated by Sir Robert Peel when he 
cited the case of the publication of the evidence collected by the com- 
mission on the slave trade, and said : ' Do you believe that slavery would 
have been abolished unless we had published to the world the abuses 
and horrors of slavery ? ' 

On the merits of the Stockdale case both parties were at one ; but the 
weakness of the Whigs was steadily increasing, and at length in 1841 

General Sir Robert Peel carried a direct vote of want of confidence 

Election, ^j^ ^-j^g Melbourne administration by 312 votes to 311. On 
this. Lord Melbourne advised the queen to dissolve parliament, and a 
general election followed. The result was highly favourable to the 
Conservatives, who came back to Westminster with a majority of 81 
votes, counting 367 against the Liberals' 286. Their success was owing 
in general to the progress of the Conservative reaction, which had set in 

Resi na- ^^^^^ *^^ passing of the Reform Bill, and in particular to 

tion of the financial reputation of Sir Robert Peel. On the residt 
^' of the general election being known. Lord Melbourne re- 
signed office, and retired into private life. The fall of the Melbourne 



1842 Melhmirne — Peel 963 

ministry brings to a close the period which succeeded the passing of 
the Eeform Bill of 1832. Many useful measures had been passed, but 
the enthusiasm for reform had died out, and the natural reaction which 
always follows a period of unusual activity had set in. 

Sir Eobert Peel formed his ministry from two sources — the old Tories 
and the Whigs who had dissented from Lord Grey on his Irish ecclesias- 
tical policy. The duke of Wellington sat in the cabinet 
without any special office, and led the ministerial party Second 
in the House of Lords ; Lord Aberdeen was secretary for ^^"^^^'"y- 
foreign affairs ; Lord Stanley was colonial secretary ; and Sir James 
Graham home secretary. Of the junior members of the government 
no one was more important than Mr. Gladstone, who was first vice-presi- 
dent, and afterwards president, of the Board of Trade. He had no seat 
in the cabinet, but to no one did Peel look for more assistance in the 
financial policy on which he so much relied for the strengthening of his 
position in the country. Generally speaking, Peel's policy was to sub- 
stitute direct for indirect taxation. In 1842 he reduced the customs 
duties on many articles, and substituted an income tax for a limited 
period ; and in 1845 he took the duty off no fewer than 430 articles, and 
substituted for them an income tax for three years. 

This was a step in the direction of free trade ; but at the general 
election the maintenance of the Corn Laws had been part of the Con- 
servative programme, and had gained them the votes of The Corn 
the agricultural interest. Peel, however, made a change in ^^ws. 
the method of calculating the duty by introducing the Sliding Scale. 
By this arrangement, when British corn was selling at 51s. a quarter, 
foreign corn could be introduced at a duty of 20s. ; and the duty 
regularly decreased till, when British corn was at 73s., the duty on 
foreign corn fell to Is. This method led to a great deal of gambling on the 
Corn Exchange, the price of corn being artificially raised in order to 
lower the duty on foreign corn, while of course it did not satisfy Cobden 
and Bright, who continued their agitation with more energy than ever. 

During the year 1842 the chief attention of the country was given to 
affairs in India, where the East India Company had engaged in war with 
Dost Mahomed, Ameer of Cabul. Since the Mahratta War ^^^.^^ 
of 1803 the rule of the East India Company had been 
rapidly extended. In 1818 the Pindarees, a set of armed robbers who 
infested the territory of the Great Mogul, were put down and the central 
provinces brought under the direct rule of the company. In 1817 trouble 
began with the Peishwah of Poonah, the nominal head of the Mahrat- 
tas. For above a year the Peishwah maintained himself in the jungle, 



964 Victoria 1839 

but was beaten whenever he ventured to attack the company's troops. 
Eventually he was forced to surrender, and was placed by the company 
at Bithoor, near Cawnpore, where he died in 1853. In 1819 the island 
of Sino'apore, which commands the Straits of Malacca, was annexed. In 
1824 occurred the first Burmese war, which resulted in the cession of 
Eano-oon and Lower Burmah, leaving Upper Burmah, with its capital of 
Ava or Mandalay, independent. In 1826 a usurper murdered the 
o-uardian of the infant Rajah of Bhurtpore, seized the fortress, which 
was one of the strongest in India, and bade defiance to British authority. 
A powerful army, commanded by Lord Combermere, the best of 
Wellinoton's cavalry officers, marched upon the fortress, and, after a 
reo'ular siege, captured it and restored the infant Rajah to the throne. 

In 1833 the charter of the East India Company expired, and, on 
application being made to parliament for its renewal, several important 

changes were made. The accessions of territory made since 
of the Com- Pitt's time had resulted in the company becoming more 
P^"^' than ever the rulers of India ; while it had begun to be 

recognised that the commercial privileges of the company were a bar to 
the development of our trade with the East. Accordingly, the monopoly 
of the trade with the East, hitherto enjoyed by the company, was 
abolished, and the duties of the company were confined to the business of 
ruling only. In order to make the governor- general and council more 
efficient, a lawyer, appointed by the crown, was made a permanent 
member of council, and the first appointment fell to Macaulay, who had 
so much distinguished himself in the debates on the Reform Bill. 

Meanwhile, the advances of the company had brought it into contact 
with the rulers of Scinde, of the Punjab, and of the more distant state of 

Afghanistan. This state, which lies beyond the Hindoo 

Afghanistan. , <> ^ • ■ ^ 

Khoosh, on the upper waters oi the river, contams the 
great cities of Cabul, Ghuznee, Candahar, and Herat. In 1837 the 
greater part of it was ruled by Dost Mahomed of Cabul and his brothers, 
who had expelled the former Ameer, Shah Sujah ; and the exiled 
sovereign was living in Bengal, under the protection of the British. 
Meanwhile, the advance of the Russians in Central Asia had begun to 
fill the company with alarm, and there was considerable apj)rehension 
lest Dost Mahomed should make friends with them and admit them into 
India through the great passes which his territory commanded. This 
fear was increased when the Persians, who were supposed to be instigated 
by Russia, laid siege to Herat, then ruled by a relation of Shah Sujah, 
and were only prevented from taking it by the bravery and skill of an 
English officer, Eldred Pottinger. At this time, Alexander Burnes, who 



1842 



Melbourne — Peel 



965 



believed Dost Mahomed to be friendly to the British, was at his court ; 
but in 1838, when the Russians also sent an envoy, the Ameer did not feel 
strong enough to dismiss him. Accordingly, in spite of Burnes' outbreak 
views, the governor-general declared war against Dost Ma- of War. 
homed, and British troops captured Candahar, Ghuznee, and Cabul. 
Dost Mahomed surrendered, and Shah Sujah was established as Ameer. 
It soon became evident, however, that the new Ameer was intensely 
unpopular. A rising took place, in which Burnes, who was regarded by 
the Afghans as a traitor, was murdered, and the British force, under 
General Elphinstone and the Commissioner, Sir William Macnaghten, 




"^^oach! ^Hydrabad 
^J-^ c/i n d e 



0\u d e 



was besieged in its cantonments. The military arrangements were grossly 
mismanaged ; the houses which contained the provisions were captured, 
and the British force, instead of fighting its way out, even at the risk 
of certain death, agreed to a disgraceful treaty with Akbar Khan, Dost 
Mahomed's son, who had placed himself at the head of the insurgents. 
In the course of a parley with Akbar Macnaghten was murdered, 
Akbar saying to him, ' So you are the fellow who came to take our 
country.' Then General Elphinstone, who, being old and ill, was quite 
past his work, agreed that the British force, which for the most part 
consisted of Sepoys, should be escorted to the frontier, Dost Mahomed 
restored, and a number of British officers handed over as hostages. 



966 Vidmia 1839 

Even this ignominious arrangement was not carried out. As the army 

made its way through the Koord Cabul Pass in January, 1842, it was 

attacked by the mountaineers, and when it emerged, after terrible loss. 

The Re- Ak])ar agreed to save the married women and their hus- 

treat. bands. The rest then marched on, only to encounter the 

wild tribes of the Jugdulluk Pass. These completed their destruction ; 

and only one European, Dr. Brydon, reached Jellalabad, where he found 

General Sale holding out at the entrance of the Khyber Pass. Shortly 

after the withdrawal of tlie British Shah Sujah was murdered. This 

disastrous affixir, more disgraceful to our army than anything which had 

ever happened in India, was a terrible blow to our prestige, and had not 

immediate steps been taken to restore our military ascendency, a general 

rising in India would probably have followed. Fortunately, General 

Siege of Nott held his own at Gandahar ; and General Sale resisted 

Jellalabad. every effort to capture Jellalabad. The British, therefore, 

possessed two roads into Afghanistan ; and, advancing from these points, 

General Pollock marching from Jellalabad, and General Nott from 

Gandahar, made their way to Cabul, captured the town, and destroyed 

„ the Bala Hissar or citadel, as a punishment for the murder 

Re-conquest 

of Afghan- of Burnes and Macnaghten. The victory of Pollock was 
followed by a proclamation of the governor-general. Lord 
Ellenborough, that the British would not force a sovereign on a 
reluctant people. Dost Mahomed was, of course, restored, so that no 
advantage whatever was effected by the war ; and Burnes' declaration 
that the true jjolicy of the company Avas to keep on good terms with 
Dost Mahomed completely made good. 

The war in Afghanistan led to a quarrel with the Ameers of Scinde, 
through whose territory our troops had been allowed to march on 
The Scinde their way to Afghanistan. Encouraged by the British 
^^^^- disasters, they ventured to break their engagements, and in 

1843 war broke out. The British general. Sir Charles Napier, defeated 
the Ameers, after severe fighting, at Meeanee and Hyderabad, and Scinde 
was then added to the presidency of Bombay. 

Hardly had Scinde been brought into order when trouble broke out 
in the Punjab or ' land of five rivers.' This district which comprises the 
The Sikh basins of the Jhelum, Chenab, Eavee, Sutlej, and the middle 
Wars. course of the Indus, was in the hands of the Sikhs. This name 

means ' disciple,' and was adopted by the followers of Nanuk, a religious 
leader who attracted followers both from the Hindoos and from the Ma- 
homedans. At the beginning of this century the Sikhs found a great ruler 
in Runjeet Singh, who made himself master of the Punjab, and maintained 



1843 Melbourne — Peel 967 

it by the niiglit of the Sikh army, which styled itself ' the army of God and 
the Sikh Khalsa.' Throughout his life Runjeet Singh was on excellent 
terms with the British ; but on his death in 1839 the Punjab fell into hope- 
less confusion, and his army of 60,000 men became completely unmanage- 
able. At length it invaded Hindostan, came into collision with the British 
army, and was driven back across the Sutlej in the battles of Moodkee 
and Ferozeshah. Next year the invasion was renewed ; but the Sikhs 
were again beaten at Aliwal and the terrible battle of Sobraon. Runjeet 
Singh's widow was then left to govern the country in the name of his 
son Dhuleep Singh. This arrangement, however, failed. In 1848 the 
Sikh army again took the field, came very near beating a British force 
under Lord Gough in the battle of Chillian wallah ; but was eventually 
utterly routed at Goojerat. After this the Punjab was annexed by the 
Company and organised by British officials, of whom Sir Henry and 
John Lawrence were the most distinguished. 

Soon after taking office Peel found himself called on to deal with a 
Repeal agitation. This had been begun by O'Connell directly after the 
passing of the Catholic Emancipation Bill, and reached its The Repeal 
culmination in 1843. O'Connell was a born agitator ; he ^g'tation. 
knew how to stir all the passions of his countrymen, and he made it 
his great object to rouse their hostility to 'the Saxon,' by which he 
meant the British connection with Ireland. This action of his did infinite 
harm, as for many years the race hostility in Ireland had been dying out ; 
but for his immediate purpose it was extremely successful, and all over 
the country gigantic meetings were held in favour of Repeal. At last 
he declared that 1843 should be the Repeal year. It was his practice to 
hold his meetings at great historical places, such as the hill of Tara ; and 
in October 1843 he summoned one to meet at Clontarf. The very day 
before the meeting the government forbade it. O'Connell, forced to 
choose between obedience to the law and armed resistance, gave way, 
and to the amazement of his followers, issued a proclamation ordering that 
the meeting should not take place. This was an anti-climax ; the mass 
of his followers had believed that O'Connell had been leading up to 
insurrection, and when they found that he had no intention of fighting, 
the majority abandoned the movement in disgust. The power of 
O'Connell, therefore, was gone, and it was probably a mistake of the 
government to indict him for high treason. He was prosecuted, however, 
and convicted before a jury composed entirely of Protestants. Such a 
conviction might easily have restored his popularity in Ireland ; but an 
appeal being made against it on the ground of irregularity, it was fortu- 
nately set aside by the law lords of the Upper House in 1844. O'Connell 



968 Vidcnia 1843 

himself recognised that his reign was over ; his health broke down, and 
he died in Italy in 1847. 

Before O'Connell's death Peel had done something by way of conciliat- 
insr the Irish Roman Catholics. Until 1795 the Irish Roman Catholic 

priests had, for the most part, been educated at the Roman 
Maynooth Catholic seminary of St. Omer in France, but when this was 

destroyed in the course of the French Revolution, a similar 

college had been set up in Ireland, and since 1795 had been in receipt of 

a small government grant. In 1845 Peel passed a measure for increasing 

this grant, and was strongly supported by Macaulay, who had been a 

member of Lord Melbourne's government. In consequence of this 

measure, Mr. Gladstone resigned his post in the government. He was 

not now opposed to the Maynooth grant, but he had written a book 

called The State in its Belations with the Church, in which he had 

expressed himself opposed to such grants. Had he retained office he was 

afraid that he Avould be thought to have changed his mind for the sake of 

keeping his place ; accordingly he resigned his post, and supported tlie 

government as a private member. 

In 1843 an important crisis occurred in the religious life of Scotland. 

Ever since 1712, when, in opposition to the feeling of the Scottish 

^, „ . , church, the British Parliament had restored the ancient 
The Scottish ' 

Free rights of the lay patrons of Scottish jjarishes, there had been 

constant friction between the patrons, who claimed to 
appoint the ministers, and the parishioners, who demanded the right to 
refuse to accept the minister so appointed. In 1843, after an unpopular 
minister had been presented to the parish of Auchterarder, and placed in 
possession of the manse, and a minister presented to the parish of Strath- 
bogie had obtained an injunction from a civil court, requiring the Pres- 
bytery to take him on trial, no less than five hundred ministers and a 
large proportion of their parishioners, headed by Thomas Chalmers, left 
the Established Church, and organised the Free Presbyterian Church 
of Scotland. Eight years later, on census Sunday 1851, 228,758 persons 
attended the morning service of the Established Church, and 253,482 
that of the Free Church. 

England, too, was being stirred by a religious movement. This was 
set on foot by a small circle of Oxford men, most of them connected 

^, with Oriel College, from whom it is generally known as the 

The ^ ' sr. J 

Oxford ' Oxford Movement,' led by Keble, Newman, and Pusey. 

Its beginning is usually dated from 1833, when it received 

a special impetus from the preaching by Keble of an assize sermon at 

Oxford on the action of the Irish Church commission in dealing with the 



1845 Peel . 969 

Irish Church. The general object of these men was to stimulate the 

spiritual life of the country, to lay stress upon the continuity which 

existed between the Church of England and the primitive church, and to 

protest against the Liberalism of the day, which they thought looked on 

the church too much in the light of a department of the State. Many of 

their particular views were enunciated in a series of Tracts for the Times, 

and Newman, as vicar of the University Church of St. Mary, acquired 

by his preaching immense influence over the undergraduates. By 

degrees, however, Newman found himself more and more out of accord 

with the formularies of the Church of England, and in 1845 he joined 

the Church of Rome. In this he was followed by many others ; but 

Pusey and Keble still adhered to the English Church, and the movement 

thus initiated has been of immense importance in forming the views and 

conduct of a large section both of the clergy and laity of the present day. 

Between 1841 and 1845 comj)aratively little progress had been made by 

the Anti-Corn Law agitation. It was fairly strong out of doors, and in 1843 

Cobden and Bright had begun a series of meetings in Covent 

The Anti- 
Garden Theatre which attracted a good deal of attention ; Corn Law 

but in parliament it was still very weak, and Mr. Villiers ^^S"^- 

found his annual motion supported by a mere handful of members. No 

one expected any immediate change in the fiscal policy of the country, 

for though, in 1842, Peel had distinctly declared that he was in favour 

of the principle of ' buying in the cheapest market and selling in the 

dearest,' he had at the same time declared that, in his opinion, corn and 

sugar were exceptions to the general rule. The attitude of the country 

towards the Corn Laws depended largely upon the harvest of the year, 

and during the first years of Peel's ministry the harvests were uniforndy 

good, and the question of the admittance of foreign corn did not seem to 

the public very important. However, in 1845, a change came. The 

harvest was worse than had been known for years. In England this 

was very serious, but still more so in Ireland, where the a Bad 

vast majority of the population lived wholly upon potatoes harvest. 

—the cheapest vegetable food. When the potato crop was ruined by 

the continuous rains, the Irish peasants had nothing to fall back uj^on, 

and famine stared them in the face. Confronted with such a disaster. 

Peel decided that something must be done, and proposed to the cabinet 

to declare the ports free l)y an order in council, at the same time telling 

his colleagues that if the ports were once free it would be very difficult 

to close them again. To this step, however, the duke of Wellington and 

Lord Stanley refused to agree, and the proposal was consequently 

dropped. 



970 Victoria 1845 

Hitherto the Whigs had been as little in favour of free trade in corn 
as the Tories. Lord Melbourne had declared that ' of all the maddest 
things he ever heard of the proposal to abolish the Corn 
Edinburgh Laws was the maddest' ; and Lord John Russell, though 
^^^^^- more liberal on this subject than Lord Melbourne, had 

never gone further than a proposal of a fixed duty of eight shillings per 
quarter. But as soon as it was known that the cabinet would not open 
the ports, Lord John Russell wrote a letter from Edinburgh, known as 
the Edinburgh Letter, announcing his unqualified conversion to the 
principle of free trade in corn, and urging his constituents to move the 
government in the same direction by 'petition, by address, by remons- 
trance.' Between them, the famine and the Edinburgh Letter forced 
Peel's hand, and he at once recommended the cabinet to call parliament 
together with a view to the speedy repeal of the Corn Laws. To this 
policy the Duke of Wellington agreed ; but as Lord Stanley refused to 
consent to it. Peel thought it w^ould be difficult to carry the measure 
against the influence that Lord Stanley represented, and sent in his 
resignation. Accordingly the queen asked Lord John Russell, whose 
letter had made him the leader of the Whig Free-traders, to form a 
ministry ; to this Lord John Russell agreed, but met with an insuperable 
difficulty in composing his cabinet, for Earl Grey, the son of the former 
prime minister, refused to take office if, as Russell intended, Lord 
Palmerston was to be foreign secretary. Grey was also strongly of 
opinion that a seat in the cabinet ought to be given to Mr. Cobden ; and 
on neither point would Lord John Russell give way. His attempt, 
therefore, to form a ministry failed, and Peel was accordingly requested 
to take back his resignation. This he did. Lord Stanley alone of the 
cabinet refused to help him, and his place was taken by Mr. Gladstone. 
In January 1846 parliament met. Peel at once introduced his 
Corn Laws measure, and eventually carried it by the aid of his own 
repealed. personal followers, the Whigs and the Free-traders. By 
the act so passed, the duty on corn was to be reduced rapidly during the 
next three years, till it stood at a registration duty of one shilling. The 
effect of this was at once to lower the price of corn. Had this occurred 
without any compensating circumstances, it would have had the efi'ect of 
lowering rents in proportion, and of making bankrupt all farmers who 
held their lands upon leases. Land would also have been throw^n out of 
cultivation wholesale, and thousands of agricultural labourers deprived of 
employment. As it w^as, the result was not at the time so disastrous to 
agriculture as was feared, for the fall in the price of corn was coincident 
with a rapid increase in the prosperity of our manufacturing industries, 



1846 Peel 971 

a growth of the town population, and a consequent increase in the 
demand for meat, milk, and straw, which could not then be obtained 
from abroad. It was, however, certain that in the long run agriculture 
would suffer, as soon as American corn began to compete on a large 
scale with that grown in the United Kingdom. This began to be the 
case between 1870 and 1880, when the opening up of the prairie lands 
and the development of the American railway system brought immense 
quantities of American corn into the market. Prices then fell so rapidly 
that wheat-growing became almost unremunerative ; and the condition 
of agn-iculture, now that wheat is selling at 20s. a quarter, has become 
one of the most difficult problems of British statesmanship. 

It was not to be expected that the representatives of the agricultural 
interest would readily forgive Peel for having repealed the Corn Laws, 
and the country gentry found a vigorous champion in 

i->- --T-x- T Tv/r-r-v- 1- 1- in 1 Disraeli. 

JBenjamm Disraeli. Mr. Disraeh was not himself a member 
of the landed aristocracy. His fiither was a literary man of Jewish 
descent, and he himself had made an early reputation by some brilliant 
novels. Born in 1805, he entered parliament in 1837 as a Tory, and up 
to 1846 had not met with much success — indeed, his first speech was 
laughed down. But when Peel announced his intention of repealing the 
Corn Laws, he stepped forward as the chanii3ion of the country gentle- 
men, and immediately took a leading position in parliament. Disraeli 
had already shown himself a master of phrases. He it was who described 
the Tories under Peel as ' having caught the Whigs l)athing, and stolen 
their clothes.' He had denounced Peel's government as an ' organised 
hypocrisy,' and Peel himself as a man of ' sublime mediocrity,' and he 
now employed all his genius to punish Peel for what the Tories regarded 
as his second betrayal — the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act 
being the first. Disraeli, however, was not at first strong enough to be 
the nominal leader of the Protectionists. That post was given to Lord 
George Bentinck, a son of the duke of Portland, whose position and 
character secured him respect, and who had considerable skill in organ- 
ising his followers ; but after Bentinck's death in 1848 Disraeli became 
the nominal as well as the real leader of his party in the Lower House. 

Meanwhile, the failure of the potato crop had reduced Ireland to the 
most terrible condition. The reduction in the price of corn could do 
little for people who lived upon potatoes, and whose crop The Irish 
had fiiiled. The peasants were dying by thousands, and all Fa"^!"^- 
the efforts of public and private charity seemed inadequate to stem the 
disaster. In this state of affairs it was not to be expected that there 
would be no increase of crime among the panic-stricken people, and to 



972 Victoria 1846 

meet this Peel brought forward an Arms Act. This was naturally 
objected to by the Irish members, and by many of the English Liberals, 

Fall of and the Protectionists saw that if they too voted against it 

Peel. pggj would be defeated. It was their opportunity for 

revenge, and they took it. Peel was defeated by a majority of 73, and at 
once resigned office. 

He was succeeded by Lord John Russell, who made Lord Palmerston 
foreign secretary. Earl Grey now consented to be colonial and w^ar 

Russell's secretary ; the earl of Clarendon was f>resident of the Board 

Ministry. ^^ Trade, and Macaulay w^as paymaster of the forces. At 
home the chief attention of the new government was given to Ireland, 
where death and emigration were decimating the country. To relieve 
the distress the sum of ,£10,000,000 Avas voted by parliament, but the 
amount was cpiite inadequate. Between 1846 and 1850 the poimlation 
diminished by nearly two millions. To cope with disorder the Russell 
ministry, though they had voted against Peel's Arms Act, were compelled 
to liring in a similar Act of their own. This they passed by the mag- 
nanimous aid of Sir Robert Peel, Avho declared that ' the best reparation 
that could be made to the last government would be to assist the present 
government in passing this law.' 

The events of the famine had brought into prominent notice the 

poverty of many of the Irish landlords, who wdth the best will in the 

. w^orld were able to do very little for their tenantry at such 

cumbered a crisis, and who were at all times prevented by want of 
capital from carrying out the improvements which were 
needed for the development of the country. Their estates being as a 
rule strictly entailed and heavily mortgaged, escape from their j)osition 
without the aid of Parliament seemed imj^ossible. Accordingly, with a 
view both of aiding the existing race of impecunious landlords to pay off 
their liabilities by selling their lands, and to introduce a class of land- 
lords with more enterprise and capital, an Encumbered Estates Court 
was set up by act of Parliament, and through its agency a large number 
of Irish estates passed into the hands of Englishmen and Scotsmen, who 
were often induced to -purchase by being told that the rents were too 
low, and might easily be raised. 

In 1847 a fiu'ther step w^as made in limiting the hours of labour. By 

Fielden's Act the work of those under eighteen was limited to ten hours 

a day, and eight on Saturdays. As this carried with it a 

Factory similar limitation on the w^ork of adult hands, whose work 

could not be carried on without that of young persons under 

eighteen, it practically amounted to a ten hours' day. This act was 



1848 Peel — Russell 



973 



opposed by Cobden and Bright, and what had come to be called the 
Manchester School, but it was supported by the Protectionists. 

The year 1848 is memorable for the outbreak on the continent of a 
series of revolutions. These began in France in February by the overthrow 
of Louis Philippe, who took refuge in this country. His a Year of 
government had never had a firm hold on France ; at the first Revolutions, 
breath of revolution it succumbed, and its place Avas taken by a republic. 
The movement then spread to Germany. There it took two forms : the 
one the demand of the people of individual states for constitutional 
government ; the other, a desire for a union of all Germany on the basis 
of nationality. The former of these had some success, but the time had 
not come for the latter, and Frederick William iv. of Prussia declined the 
imperial crown when off'ered to him, on the ground that the states were 
not unanimous. In Austria, on the other hand, the national movement 
took the form of a rising of the Hungarians, under Louis Kossuth, 
against Austrian rule. The Hungarians fought admirably, and enlisted 
the sympathy of Europe ; but in 1849 the Eussians intervened, and the 
rebellion was crushed out. Kossuth and the other leaders escaped into 
Turkey, and thence made their way, by way of England, to America. 
In Italy Mazzini, who had long been advocating an Italian republic, and 
the expulsion of the Austrians, organised a popular rising, and Charles 
Albert, king of Sardinia, led an army against the Austrians in Lombardy. 
Eventually both were defeated. Radetzky beat the Sardinians at the 
battle of Novara, and though Mazzini succeeded for a time in establishing 
a republic at Rome, it was put down by French republican troops, and 
the rule of the pope restored. 

In England much sympathy was aroused by these events, but she had 
her own share of difficulties. These took the form of a rebellion in 
Ireland, and a Chartist demonstration in London. After ^^ 
O'Connell lost influence in 1843, the leadership of the Repeal ' United 
agitation^which in their hands was simply a movement for 
Irish independence— fell into the hands of a number of enthusiastic young 
men, of whom John Mitchel, Thomas Francis Meagher, and Charles 
Gavan Duffy, and Smith O'Brien, an older man and member of parlia- 
ment, were the most remarkable. Mitchel was the editor of the United 
Irishman, a paper he had founded in consequence of the moderation of 
O'Connell's organ, the Nation, and in it he deliberately attempted to 
goad his countrymen into insurrection, and explained week by week 
the best methods of attacking the British soldiery. To meet him the 
government passed an act by which writing and speaking with a view 
to excite sedition was constituted a crime under the new name of 



974 Victoria 1848 

treason felony. Under this act Mitchel was convicted and transported. 
He expected that an attempt wonld be made to rescue him ; but no 
such attempt was made. Shortly afterwards, Smith O'Brien and 
Meagher, who had also been tried but acquitted, drifted into, rather than 
deliberately engaged in, an insurrectionary movement. This outbreak 
was never serious — an attack upon some police who had taken refuge in 
a cottage at Ballingarry, was its greatest achievement ; and their follow- 
ing having broken up, O'Brien and Meagher were quietly arrested. 
They were condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted into 
transportation. O'Brien was ultimately allowed to return to Ireland, 
and Meagher escaped from Tasmania and made his way to the United 
States. The insurrection showed the unpractical nature of the Young 
Ireland movement, and for some time the spirit of insurrection seemed 
to have died out in Ireland. 

In England the Chartist movement was even less serious. Encouraged 
by the success of the Parisians in effecting an overthrow of the govern- 
The ment, and quite oblivious of the fact that whereas Louis 

Chartists. Philippe's government was extremely weak, the English 
ministry was supported in maintaining law and order by the vast majority 
of the people of the country, they determined to show their strength 
by holding a great meeting on April 10, 1848, and marching in proces- 
sion to Westminster, for the purpose of presenting a monster petition 
to parliament. A quarter of a million persons were, it was announced, 
to take part in the procession, and the petition was said to be signed by 
more than five and a half million persons. The anticipation of the great 
day roused much apprehension among the middle classes. The govern- 
ment, however, was thoroughly prepared. As commander-in-chief, the 
duke of Wellington had garrisoned the Post-office, the Tower, the Bank, 
and other important buildings. Soldiers under cover, but perfectly 
ready for action, held the approaches to the bridges, and no less than 
170,000 special constables had been sworn in; In face of such prepara- 
tions, and the certainty that any rash movement would lead to a terrible 
and useless loss of life^ Feargus O'Connor advised the Chartists not to 
march in procession. As in the case of O'Connell, this advice was the 
deathblow of the movement. Not more than twenty-five thousand 
persons, spectators included, attended the meeting, and no procession 
was formed. The great petition when presented overwhelmed its authors 
with ridicule. It was found that there were less than two million 
signatures all told ; that sheets and sheets of names had been written 
by the same person, and among the signatures were such obvious forgeries 
as those of the queen, Prince Albert, the duke of Wellington and Sir 



1851 Russell 975 

Robert Peel, to say nothing of Punch, Davy Jones, ' Cheeks the Marine,' 
and other fictitious characters. Ridicule, however, would not have proved 
the end of Chartism, had not other causes operated as M^ell. causes of 
The legislation that followed the Reform Bill was beginnino- ^^^ disap- 
to tell. The strong feeling excited by the new Poor Law Chartism. 
was dying out. Projects of parliamentary reform were being taken up by 
responsible statesmen,and the abolition of the Corn Laws had been followed 
by a great increase in the material prosperity of the artisan classes. 

In 1849 the system of local self-government, which had been intro- 
duced in Canada in 1840, was extended to the Australian colonies. 
The method was based on a division of political power 
between the mother-country and the colony. All strictly Seif-Govern- 
local matters, with control over customs duties, the militia, "^^"*- 
and the land were handed over to the colony ; foreign affairs were 
reserved to the mother-country, which, at her exclusive cost, provided a 
navy and standing army for the whole empire, the colonies not being 
bound to make any contribution for these purposes. Within the self- 
governing colony itself, the system of government employed was imitated 
from that of the mother-country. The governor, appointed by the 
queen, was, to all intents and purposes, a constitutional sovereign, and 
acted by the advice of his ministers, who were responsible to an elected 
chaml>er, consisting of two houses. Like the sovereign, he had the right 
to refuse his consent to bills passed by the legislature. In practice, 
therefore, each colony managed its own affiiirs, subject to the rarely 
exercised authority of the mother-country. It was anomalous for two 
reasons : first, because the colonists had no direct voice in the manage- 
ment of foreign affjxirs, and peace and war, in which their interests were 
bound up with those of the inhabitants of the mother-country ; the 
second, because the colonies, though containing a steadily increasing 
proportion of the wealth and population of the whole empire, contributed 
little or nothing to its general military and naval defence. 

The same year parliament repealed the Navigation Laws, so that for 
the future no restriction was made with respect either to j^^^jg^^jo^ 
the ships or the seamen by whom the commerce of the Laws 

■*• . repealed. 

British empire was carried on. (See page 928.) 

The idea of inaugurating a new era of history, in which the free 
exchange of products should take the place of protection, and friendly 
competition in arts and manufactures should be substituted ^^^ 
for political rivalry, which was regarded by the Free- Exhnjition 
traders as the real object of the repeal of the Corn and 
Navigation Laws, and other Free-trade legislation, found further 



976 Victoria 1848 

expression in 1851 in the opening of the first of a long series of inter- 
national exhibitions. This was held in Hyde Park, under the presidency 
of Prince Albert, in a building of glass and iron designed by Joseph 
Paxton and now removed to Sydenham. In it all the civilised 
nations of the world displayed their various productions, and it was 
attended by a vast concourse of people. Its eflFects were great, but not 
altogether what were expected. So far from introducing an era of 
peace, its date may almost be taken as that of the close of the long peace 
which followed the revolutionary wars. From a cosmopolitan point of 
view, it undoubtedly supplied a great stimulus to progress by making the 
more backward nations acquainted with the methods in use among their 
more advanced neighbours, especially by showing the continental nations 
how British manufacturers carried on their business. On the other hand, 
it tended to stimulate foreign competition in markets where there had 
hitherto been a practical monopoly for British goods. In 1851, however, 
the superiority of British manufactures was so marked that foreign 
competition was hardly thought of as a serious matter ; and, moreover, it 
was an article of unquestioned belief with the Free-traders that a very 
few years would witness the adoption of their principles by the whole 
civilised world — an expectation which has turned out to be mistaken. 

Between 1848 and 1852 three prominent leaders — Bentinck, Peel, and 
Wellington — were removed by death. In 1848 died Lord George 
Bentinck, the honest but not very able leader of the Protectionists in 
Death of the House of Commons ; and as Lord Stanley had sat in 
Lord George ^|^g House of Lords since 1844, Disraeli was left to the 

tJentinck. ' 

unquestioned leadership of his party in the Lower House. 
Duke of ^ ^^ 1^^^ importance politically was the death of the duke 
Wellington. Qf Wellington, who passed quietly away in September 
1852. His political life had not been so successful as his military, 
and gained him much unpopularity. His chief claim to political 
insight is his clear apprehension of the fact that, the centre of gravity 
of political power having definitely shifted to the House [of Commons, 
the House of Lords must be prepared to give way whenever its views 
were in conflict with the clearly expressed wishes of the nation. Sir 
Death of Robert Peel died in 1850. His death left a considerable 
^^^^' blank in British politics. For some time it had seemed as 

if he would again take the leading place. Lord John Russell's ministry 
had not proved very popular ; and the Protectionists alone were too weak 
and too uncertain of their policy to secure the confidence of the country. 
On the other hand. Peel's strength lay, not only in his own character 
and experience, but in the number of able men who had attached them- 



1852 Russell 977 

selves to him, and were known as the ' Peelites.' Among these were Lord 
Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, Sidney Herbert, Edward Cardwell, and 
William Ewart Gladstone; and the whole group numbered some 'forty 
members of the House of Commons. Such a body, if it acted together, 
held the key of the situation ; and its individual members commanded 
attention whatever subject was under discussion. Acute observers were 
of opinion that one party or the other must make terms with so impor- 
tant a l)ody ; and Macaulay, while bitterly lamenting the decay of Whia 
principles, declared that power would go ' to those nasty Peelites.' Such 
was the state of aflfairs when Peel, at the age of sixty-two, was killed by 
a fall from his horse in July 1850. Though deprived of their leader, his 
followers still held together. 

The deaths of Peel, Bentinck, and Wellington mark the close of a 
distinct period in British history —that in which the direct results of 
the Reform Bill of 1832 were worked out ; and from 1850 Parliament 
a new period, with new objects of interest, sets in. In ary Reform, 
domestic politics the central fact which gives unity to the next twenty 
years is the rise of a new reform movement. The settlement of 1832 
was eminently artificial. The line drawn both in counties and towns 
between voters and non-voters was purely arbitrary ; and the spread of 
education and of political ideas caused it to be called in question. Such 
a revival of the reform movement was opposed to the ideas of statesmen 
like Lord John Russell, who had regarded the franchise question as 
settled for their time ; and for some years it had been left to the 
Chartists. In 1850 the matter was broached in parliament by a regular 
member of the Whig party. This was Locke-King, who brought forward 
a motion for assimilating the county and borough franchises, and carried 
it against the government by one hundred and two to fifty-two. On 
this Lord John Russell resigned. Lord Derby was then asked to form 
a ministry, but as he felt that his party in the Commons was not strong 
enough to justify his taking office in opposition both to the Whigs and 
to the Peelites, he declared himself unable to do so ; and Lord John 
Russell was persuaded to retain office. His position, however, was very 
weak ; and in 1852 he was again forced to resign. 

This arose from the action of Lord Palmers ton. Lord Palmerston 
had been secretary for foreign affairs under Lords Grey and Melbourne, 
and held the same post under Lord John Russell. In Lord 
spite, however, of his long tenure of office, and his thorough Palmerston. 
acquaintance with foreign aflairs, he had nevertheless been a thorn in 
the side of many Whig politicians. In the first place, he had a 
somewhat jaunty and supercilious manner of asserting the rights of 

3 Q 



978 Victoria 1852 

Englishmen without much regard for the feelings of foreigners, which 
was most distasteful to men like Cobden and Bright, and also to 
Mr. Gladstone, who always tended to regard all questions from the 
cosmopolitan rather than from the British point of view. Lord Palmer- 
ston also had a great belief in himself, and annoyed his colleagues by 
doing what he called ' making a stroke off his own bat,' and committing 
them to a line of conduct of which they did not wholly approve. The 
same habit also gained him disapproval at court, where both the queen 
and Prince Albert were often displeased to find that the foreign 
minister had embarked on a policy which they had not had time to 
consider and approve of, but from which it was now too late to dniw 
back. All these things caused friction ; but Lord Pahnerston, who had 
a consummate knowledge of the House of Commons and of his country- 
men, went his own way without much regard either for his colleagues 
or for the court. 

The first ' full dress ' attack on Lord Palmerston's policy arose out of 

the once famous Don Pacifico case in 1849. Don Pacifico was a man of 

dubious nationality, but undoubtedly a British subiect, 

The Don , ^ . -, ^ ^ n • • .1 tt- 

Pacifico whose goods had been destroyed in a not at Athens. His 
case was energetically taken up by Lord Palmerston ; 
gunboats were sent to Athens, and reparation extracted from the Greek 
government by a threat of bombardment. So much dissatisfaction was 
felt at this high-handed conduct that, to bring matters to a crisis, a 
friendly motion was introduced by Mr. Eoebuck, approving of Lord 
Palmerston's action. It was opposed by Cobden, Bright, Gladstone, and 
Disraeli ; but Palmerston defended himself in a clever speech, and 
declared that it was his intention to make the rights of the meanest 
British subject as safe as that of the Roman, whose proud boast — 'Civis 
Romanus sum ' — announced him to be the privileged citizen of the ancient 
world. Palmerston knew his audience well, and struck exactly the 
note which he was sure would appeal to his hearers ; and the result was 
that Roebuck's vote was carried by three hundred and ten to two hun- 
dred and sixty-four. His next difficulty arose with the queen in 1850. 
So annoyed was she with Palmerston's method of conducting business 
that she sent him a letter, in which she laid it down as a rule (1) 
that Lord Palmerston was to state distinctly what he proposed to do, 
so that the queen might know as distinctly to what she was giving her 
sanction ; (2) that the measure was not to be afterwards arbitrarily altered 
or modified by the minister ; (3) that the drafts of correspondence were to 
be sent to her in plenty of time for her to make herself acquainted with 
their contents. 



1852 Russell 979 

Palmerston, of course, submitted ; but in 1852 his impulsiveness 
produced fresh trouble. In 1848 the French had elected as president of 
their republic Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of The French 
the great Napoleon, and a personal friend of Lord Palmer- '^°"P "^'^tat. 
ston, who had seen much of him during his exile in England. In 
1851 Louis Napoleon formed a plan for making himself the real ruler 
of France. By a coujj cVetat carried out on the 2nd of December of that 
year he seized and imprisoned the leading republican deputies, carried 
terror into the hearts of his opponents by shooting down large numbers 
of persons — mostly unresisting — in the streets of Paris; and practically 
abolished the republic in favour of a thinly -veiled despotism, to which 
the keystone was given in 1852 by his assumption of the title of 
emperor. Directly .after the massacre of Paris, when Lord John Russell 
and his colleagues were most anxious to do nothing that could be 
regarded as showing approval of what had been done. Lord Palmerston 
was indiscreet enough to express to the French ambassador his private 
impression that Bonaparte could not have acted otherwise. This 
expression of opinion, though quite unofficial, was of course transmitted 
to Paris and published to the world. Ministers, ^. naturally, were 
indignant with Palmerston ; and, when his resignation was demanded, 
he had no course but to leave office. He was not, however, by any 
means abashed, and believed he would still get his countrymen to 
reinstate him in power. 

Lord Palmerston had not to wait long for an opportunity of having 
what he called his ' tit-for-tat with John Russell.' The revival of the 
French empire under a member of the Bonaparte family The Militia 
had given rise to very considerable anxiety on this side 
of the Channel. It was believed that— partly to divert the thoughts of 
his subjects from home aflfairs, partly to flatter the French craving for 
military glory, which had been somewhat tarnished by the events of 
1814 and 1815— the emperor would be compelled to embark upon a war- 
like policy. If he did so, it was thought that Great Britain, Russia, and 
Prussia would be the objects of his attack ; and, as a mere matter of 
precaution, the British government decided to reorganise the militia, 
which had not been embodied for nearly forty years. For this purpose 
Lord John Russell introduced a bill, in which he spoke of the creation 
of a local militia. Here Palmerston saw his chance. He proposed to 
substitute the word 'national' for 'local,' and carried his motion by 
one hundred and thirty-six to one hundred and twenty-five. There was 
not much more than a verbal difterence between Palmerston and Russell, 
as the latter explained that, in case of war, the militia would certamly 



980 Victcnia 1852 

be available for national purposes ; but the government chose to regard 
Palmerston's motion as practically a vote of want of confidence, and in 
February 1852 the Whig ministers resigned. 

Though Lord Palmerston had defeated the government, he was not in 

a position to take office. Accordingly the queen sent for Lord Derby, 

who agreed to form a ministry out of the members of the 

Lord Derby's *=. . tt i • i/. i 

First Protectionist party. He himseli became prime minister ; 

Ministry. Lord Malmesbury was foreign secretary, with Lord Stanley, 
the premier's eldest son, as under-secretary ; Mr. Disraeli held the post 
of chancellor of the exchequer, with the leadership of the House of 
Commons. None of the other members of the government were men of 
mark. After a Militia Act had been passed, on the lines of that already 
proposed, parliament was dissolved. The election showed a considerable 
growth of Conservative opinion. In the new House of Commons the 
Conservatives numbered two hundred and ninety-nine, the Liberals 
three hundred and fifteen, and the Peelites forty. In these circum- 
stances the question naturally arose whether the Conservative party was 
prepared to adhere to the Protectionist views which had been preached 
by Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli. To test the question, several 
resolutions committing the House to the principle of Free-trade were 
brought forward ; and eventually one of these, devised by Lord 
Palmerston was passed by four hundred and sixty-eight to fifty-three. 
Henceforth Conservatives and Liberals alike professed to accept Peel's 
policy as the policy of the nation, and from that time to this a return to 
the policy of Protection has been regarded by both parties as being out- 
side the range of practical politics. As the resolution of the House in 
favour of Free-trade made any direct return to Protection impossible, 
the government, in framing the budget, were in great difficulty as to 
Disraeli's l^ow anything could be done for the benefit of the agri- 
Budget, cultural interest, whose wrongs had been the chief theme 
of Conservative orators for the last six years. Mr. Disraeli, however, 
with great cleverness, devised an ingenious scheme by which, while 
adhering in the letter to Free-trade principles, he contrived so to 
rearrange taxation as to give an advantage to the farmers at the expense 
of the dwellers in towns. The moment the scheme was understood it 
provoked bitter hostility. The leader of this was Mr. Gladstone, who 
then entered upon a course of personal antagonism to Mr. Disraeli that 
ended only with the life of the latter. Mr. Disraeli fought hard in 
defence of his scheme, and spared neither sarcasm nor innuendo in his 
attacks upon his opponents — declaring, among other things, that he was 
the victim of the hostility of a coalition, and that ' England does not 



leen s 



1853 Derby — Aberdeen 981 

love coalitions.' Nevertheless, he was defeated by three hundred and 
five votes to two hundred and eighty-six, and Lord Derby at once resigned. 

A coalition ministry was then formed, consisting of Whigs and 
Peelites. Lord Aberdeen, a Peelite, who had been foreign secretary 
under Peel, became prime minister, bringing with him 
Mr. Gladstone, as chancellor of the exchequer ; Newcastle, Aberde 
the son of Mr. Gladstone's old patron, colonial secretary ; ^'"^stry. 
Sidney Herbert, secretary at war ; and Sir James Graham, first lord of 
the admiralty. Of the Whigs, Lord John Russell became foreign secre- 
tary ; Palmerston, home secretary ; and places were found for Lord 
Granville and the duke of Argyll. There was some difficulty as to 
Lord Palmerston's position, as neither the Whigs nor the Peelites liked 
his conduct of foreign aff'airs ; but he good-naturedly settled the matter 
himself by asking for the Home Office, remarking that ' it was a good 
thing for a man to learn something about his fellow-countrymen.' As 
he had so fiercely criticised Disraeli's budget, everyone was interested to 
see what Gladstone himself would produce. When he formulated his 
proposals it was found that his main proposal was a farther step in the 
direction of free imports. He abolished the duty on soap, and reduced it 
on one hundred and thirty-three other articles. To efiect this he kept 
the income tax at 7d. in the £1, but proposed, as the new system of 
taxation became more productive, to reduce it by degrees, so that it 
would disappear in 1860. Incidentally, he pointed out the advantage 
of the income tax as a, war tax. Though there was nothing new in the»e 
principles, which were those of Pitt, Huskisson, and Peel, Gladstone, in 
his budget, made a great sensation by his marvellous power of throwing 
the glamour of rhetoric over what had hitherto been a dry statement of 
accounts, and from this time forward he enjoyed the reputation of being 
a financier of the highest capacity. 

Though Mr. Gladstone had mentioned the value of the income tax in 
time of war, his whole scheme of finance was based upon the continuance 
of peace, and it was a bitter satire on his forecast of events ^^^ 
that at the moment he made it, he and his colleagues were Eastern 

... . 1 -r. • TIT Ni Question. 

engaged in drifting into war with Russia. In dealing witli 
the Russian war, as in many other cases, it is necessary to distinguish 
between the essential causes of the war and the special circumstances 
which gave rise to it. The real cause of the war was the determination 
of the western powers not to allow Russia to acquire such an influence 
at Constantinople as would virtually amount to the destruction of 
Turkey as an independent power ; the special causes were a dispute 
about the claims of the priests of the Latin and Greek Churches 



982 Fictmia 1853 

respectively to a special interest in the holy places at Jerusalem : such as 
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ; and a difference of opinion as to the 
interj)retation of some clauses in the Treaty of Kutchuck-Kainardji. 
The quarrel between the priests was trivial in itself, but acquired im- 
portance from the fact that the Emperor of the French regarded himself 
as being the special protector of the interests of the Latin priests, and the 
Czar of Russia of those of the Creeks. The difficulty about the treaty 
was of much deeper importance. In this treaty, which had been made 
so far back as 1774, the Turks had promised the Russians ' to protect 
constantly the Christian religion and its churches.' On this the Czar 
claimed to be regarded as the protector of the Christian population 
of Turkey, and to hold the Sultan responsible for his conduct to his 
Christian subjects — a view which has received the sanction of Mr. Glad- 
stone, On the other hand, the general opinion of Europe was opposed 
to such a claim. For it would mean that fourteen millions of Greeks — 
that is, of Greek Christians — would henceforward regard the Czar as 
their supreme protector, and their allegiance to the Porte would be little 
more than nominal. The practical significance of Russia's claim lay in 
the fact that the Czar Nicholas regarded the Turkish empire as on the 
verge of dissolution, and was in the habit of speaking of it as ' the sick 
man.' It seemed, therefore, to most statesmen that the pushing forAvard 
of Russia's claim to the protectorate was only a step towards claiming 
the lion's share in the Turkish empire whenever its dissolution came 
about. 

The matter became serious in 1852, and for two years the diplomatists 

of Europe battled against one another. The interests of the several 

„ states were various. Great Britain regarded herself as dis- 

Progress ... . . 

of Negotia- tinctly interested in preserving the independence of Turkey. 
The Emperor of the French cared little about the matter in 
hand ; but was anxious to appear as the ally of Great Britain, and gladly 
welcomed an opportunity of fixing himself more firmly on the throne by 
a popular war. Austria, which was more directly interested than any 
other power in keeping the Russians from annexing Turkish terri- 
tory, was ready enough to see Great Britain and France fight her 
battles if they could. The key of the situation was really held by 
the British ministers, and if they had known their own minds, and 
could have made the Czar believe that they meant what they said, 
war would probably have been avoided ; for the Czar certainly did 
not contemplate pushing his claims at the risk of war. As it was, 
there was no harmony in the cabinet. Lord Aberdeen believed war 
impossible, and was friendly to the Czar ; IVIr, Gladstone agreed with 



1854 Aberdeen 983 

the Russians in their interpretation of the treaty, and also disliked a 
war which would upset all his financial arrangements ; while Lord 
Palmerston believed in energetic measures, and was anxious to commit 
his colleagues as far as he could. The result was that the opinions of 
the ministers were hopelessly divided. No uniform line of policy was 
adopted and adhered to, and before the country realised the gravity of 
the situation war had become inevitable. In July 1853 the Russians 
occupied the Danubian principalities as a material guarantee for the 
recognition of their protectorate. In October Turkey declared war. In 
November the destruction by the Russians of the Turkish fleet at Sinope 
gave them the command of the Black Sea and the power of attacking 
Constantinoi3le. In December the British and French fleets entered the 
Black Sea ; and in March 1854, without waiting for Austria to join 
them. Great Britain and France declared war against Russia. 

Before the British and French troops could arrive on the Danube, the 
Turks had, single-handed, checked the Russian advance. It was there- 
fore determined to take advantage of the unquestioned 
superiority of the British and French fleets to attack the Operations 

• • of War. 

naval arsenals of Russia. For this purpose two expeditions 
were organised, one under Admiral Sir Charles Napier against Cronstadt 
— the Portsmouth of the Baltic ; and another against Sebastopol, in the 
Crimea, which played a similar part in the Black Sea. The latter was 
placed under Lord Raglan, who, as Lord Fitzroy Somerset, had been mili- 
tary secretary to Wellington, and had lost an arm at Waterloo. He was 
a man of great tact, and well fitted to work in harmony with a foreign 
force, but not of enough force or ability for his post. The former efi'ected 
nothing, as the fortifications proved far too strong for the ships, but the 
expedition to the Crimea proved to be of great importance. In 
undertaking it the British government had no idea of its difiiculty. As 
the allied fleet dominated the Black Sea, it was thought an easy matter 
to transport an expeditionary force to the Crimea, destroy Sebastopol, 
and return before the inclement weather of a southern Russian winter 
began. This would have been the case had the expedition started in 
June, when Lord Palmerston first proposed it, for Sebastopol was then 
practically unfortified, and there were not more than 40,000 troops in the 
Crimea ; but it was a very different matter in September, when the 
Russian retreat from the Danube had enabled the Czar to fill the Crimea 
with troops. Nevertheless, late as it was, orders were sent to Lord 
Raglan and Marshal St. Arnaud, the commanders of the British and 
French troops in Turkey, to embark for the Crimea. 

Accordingly, 25,000 British and 35,000 French were landed in the 



984 



Victoria 



1854 



Crimea at Eupatoria, a few miles north of the river Alma, and some 
twenty miles from Sebastopol. They found the Riissiaus, to the nuni- 
Battle of ber of 45,000 men, drawn up on a series of heights behind 
the Alma, ^Y\q river Alma, in a position so strong as to be con- 
sidered practically iiiij)regnable. On September 20 the allies attacked 
the Russians, the French taking the right, the English the left of the 
advance. The battle showed little skill on either side. There was no 
manreuvring or scientific arrangement of troops ; but both men and 
officers advanced straight ahead with bull-dog courage, and at the expense 
of great loss of life carried the heights. Had the allies pushed boldly on 
in pursuit, it is probable that they might have carried Sebastopol with 
a rush, as it was quite unprepared for a sudden assault. For reasons. 




THE OPERATIONS IN THE EAST, 1854-1856 

however, not easy to fathom, dilatoriness prevailed, and the Russians 
were not only allowed to retreat unmolested, but were permitted several 
days of respite to make their preparations for defence. By the time 
the allies were again in motion, the Russians had not only withdrawn 
their army into a position where it could harass the besiegers without 
much danger to itself, but had put Sebastopol into 'a condition to make 
an excellent defence. 

Sebastopol lay on the south side of an inlet of the sea, about four 

miles long, and consisted almost entirely of dockyards, arsenals, and 

Position of barracks, with hardly any population unconnected with the 

Sebastopol. government service. Its buildings were of stone. The side 

towards the sea was defended by powerful forts. As the Russian fleet 

was too weak to cope with that of the allies, the Russians withdrew it 




II \ 

f \ 
1 

% French * 

f' Headquarters^ \ 



SIEGE of 
SEBASTOPOL 

1854-1856. 

English Miles 
2 

I 

"T" Russian Attack at Inkerman 










986 Victoria 1854 

into the harbour, and blocked the entrance by sinking a series of ships 
across the mouth. On the land side, General Todleben, an engineer, to 
whom the chief credit of the defence is due, planned a series of earth- 
works armed with guns from the ships. Of these, the most notable were 
the greater and lesser Redan, and the Malakoff. To besiege such a place 
was no light matter, and was far beyond the powers of a mere summer 
expedition, in which light the ministers seem to have regarded the 
invasion. 

There was, however, no choice but to undertake the task ; so the allied 
army was marched from the Alma round the extremity of the harbour of 
Sebastopol, and took up its quarters on a line of heights 
overlooking the town, while the fleet prepared to attack the 
forts. Even then it could not surround the whole town ; and the 
northern side of the harbour remained in the hands of the Russians. 
As the army had not only to besiege Sebastopol, but to be prepared 
to repel an attack from the army of Prince Menschikov, it had to form 
two lines — an inner line engaged in the siege facing inwards, and 
another and longer line facing outwards. Though the allies were 
before Sebastopol on the 26th of September, and it is almost certain 
that even then an assault would have carried the town, the generals 
decided to wait for their siege guns. It took nearly three weeks 
to get these into position, during which time the Russians still fur- 
ther strengthened their defences, and it was not till October 16 that 
fire was opened. Though carried on with great energy, the bombard- 
ment had little effect. In an ordinary siege, a bombardment is often 
effective by working upon the fears of the non-combatant population ; 
but in Sebastopol there was practically no one but soldiers and sailors, 
who were rather encouraged than otherwise by seeing how little damage 
was done. At the end of a week's firing the allies found that they must 
give up all hope of an assault, and enter upon a regular siege. 

Hardly had this been realised than the "besiegers found themselves 
exposed to a series of attacks from Menschikov's army. The first of 

Battle of these led to what is spoken of as the battle of Balaclava. 

Balaclava, j^ really consisted of a series of somewhat isolated cavalry 
operations by the Russians against the Balaclava end of the allied 
line, which was defended by British, French, and Turks. The attack 
of the Russians effected nothing of importance ; but three incidents 
of the day will always be remembered with pride by the British army. 
Near Balaclava itself, the 93rd Highlanders (now 2nd Battalion, ArgyU 
and Sutherland), under Sir Colin Campbell, were charged by a body 
of Russian cavalry, and repelled them i7i line by a volley, without 



1854 Aberdeen 987 

taking the trouble to form square. The next was the charge of the 
Heavy Brigade of cavalry, under General Scarlett. In this, Scarlett, 
with three hundred horsemen, charged a body of halted Russian cavalry, 
numbering between two and three thousand men, and cut his way 
almost through it. Fortunately other regiments were brought up in 
support, and the whole Russian mass of cavalry broke up in disorder and 
fled from the field. Even this magnificent feat of arms was thrown into 
the shade by the romantic episode of the Light Cavalry charge. This 
arose out of a mistake. Lord Raglan, standing on the heights above the 
field, could see that the Russians were carrying off" seven British guns 
which had been lent to the Turks, and lost by them, so he sent orders to 
Lord Lucan, who commanded the cavalry, to try and save the guns. 
Lord Lucan being iti the plain, and not seeing as well as Lord Raglan, 
rather naturally asked, 'What guns?' Nolan, the aide-de-camp sent 
with the message, said merely, but probably somewhat forcibly : ' The 
enemy is there, and there are your guns.' This, Lucan understood to 
refer to a battery not of British but of Russian guns, and he ordered 
Lord Cardigan with theLight Brigadeof six hundredand seventy-three men 
to charge these guns. Though to obey it seemed certain death, rhe order 
was obediently carried out. The guns to be charged were at the end of a 
valley two miles long, and on the slopes at each side of it, to right and to 
left, were Russian batteries. Nevertheless, as steadily as on parade, Lord 
Cardigan and his gallant followers rode off down the valley. For some 
moments the Russians were dumbfounded at their audacity, but soon a 
hundred guns were firing on the devoted horsemen. Nevertheless, the 
brigade actually reached the Russian battery, and even passed it, but 
their eftorts were perfectly useless, and, after sufi'ering terribly, the sur- 
vivors fought their way back as best they could. Tavo hundred and forty- 
seven men were killed or wounded, with a much larger number of horses. 
Had it not been for a well-directed charge of the French, who silenced 
the batteries at one side of the valley, a much larger number would have 
perished. ' It is magnificent, but it is not war,' said a French looker-on 
from the height ; and, from a military point of view, it was a gross 
blunder. Nevertheless, as teaching a permanent lesson of unquestioning 
devotion to duty, it cannot altogether be regretted ; and its memory will 
always remain a glorious heritage for the British army. 

A few days later, the infantry had its opportunity for distinction. On 
November 5 the Russians attempted an attack upon the opposite end of 
the allied line on the heights of Inkerman, occupied solely Battle of 
by British troops. According to their plan, a sortie from inkerman. 
Sebastopol was to assault the extreme end of the allied line, and at the 



988 Victoria 1854 

same time a body of troops from Menschikov's army was to assault 
the position in flank. The attack was made in the early morning, 
when the slopes were covered with mist. The natural way to repel 
such an attack was for the outlying picquets to fall back on the main 
body, and so concentrate on some defensible position ; but, partly through 
the mist, and partly through the unwillingness of the British to retreat 
at all, the battle took the form of the outlying positions being defended, 
and the picquets reinforced from the main body. Such a method of 
fighting was contrary to all rule, and involved the greatest risk, for had 
the Russians broken through at any point, the whole defence must have 
collapsed. Luckily for the British, the mist stood them in good stead by 
preventing the Russians from seeing the exact state of affairs ; and the 
tenacity and courage with which all ranks fought were beyond praise. The 
loss, however, was most serious, and had it not been for the French, who 
moved up troops in sufficient numbers to give an eftective support to the 
scattered British regiments, it is difficult to see how the Russian masses 
could, in the long run, have been defeated by such a method of fighting. 
Nevertheless, victory declared for the allies, and had the French been 
willing to engnge in a vigorous pursuit the Russian defeat might have 
been converted into a rout. 

After the battle of Inkerman the Russians gave up, for a time, their 
operations in the open field, but their inaction gave little respite to the 
allied troops. The necessity for engaging in a prolonged 
of the siege had entirely altered the character of the campaign and 

compelled the allies to winter in the Crimea. For this they 
were totally unprepared. Losses by battle and sickness had reduced the 
strength of the British contingent to 16,000 men, a number so small as 
to throw upon individuals a disproportionate amount of work, and rein- 
forcements were slow in coming. The distance of the British camp from 
Balaclava, some ten miles, traversed by a miserable road, made it 
hard to get supplies. In a terrible storm on November 14, two vessels, 
one containing warm clothing the other ammunition, were sunk in Bala- 
clava harbour. The winter proved to be exceptionally severe ; and it was 
hard for the troops, camped on a wind-swept plateau, or shivering in the 
wet trenches, to keep themselves warm. All these things would have 
tried the resources of any country ; and they proved far too severe for 
the ministry of Lord Aberdeen. Forty years of peace seem to have 
been fatal to the efficiency of the British war department. The most 
grotesque blunders were committed. A consignment of boots, all for the ' 
left foot, was sent out because the ministers had provided no efficient 
way of checking the stores. No care was taken even to see that those 



1855 Aberdeen — Palmerston 



989 



who were to superintend the hospitals knew their business. Medical 
stores were sent out in abundance, but men were allowed to die for want 
of them, because no official authority had been given for servinc^ them 
out. No proper appliances for cooking their rations were given to the 
soldiers ; and lastly, while sending out horses and mules for the trans- 
port service, the British treasury refused to send any hay on which to 
feed them. Moreover, the officers and men themselves did not show the 
resource they might have done in coping with difficulties, and the con- 
dition of the army became pitiable in the extreme. It is true the 
French were nearly as badly off, but as there were more of them, work 
fell less heavily on individuals; and the French soldiers certainly 
showed more skill than the British in making themselves comfortable 
under difficulties. 

Doubtless there had been other campaigns where the British troops had 
had to bear similar hardships ; but, in former days, the exact state of the 
army was little known at home, except to the authorities. In 
the Russian campaign, for the first time, the special correspon- ' Times ' 
dents of newspapers— and especially Dr. (now Sir William) ^^**^^^- 
Russell of the Times — kept the public thoroughly informed of vrhat was 
going on. The natural result was an outburst of vehement indignation 
against the government. Of this Mr. Roebuck made himself the mouth- 
piece, and carried a proposal in the House of Commons that 
a commission should be appointed to inquire into the con- tion of Lord 
duct of the war. The proposal was regarded as a vote of want ^^ ^^"* 
of confidence in the government. Lord Aberdeen at once resigned, and 
his place was taken by Palmerston. 

What the country really wanted was to have a strong man at the 
head of affairs. It had no confidence in Lord Aberdeen : it did believe 
in Lord Palmerston ; and as soon as he was at the head of 
affiiirs, confidence was restored. Nevertheless, the House merston's 
was determined to have its commission of inquiry, and Mr. ^^^jg.j. 
Gladstone and other Peelites, who had at first retained office 
under Lord Palmerston, decided to resign. The commission did much 
good ; and its report should be a warning to British governments for all 
time. Its inquiries showed distinctly that the mismanagement com- 
plained of was to be traced, not so much to the faults of individuals, as to 
the absurd system by which Great Britain had allowed the machinery for 
making war to grow rusty and obsolete in time of peace, and also to the 
foolish arrangement by which sub-division of responsibility was carried 
so far as to make it almost impossible to say Avho was really to blame 
for any particular mistake or omission. Without waiting for the report, 



990 Victoria 1855 

however, Lord Palmerston's government worked hard to improve the 
existing state of affairs. Even before the fall of Lord Aberdeen Mr. 
Sidney Herbert had persuaded Miss Florence Nightingale to go out to 
Constantinople and see what could be done for the reorganisation of the 
nursing in the hospitals there ; and the duke of Newcastle had suggested 
to the cabinet the construction of a railway to bring stores from Bala- 
clava to the camp. From Miss Nightingale's reports Lord Palmerston 
learnt what should be done, and so energetic were the steps taken that, 
whereas, under Lord Aberdeen, the deaths in the hospital at Scutari 
had been fifty per cent, of those admitted, under Lord Palmerston 
they were enormously reduced. The railway also from Balaclava — the 
necessity for which should have been obvious to any government — was 
at once made by the new ministers. Energy and order were infused 
everywhere ; and, before summer, the efficiency of our army in the 
Crimea had been restored, though at the best it was so small that hence- 
forward the French took perforce the leading part in all military opera- 
tions. They even took over from the British the north-eastern end of 
the trenches, and the attack on the Malakoff and Little Kedan. 

Meanwhile, the inclemency of the weather had proved even more 

serious for the Russians than for the allies. The Crimea being far 

distant from the seat of Russian power, and there being no 

Negotia- . r j n 

tions for railways to it, all reinforcements both of men and material 
^^^^' had to be sent hundreds of miles by road. The loss incurred 

in doing this was enormous, and sapped the strength of the Russians far 
more than the losses in the Crimea itself. In these circumstances hopes 
of peace were raised, which were increased by the death of Czar Nicholas, 
in March 1855, and by the intervention of Austria. It was, however, 
found impossible to come to terms, and, with the approach of warmer 
weather, fighting was resumed. 

In the spring of 1855 the allies were joined by the Sardinians, who 
sent a contingent of men to the Crimea under General della Marmora. 
The Their arrival, and that of numerous reinforcements for the 

Sardinians, j^rench and some for the British, enabled the allies to feel 
comparatively safe from attack, and the siege works were pushed on 
with vigour. It was not, however, till June that a serious assault 
was delivered. This proved a failure, for Todleben's energy had so 
enormously strengthened the Russian lines that the capture of one post 
only revealed a new series of defences behind it ; and on the 18th of 
June the allies were completely repulsed in an attempted assault 
Lord Raglan died a few days later, and the command of the British 
contingent fell to General Simpson. 



1856 Palmerston 99^ 

New approaches had to be opened, and before they were ready the 
Russian covering army made another attack. This assault fell entirely 
upon the French and Sardinians ; and was repulsed on 
August 16 in what is known as the battle of the Tchernaya. ^tlh! 
This was the last attempt of the relieving force. On Sep- '^'^^^rnaya. 
tember 8 the French, under General Macmahon, stormed the MalakofF 
and little Redan, and though the British failed to retain the paii of 
Great Redan, into which they had penetrated at a terrible Sebastopoi. 
cost of life, it was evacuated the same evening by the Russians. The 
loss of these outposts made the other Russian works untenable ; and the 
same night, after destroying everything of value, the brave defenders of 
Sebastopoi withdrew across the harbour, leaving its blackened walls as 
a barren trophy to the victors. 

The fall of Sebastopoi brought to a close the active operations in the 
field. There was no other point where the allied forces could readily act 
against the Russians, and for the remainder of the war 
nothing but small naval expeditions were attempted ; and 
these were of slight importance. The only occurrence of note was the 
capture of Kars, in Armenia, by the Russians, after a stubborn defence, 
in which the chief honours fell to three Englishmen — General Williams, 
Dr. Sandwith, and Colonel Lake — whose presence encouraged the 
Turkish garrison to make a most heroic resistance. All parties were, 
therefore, desirous of peace ; and a congress was held at Conclusion 
Paris, at which it was agreed (1) that the Black Sea of Peace, 
should be regarded as neutral, and that all ships of war, except a few 
small ones needed for police, should be excluded from it ; (2) that 
Russia was not to refortify Sebastopoi ; (3) that Turkey should retain her 
suzerainty over the self-governing Danubian principalities ; (4) that the 
navigation of the Danube should be free ; (5) that the Turks should 
enforce a recent Firman, giving certain rights to the Christian popula- 
tion. These terms were only moderately satisfactory, but they seemed 
the best attainable unless Great Britain and Turkey were prepared to go 
on with the war by themselves. The most galling part to Russia of the 
Treaty of Paris was the neutralisation of the Black Sea ; and in 1870, 
when Mr. Gladstone was prime minister of England and France was 
engaged in war with Germany, she took the opportunity of declaring her 
intention of being bound by this clause no longer. In this the British 
ministry acquiesced, merely stipulating that Russia should ask leave 
formally from a European congress. Since then Sebastopoi has been 
completely rebuilt and fortified, and the Russian fleet on the Black Sea 
is one of the strongest in the world. Generally speaking, the Russian war 



992 Victoria 1856 

effected two great ends. First, it weakened Russia so much that for a 
considerable time she was unable to hold over Turkey the threat of 
immediate dissolution. Second, time was gained which the Turks might 
have used to set their house in order, and remove the evils in their 
administration which had given an excuse for Russian interference. In 
1856 manypeo])le, especially Palmerston and Lord Stratford deRedcliffe, 
ambassador at Constantinople, believed that the Turks would use their 
respite well ; but subsequent experience has amply demonstrated the 
futility of any such expectations. 

Hardly was the Russian war over when we found ourselves involved in 
a quarrel wnth China. In this we were wholly in the wrong. A 
The second Chinese vessel, the Arrow^ of the class known as a Lorcha, 
China War. owned and manned by Chinamen, but flying, without 
authority, the British flag, was boarded by the Chinese marine police in 
order to arrest one of the crew for piracy. This they had a perfect 
right to do, for though the vessel had once held a licence to carry the 
British flag, it had expired before the seizure and had not been renewed. 
Nevertheless, the consul at Hong-Kong took up the matter as an insult 
to Great Britain, and persuaded Sir John Bowring, our representative in 
China, to support him. The Chinese government, of course, held to its 
rights ; and the quarrel having once begun, and other matters being- 
brought in, an amount of irritation was engendered which led to a declara- 
tion of war ; and in the summer of 1857 troops were despatched from 
this country to invade China. They were, however, needed for a more 
serious purpose ; and military operations against China were deferred 
till 1858. Besides the Chinese war, we were also involved in a quarrel 
with Persia, which led to an expedition under Sir James Outram and 
General Havelock being sent there in 1857. The afiair of the Lorcha 
Arroiv ofi'ered an excellent chance of attacking the government ; and, 
accordingly, Lord Palmerston was denounced by Gladstone on behalf 
of the Peelites, by Disraeli for the Conservatives, by Lord John Russell, 
and by Cobden, Bright, Milner-Gibson, and other representatives of 
the Manchester School, who disapproved of Lord Palmerston's vigorous 
assertion of British rights. This combination was very formidable, and 
though Palmerston did not spare his opponents in defending himself, he 
was beaten by 263 to 247. Instead of resigning, Palmerston appealed 
to the country. Ignoring the special grounds of censure, he practically 
asked it to say whether it believed in him or whether it did not. The 
answer was conclusive. Cobden, Bright, and Milner-Gibson all lost 
their seats ; and in the new parliament Palmerston's authority was for a 
time unquestioned. 



1857 Palmerston 



993 



It was well we had a strong man in power, for in 1857 broke out 
the Indian Mutiny, the most serious crisis through which the empire 
has passed since the Napoleonic wars. Its causes were extremely 
various, and it is not easy to distinguish those which were The Indian 
general and those which were merely the sparks which ^"tiny. 
set fire to the pile. Our rule in India was a military occupation main- 
tained by a mixed army of British and Sepoys ; and the immediate 
cause of the mutiny was the discontent of the native soldiers, coupled 
with the circumstance that the proportion of native to British soldiers 
was so great as to give them a reasonable prospect of success. The 
special cause of grievance arose from a change of arms. The Russian 
war had shown the advantage of rifled muskets over the old smooth 
bores, and the new weapons were being served out to the native troops, 
when a fiilse rumour was circulated that the grease with which the new 
bullets were lubricated was made of a mixture of cow's fat and hog's 
lard. As the Hindoos reverenced the cow and the Mohammedans detested 
the hog, the rumour was invented with ingenious subtlety to excite the 
anger and apprehension of both the Hindoo and Mohammedan soldiers. 
Nevertheless, had there been no deeper causes of alarm, the difficulty 
might have passed over without serious consequences, as had been the 
case with several previous mutinies in the Indian army. As it was, the 
greased cartridges merely fired the train of rebellious feeling which had 
for some time been ready for explosion. 

One of the chief causes of this feeling of apprehension was the policy 

of Lord Dalhousie, who had been governor-general of India from 1848 

to 1856. This nobleman had been a most energetic ruler, ^ 

° . General 

who honestly believed that British rule was good for India, Causes of 
and was bent on using every opportunity to extend its area. 
In 1849 he extinguished the independence of the Sikhs (see page 967) ; 
he successively annexed Sattara, Nagpore, and Jhansi, the territories of 
Mahratta chieftains, on the failure of direct descendants ; and in 1855 he 
took over the government of the great kingdom of Oude. These annexa- 
tions, each of which, especially that of Oude which was grossly mis- 
governed by its native rulers, could readily be justified to Europeans, 
appeared very difierent in the eyes of natives, especially to the kinsmen 
of the late rulers and to the soldiers and hangers-on at the native courts, 
who lost directly by the change. Moreover, the introduction of the rail- 
way, of the telegraph, and, generally speaking, of Western civilisation, 
even the well-meant but not always judicious action of the missionaries, 
all tended to produce an impression that a revolution was in progress 
which must be fatal to the existing state of affairs, to the maintenance 

3 R 



994 Victoria 1857 

of which large classes of natives were attached either by interest or 
seatiment. Moreover, there was a prophecy current that the company's 
rule would last one hundred years from the battle of Plassey, and that the 
year 1857 would see its overthrow accomj)lished. It was also believed that 
the Eussian war had sapped the strength of Great Britain, and that she 
had not the troops to deal with a widespread revolt. All these causes 
worked together to produce a feeling of unrest, and nowhere was this 
feeling stronger than among the Brahmin Sepoys of the Bengal army, 
most of whom were recruited from Oude. For many years acute 
observers had noticed the unsatisfactory state of this corps, and had 
pointed out the small proportion of European officers to natives, the 
strong class and family feeling in the ranks and the ignorance of the 
Europeans as to the real feelings of the soldiery ; but their words fell 
unheeded, and even when mutiny after mutiny broke out in the spring 
of 1857, the authorities were long in realising the real nature of the 
crisis with which they had to deal. 

At last, after a series of isolated outbreaks, the mutineers at Meerut 
succeeded in breaking away with their arms and marched in a body to 
Outbreak at Delhi. There they set up the old king who represented the 
Meerut. \[y^Q ^f ^^q Moguls, and endeavoured to give their mutiny 

the character of a national revolt. The news spread like wildfire, and 
presently every station in the upper basin of the Ganges was the scene 
of a military outbreak. The central points of the revolt were Delhi, 
Cawnpore, and Lucknow. At Delhi, the presence of the old king 
formed a rallying-point for the mutineers ; at Cawnpore, Nana Sahib, 
the Rajah of Bithoor, the adopted son of the last Peishwah (see page 
964), furious with Lord Dalhousie's refusal to continue his pension, 
placed himself at the head of the movement ; and at Lucknow, 
though the ex-king himself was absent, being a prisoner at Calcutta, 
there were plenty of discontented nobles to take the lead against the 
British. At Delhi, the British were completely overpowered. At 
Cawnpore and Lucknow they held out under Sir Hugh Wheeler and Sir 
Massacre of Henry Lawrence respectively. The defence of Cawni^ore 
Cawnpore. ^^^g grievously ill-managed, and in spite of a most heroic 
struggle against overwhelming odds, the garrison was compelled to 
capitulate, and Nana Sahib disgraced himself by carrying out a horrid 
Siege of massacre of men, women, and children, from which only 

Lucknow. three men escaped to tell the tale. At Lucknow, on the 
other hand, the defence was admirably managed by Sir Henry Lawrence, 
and after his death by Brigadier-General Ingiis. 

The situation of the rebellion was favourable to the British. In 



1857 Palmerston 



995 



the lower valley of the Gauges, from Calcutta to Benares, the British 
never lost their hold. The Ghoorkas of Nepal remained faithful. The 
Sikhs of the Punjab, though so recently conquered, gave the highest 
testimony to the skill of Henry and John Lawrence, by enlisting 
freely for service against the rebels. Scindia, the ruler at Gwalior"^ 
and Holkar at Indore, though they could not restrain their soldiery', 
remained true themselves. Consequently, the rebels were sur- 
rounded by loyal districts, and the government was free to concentrate 
against them the troops from Lower Bengal, Madras, Bombay, and the 
Punjab. The great difficulty was to secure sufficient British troops to 
form an active army, while leaving enough men in garrison in the 
different loyal districts to guard against fresh revolts. Fortunately, the 
small war with Persia being just over, Outram and Havelock were already 
on their way back to Calcutta ; and Sir George Grey, governor of the Cape 
Colony, had the public spirit and courage to take the responsibility 
of ordering the troops which reached the Cape on their way to the 
China war to go to India instead. Sir Colin Campbell, afterwards Lord 
Clyde, was sent out from England to take the general command. 

Before he arrived, however, the neck of the rebellion had been broken. 
Lord Canning, the governor-general, son of the former prime minister, 
was statesman enough to see that the real centre of the The Siege > 
revolt was Delhi, and he directed every nerve to be strained of Delhi, 
for its recapture. Fortunately, there were in the Punjab sufficient guns 
to form a siege train ; and, making the Punjab the basis of oijerations, 
an army attacked Delhi from the north-west. The siege was an arduous 
one, and lasted from the end of May till the middle of September. At 
times the British were themselves in great straits, but fortunately they 
were never obliged to relax their hold, and eventually, mainly through 
the energy of John Nicholson, an officer despatched by John Lawrence 
from the Punjab, it was carried to a successful conclusion. The walls 
were breached, and though Nicholson himself fell in the assault, the city 
was stormed, and the old king of Delhi, the nominal leader of the revolt, 
was among the prisoners. His life was spared, but his sons were sum- 
marily shot by Hodson, of Hod son's Horse. 

While the main British army had been engaged in the siege of Delhi, 
General Henry Havelock, with troops from Lower Bengal, had fought 
his way to Cawnpore and defeated the Nana. There he ^^^ ^^^^ 
had to wait reinforcements; but in September he and Relief of 

, , . r T 1 Lucknow. 

Outram again advanced and relieved the garrison ot Luck- 
now, after they had held out unassisted for eighty-seven days. Havelock, 
however, was not strong enough to fetch the garrison out, and it was not 



996 Victoria 1857 

till November th.'it Sir Colin Campbell, with the reinforcements from 
Eno-land, fought liis way through to Lucknow and brought out the 
whole garrison. He was, however, obliged to retreat to Cawnpore. 
By the second relief of Lucknow the capacity of the rebels 
Relief ot for doing serious mischief was destroyed, but it yet re- 
Luc now. jj^g^^jjg(j ^Q conquer them in detail. This was done in 1858, 
Aided by the Goorkhas, Sir Colin Campbell retook Lucknow in March. 
South of Cawnpore, Sir Hugh Rose, afterwards Lord Strathnairn, ad- 
vancing from Bombay by the line of the Nerbudda, carried out a 
brilliant campaign against Tantia Topee and the Ranee of Jhansi and 
put down the rebellion in Gwalior. These successes destroyed the 
coherency of the mutiny. For some little time isolated leaders held 
out, but by the close of the year the British rule was practically 
restored. 

The failure of the mutiny may be attributed chiefly (1) to the fact 

that it was a revolt of professional soldiers and not of any large section 

of the inhabitants of India ; (2) to the circumstance that 

the British the mutiny was confined to Bengal, so that the presidencies 

uccess, ^£ Madras and Bombay could spare troops to put it down ; 

(3) to the fidelity of the Sikhs and Goorkhas ; (4) to the accidental 

presence of the troops despatched to China ; and last, but not least, to 

the extraordinary heroism and devotion displayed by the army, and 

by the whole European population throughout that terrible time. 

Since the su^^pression of the mutiny, greater care has been taken in the 

management of the native troops. The proportion of British to native 

troops has been kept at a higher rate ; and almost the whole of the 

artillery service has been kept in European hands. Though the mutiny 

had been put down by the East India Company, there was a widespread 

_ ■ , . feeling that the time had come when the direct rule of India 

End of the ° 

East India should be placed in the hands of the crown. Accordingly, 
^ ^' in 1858 an Act was passed to place the government of 
India in the hands of a secretary of state in London assisted by a 
council of experienced Indian ofiicers, and a viceroy or governor-general 
in India. The secretary of state for India is ahvays a member of the 
cabinet, and is responsible to parliament for the conduct of Indian 
afiairs. 

Though Lord Palmerston had gained such a large majority in the general 
election of 1857, he was overthrown a year later by a combination of 

^ . . parties. This arose out of the Orsini afiair. Orsini was 

Ors.ini. *■ . 

an Italian gentleman, well known in English society, who 
in 1858 contrived a plot to murder the Emperor of the French on his 



1858 Palmerston — Derby 997 

way to the opera. The eraperor escaped unhurt, but ten persons were 
killed, and one hundred and fifty-six wounded by the explosion of 
Orsini's bomb. This diabolical crime excited the utmost horror, and as 
it was certain that the bomb had been manufactured and all Orsini's 
preparations made in England, the question naturally arose how far politi- 
cal refugees were at liberty to use England as a basis for murderous plots 
against continental governments. Accordingly Lord Palmerston brought 
in a Conspiracy to Murder Bill, making such plotting a penal action, 
punishable in the English Courts. There was little to be objected to 
in the bill itself; but the country was irritated by the vainglorious boasting 
of some French colonels who had talked about the emperor's leading them 
against the ' lair of assassins,' and many members of Parliament had a 
feeling that Lord Palmerston had in this matter shown too nmch 
deference to the wishes of the Emperor of the French. Accordingly, 
Lord Palmerston was placed in a minority of nineteen votes by a 
strange combination between the discontented Whigs, the Manchester 
School, the Peelites and the Conservatives, and his resignation at once 
followed. 

He was succeeded by Lord Derby, with Mr. Disraeli chancellor of the 
exchequer. Lord Derby also asked Mr. Gladstone to join him. That 
gentleman, though not yet a declared Liberal, refused to Lord 
take office ; but accepted instead the place of Commissioner ^^'"by's 

' i ^ second 

to the Ionian Islands. On his arrival, he found that the Ministry, 
inhabitants were desirous of severing their connection with Great 
Britain and joining the kingdom of Greece. With this feeling Mr. 
Gladstone was in the fullest sympathy, and aided the inhabitants to put 
their views before the British government. Eventually, in 1865, the 
protectorate established by the Treaty of Vienna was terminated, and 
the islands became part of the Greek kingdom. The chief attention 
of the new government was given to the preparation of a Reform 
Bill. In this measure it was proposed to assimilate the a Reform 

• Bill 

county and borough franchises on the basis of giving votes 
to all ^10 householders. Besides this votes were to be given to all univer- 
sity graduates, to doctors, and lawyers, and to everyone who had i'lO in 
the funds or £60 in a savings bank. These additional provisions proved 
fatal to the bill. They were stigmatised by Mr. Bright as 'fency fran- 
chises,' and the government were defeated on the second reading by 
330 to 291. On this the ministers appealed to the country, but at the 
opening of the new parliament they were defeated by 323 to 310, on an 
amendment to the address. 

Lord Palmerston therefore became prime minister, with Lord John 



998 Victoria 1858 

Eussell as foreign secretary. The most important event in the formation 

of the new ministry was the appearance of Mr. Gladstone as a Liberal. 

He became chancellor of the exchequer, and his reputation as the best 

Palmer- financier of the day was a tower of strength to the new 

ston's crovernment. Palmerston offered the post of president of 

second " ^ ^ 

Ministry, the Board of Trade to Cobden. It was, however, refused ; 

but Cobden gladly undertook the business of negotiating a commercial 

treaty with France. This treaty, which was modelled on 

French 

Commercial Pitt's famous treaty of 1786, was based on the principle 
'^^^*^" that each country should lower its existing customs duties on 

the goods of the other. In practice it was a step towards free trade. 
After the action of Lord Derby's government the ministers felt bound to 
bring in a Reform Bill ; but as the official leaders of parties cared little 
about it and there was no strong wave of public opinion at its back, 
it was soon dropped ; and it was several years before reform was 
again brought forward as a government question. In 1861 occurred an 
interesting struggle on the paper duties. Though the tax on newspapers 
had been abolished in 1855, there was still a heavy tax on the paper on 
which news was printed. In 1861 Mr. Gladstone, as chancellor of the 
exchequer, proposed to repeal this. His bill was accepted 
the Paper by the Commons, but thrown out by the Lords. Consider- 
" ^* able excitement was caused by this, as the bill was in fact, 

if not in form, a money bill. In 1861, however, the Lords were out- 
manoeuvred by making the repeal of the paper duty a part of the budget 
of the year, which could only be rejected at the price of throwing the 
whole government into confusion. In this form the repeal of the duty 
passed without difficulty. 

Though few events of importance marked the period of Lord Palmer- 
ston's administration, it was an exciting time in foreign affairs. Since 1849 
Foreign events in Italy had been making in the direction of national 
Affairs. unity. Two great men — Cavoilr and Mazzini — the one 
prime minister of Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia, the other a free- 
lance who advocated by his pen a restoration of Italian 
unity under republican forms, were each in his own way 
pressing the matter forward. Cavour did much to increase the import- 
ance of Sardinia in the eyes of Europe by taking part in the Russian 
war ; and in 1859, at the price of ceding Savoy and Nice to France, he 
persuaded Louis Napoleon to join him in a campaign against Austria. 
The Austrians were defeated in the battles of Montebello, Magenta, and 
Solferino ; and were compelled to hand over Lombardy with its capital, 
Milan, to the Sardinians. At the same time Tuscany and Parma 



1861 P aimer ston 999 

declared for union with Sardinia. This formed the basis of an Italian 
kingdom, with its capital at Florence. In 1860 Garibaldi, an Italian 
who had distinguished himself in the wars of South America and had 
been associated with Mazzini at Rome in 1849, raised an insurrection in 
Sicily and Naples, succeeded in deposing the Bourbon king, Ferdinand 11. 
and offered the crown to Victor Emmanuel. By him it was accepted, and 
in March 1861 an Italian parliament declared Victor Emmanuel to be 
king of Italy. Eome, however, under the pope, and Venice under the 
Austrians, still remained detached from the rest of Italy. From this 
time forward, Italy, which for centuries had been a mere 'geographical 
expression,' began to be reckoned as one of the great powers of Europe. 
Two months after having thus achieved the object of his life, Cavour 
died. 

In 1861 a war broke out between the northern and southern sections 
of the United States. Such a quarrel had long been growing inevitable. 
The slave- owning states of the south viewed with apprehen- 
sion the rise of an Abolitionist party in the north, and when Anferican 
Abraham Lincoln, an Abolitionist, was elected president, ^'^'^ ^^^' 
they declared their intention of seceding from the union. The 
southerners had always laid great stress on the rights of individual 
states as against interference from the central government, and the 
natural corollary of this belief in state rights was that each state had a 
right to secede in case it had good reason to suppose that its private 
institutions were in danger. Accordingly, the two Carolinas, Georgia, 
Virginia, and seven other states joined to form the Confederate States under 
the presidency of Jefferson Davis. Their right, however, to do this was 
not admitted by the Northerners, and the attempt of the Southerners to 
seize Fort Sumter, near Charleston, which belonged not to the state 
but to the Federal government, caused the outbreak of civil war. This 
struggle placed Great Britain in considerable difficulty. The first action 
of the Northerners was to blockade the southern ports and so stop the 
exportation of cotton, on which Lancashire depended for its livelihood. 
The result was the terrible cotton famine. Had Great Britain allied 
herself with the Southerners, the blockade might have been raised in a 
week, and the temptation to interfere was, therefore, enormous. More- 
over, a considerable section of English society was enthusiastically 
in f^ivour of the South ; and Mr. Gladstone, speaking at Newcastle with 
all the authority of a cabinet minister, declared that ' Jefferson Davis 
had created a nation.' Nevertheless, the Lancashire operatives were 
determined that whatever their miseries might be, they would never 
purchase cotton at the price of supporting slavery, and their noble disin- 



I 



1000 Fictmia I86I 

terestedness kept the government true to its duty. In spite, however, 
of our neutrality, the negligence of the government permitted an 
armed cruiser, the Alabama, to be built and launched at Birken- 
The ' Ala- head. Thence she sailed as a Confederate warship, and did 
bama.' much damage to the shipping of the Northerners before 
she was sunk by one of their men-of-war. Naturally her ravages caused 
great exasperation against Great Britain, and in 1872, long after the 
conclusion of the war, Mr. Gladstone was obliged to submit the matter 
to arbitration, with the result that Great Britain had to pay no less than 
£3,000,000 damages to the United States for the negligence of Lord 
Palmerston's government and the action of the shipbuilders. In the end 
the Northerners defeated the Southerners owing to their greater num- 
bers, their greater wealth, and their ability to establish a navy which 
gave them the command of the sea, which enabled them to paralyse the 
commerce of the Southerners, and to use the sea-coast as a basis for 
military operations, advantages of which full use was made by the 
dogged determination of President Lincoln and the military skill of 
General Grant. During the war the slaves of the southern states were 
declared by the Federal Congress to be free, and since then the 
negroes of the United States have had in law the same rights as 
their fellow-citizens. In some states they even form the majority of 
the population, and the future relation of the negroes and whites is a 
problem that will some day require solution at the hands of the United 
States. 

Lord Palmerston's last ministry also saw a distinct step taken in the 
direction of German unity. The Napoleonic wars had given a great 

stimulus to the idea of a united Germany, partly by 
Germany. • i /-< i • 

accustoming the Germans to act together m great con- 
federations, partly by the national feeling excited by the Avar of 
liberation, partly by impressing on men's minds that, so long as 
Germany was disunited, she was in constant danger of French inter- 
ference. Accordingly, ever since 1814, many of the best statesmen of 
Germany, and an increasing number of the most energetic and intellectual 
minds in the country, had earnestly wished to see the Germans united 
into one political community instead of being divided into a number of 
small and often hostile states. The spirit of the Holy Alliance, how- 
ever, which was dominant in the small courts, was bitterly hostile to 
the movement ; and the independent advocates of German unity had 
almost as much persecution to undergo as the followers of Mazzini in 
Italy. Nevertheless, in 1834, a move in the direction of unity was 
made by uniting all Germany into a Zollverein, or customs union ; and 



1865 Palmer ston \00\ 

the revolutionary year of 1848, when the king of Prussia was actually 
invited to take the title of German emperor, gave a further impetus to 
the movement. So long, however, as Austria was the dominant state, 
little could be done ; and France naturally viewed with jealousy any 
change which was likely to make Germany stronger. The position, 
however, of Austria was now disputed by Prussia. Since the death of 
Frederick ii., the personal feebleness of the kings of Prussia had been a 
great bar to the progress of that state ; but in 1861 William i., a really 
strong man, succeeded his brother as king of Prussia ; and he immedi- 
ately chose Bismarck, a man of great strength of character and of enor- 
mous energy, for his chief adviser. These great men saw that the true 
road to German unity lay in making Prussia the leading state, and they 
steadily worked for that purpose. On his side the king devoted immense 
attention to the army. He was the first European sovereign to arm his 
troops with the breechloader, and he endeavoured to give the Prussian 
army not only the fullest benefit of modern scientific appliances, but also 
of the most advanced ideas on the art of war. In this he was assisted by 
Count von Moltke, an admirable general. Meanwhile, Bismarck devoted 
himself to diplomacy and to trying to accustom the small states to look up 
to Prussia and not to Austria as the leader of German opinion. The result 
of the joint eff'orts of William, Bismarck, and Moltke was seen in 1864, 
when Prussia appeared as the colleague of Austria in enforcing the 
claims of Germany to the duchies of Holstein and Schles- ^he Danish 
wick, which had long been in the hands of Denmark. In War. 
this quarrel Denmark was in the wrong ; but much enthusiasm was 
excited in England by the stout resistance made by the Danes, especially 
as the Prince of Wales had the year before married the Princess 
Alexandra, a daughter of the king of Denmark. There was, however, no 
legitimate ground for interference. The Danish war showed careful 
observers how great was the improvement made by the Prussian army ; 
and when, in 1866, the Austrians, Bavarians, Hanoverians, and other 
German states attacked Prussia, the Prussians, with their ^^^ Austro- 
breechloaders and modern methods, not only beat the brave Prussian 

War. 

but out-generalled Austrians in the campaign which ended 
at the battle of Sadowa or Koniggratz, but also defeated the Hanoverians 
and Bavarians. The result of this war was to make the Prussians the 
undisputed leaders of a new German confederation, from which Austria 
was excluded ; while so great was their military efficiency that the 
Emperor of the French did not dare to interfere till he had armed his 
soldiers with breechloading rifles. While the Austrians were at war 
with the Prussians they were also attacked by the Italians ; and though 



1002 Victoria 1865 

they were victorious in the battle of Custozza, so serious were their 
defeats in Germany that they purchased peace in Italy by the virtual 
surrender of Venetia to Victor Emmanuel. 

These European wars had the effect of causing a considerable feeling 
of anxiety in England. It was known that our regular army was very 
,pj^g small in comparison with the huge armies of the great 

Volunteers, continental states. Accordingly some patriotic men set on 
foot a movement for supplementing the regular army and militia by 
increasing the number of volunteer soldiers, who, without giving up their 
ordinary avocations, should be regularly drilled, armed, and disciplined 
to act as an additional force in case of invasion. The proposal proved 
to be extremely popular. Though at first looked on somewhat askance 
by the regular soldiers, it gradually secured greater recognition ; and in 
time the volunteer regiments have come to be regarded as a very impor- 
tant element in our system of defence, and as a valuable means of moral 
discipline and physical training for the young men of our great cities 
and towns. 

In 1865 a general election had been held. It produced no great 

excitement ; and its chief incident was the defeat of Mr. Gladstone for 

^^ ^ , the University of Oxford, and his election for South 

The General 

Election Lancashire. This event, which is generally regarded as the 

turning-point in Mr. Gladstone's career, marks the close of 
the first thirty-three years of his political history, during twenty-seven 
of which, as a Conservative and a Peelite, he had been regarded as a 
strong supporter of what were thought to be the interests of the Church, 
and of Conservative principles in all other matters than Free-trade. 
During six years he had been a member of Lord Palmerston's govern- 
ment ; and his defeat for Oxford and return for a popular constituency 
mark definitely the beginning of a second period of nearly twenty years, 
during which he acted as the recognised leader of a united Liberal 
party. 

In October 1865 Lord Palmerston died ; and as his death had been 

preceded by those of Cobden, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Sir James 

Graham, and Lord Herbert of Lea (formerly Sidney 

Death of ' ^ ^^ ■ \ 

Lord Herbert), room was made for new actors on the political 

stage, and an era of greater activity began. The death of 
Lord Palmerston brings to a close a period which may be said to have 
begun in 1841 with the first ministry of Sir Robert Peel. It was a 
period when many useful measures were passed, and had witnessed an 
immense change in our national life. At home, the establishment on a 
large scale of our railway and steamboat systems, the introduction of the 



1865 Palmerston ^ 1003 

penny post and electric telegraph, the advance of all forms of education, 
the multiplication of cheap newspapers, had led to a widening of the 
area of intelligent thought that went to form pubhc opinion. Abroad, 
the same period had seen the completion of our Indian empire, the grant 
of self-government to our distant colonies, which tends to make them the 
colleagues rather than the pupils of Great Britain in the government of 
the empire ; while the increased facilities of communication helped to 
check the tendency to separation which distance created, and fostered 
a sentiment of common interest and common aspirations, which were 
necessary for the maintenance of the unity of the empire. 



CHIEF DA TES. 

A.D. 

Penny Postage adopted, 1839 

Great Secession from the Scottish Church, 1843 

Corn Laws repealed, 1846 

Annexation of the Punjab, 1849 

Australian Colonies become self-governing, . 1850 

Russian War, 1854-1856 

Indian Mutiny, 1857 

Death of the Prince Consort, .... 1861 



CHAPTER VI 

VICTORIA: 1865- 

PART II 

CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES AND GOVERNMENTS 

France. Germany. Italy. 

Napoleon iir., William (King of Prussia, Victor Emmanuel, 

deposed 1870. 1861-1871), German Em- d. 1878. 

Republic, 1870- peror, 1871-1889. Humbert, 1878- 
Frederick, d. 1889. 
William ii., 1889- 

House Suffrage granted to the Towns — Great Legislative Activity under Glad- 
stone—The Russo-Turkish War- Gladstone's Ministry of 1880 to 1885— The 
Irish Question — The Occupation of Egypt — Lowering of the County Franchise 
— Home Rule adopted by Mr. Gladstone — Unsuccessful Attempts to carry 
his Views into Effect — Extension of Popular Government to Counties and 
Parishes — Problems of the Future — Conclusion. 

On Lord Palmerston's death the post of First Lord of the Treasury was 
taken by Earl (formerly Lord John) Eussell. He made no important 
changes in the cabinet, but places in the government were found for 
W. E. Forster and G. J. Goschen, both of whom lived to play a con- 
siderable part in the history of the country ; and the appearance of 
Mr. Gladstone as the recognised leader of strong Liberal opinion in the 
House of Commons showed that a new era was beginning. 

For some time the attention of the ministers was engrossed by the 
Jamaica agitation. This movement arose out of the extraordinary 
The Jamaica severity and contempt for legality Avith which the Jamaica 
Agitation, authorities, under Governor Eyre, had punished a negro 
riot in that country. The colonial ofl&ce at once suspended Mr. Eyre ; 
but the attempt of a private association to convict him of murder failed ; 
and eventually the expenses he had incurred in defending himself were 
paid in 1872 by Mr. Gladstone's government. 

1004 



1867 Russell — Derby 1005 

Lord Palmerston had never been an ardent advocate of parliamentary 
reform ; and so long as he lived, the government had been content to 
leave the matter to the advocacy of private members of par- 
liament ; but the election of 1865 had revealed the existence second 
of a strong feeling in favour of an extension of the franchise ; '^'"^^^''^ • 
and in 1866 the government measure of reform was introduced by Mr. 
Gladstone. The bill, which proposed to lower the county The Whig 
franchise to <£14 and the borough franchise to £7, was a Reform Bill, 
moderate measure, based on no definite principle, and therefore it pleased 
nobody. It was disliked by John Bright and the Radicals because it did 
not go far enough, and by the Conservatives and moderate Whigs because 
it went too far. The Whig opposition was led by Mr. Robert Lowe, 
who had been vice-president of the council under Lord Palmerston. 
He collected round him a small but able band of followers, who were 
likened by Mr. Bright to the discontented persons whom David 
gathered together in the cave of Adullam, and were hence called 
the Adullamites. This band numbered about thirty ; and in the 
committee stage of the bill the government was defeated on a motion 
brought forward by one of them. Lord Dunkellin, that rating valuation, 
not rental, should be taken as the basis for the franchise. This was in 
June 1866 ; and on the resignation of the government Lord 

. . " . ° Lord Derby's 

Derby again took office, with Mr. Disraeli as chancellor of third 
the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. As '"'^ ^^' 
yet no special enthusiasm for reform had been shown, but during the 
autunm two events gave a marked impetus to the progress of the reform 
movement. One of these was the holding of a large meeting in Hyde 
Park in favour of reform, which ended in a riot in which many hundred 
yards of railings were torn down. The other was a speech by Mr. 
Gladstone, in which he asked the pertinent question — 'Are not they 
(the non-voters) our own flesh and blood*?' The phrase spread like 
wildfire, and undoubtedly had great effect in determining the views of 
the country. 

Accordingly, when parliament met in 1867, there was a strong feeling 
that the question ought to be settled as soon as possible. Mr. Disraeli 
had himself made up his mind to go a long way, and, as he ^^^ ^^^ 
said, had been ' educating his party for the effort.' After servative 

1 • . ,^ -r.. 1- • . 1 1 v-n 1 • T, ^. Reform Bill. 

some hesitation, Mr. Disraeli introduced a bill which went 
a step farther than that of the late government, lowering the franchise 
to £10 and £6 respectively. Mr. Disraeli had not secured its acceptance 
without difficulty, and Lord Cranborne (afterwards marquess of Salis- 
bury) and Lord Carnarvon resigned their posts rather than agree to it. 



] 006 Victoria 1867 

Nevertheless, Mr. Disraeli persevered, aud when he found that his bill 
did not give satisfaction, decided to ' dish the Whigs ' once for all by 
Household proposing household suffrage in the towns, and <£12 in the 
Suffrage, counties. Household suffrage having been proposed by the 
Conservatives, it was impossible for the Whigs to resist it, and the 
measure passed by large majorities in the Commons. In the Lords, 
Earl Derby described it ' a leap in the dark,' but his followers accepted 
the plan without much demur. A Distribution of Seats Bill followed, 
by which, following the precedent of 1832, eleven boroughs were dis- 
franchised, and one member taken from thirty-five others having less 
than 10,000 inhabitants. By this means additional members were given 
to large towns and to populous counties. 

While the attention of Great Britain was concentrated on parliamentary 
reform, an act was passed through parliament which was to have the 
most far-reaching consequences in the future. This was 
Canadian ^he Canadian Federation Act, which enabled the scattered 
Federation British colonies of North America to form themselves into 
a federation under the title of the Dominion of Canada. 
This was based on the principle that the local affairs of each colony were 
to be under the management of its own local assembly, but that the 
affairs which touched the general interests of the colonies should be 
managed by a Dominion parliament at Ottawa, to which a Dominion 
cabinet should be responsible. The new Dominion included Canada 
proper. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, to which were subsequently added 
the old Hudson's Bay Territory, now known as Manitoba, and British 
Columbia. This great change has had enormous influence in Canada. The 
necessity for wide views, and the consideration of conflicting interests, has 
almost eradicated in Canada the provincial spirit, the existence of which 
has such a dangerous tendency to make small and distant communities 
prefer their petty interests to the good of the greater community of 
which they form a part, and has already produced several Canadian 
statesmen, such as the late Sir John Macdonald, of whom any country 
might be proud. Its success has encouraged other parts of the empire 
to consider the advisability of taking a similar step. Already proposals 
are under consideration for the federation of the Australian colonies, 
and at no distant day the South African colonies will follow suit, to the 
great advantage of the whole empire. 

As is usual with great events, the Canadian Federation Act attracted, 
at the time, less interest than a petty war which Lord Derby's 
government were forced to undertake against King Theodore of Abyssinia, 
who had imprisoned certain missionaries and travellers at his capital, 



1869 Disraeli — Gladstone 1007 

INIagdala. An expedition composed of British and Indian troops was 
sent, under the command of Sir Kobert Napier (afterwards Lord Napier 
of Magdala), and, after a difficult march, Theodore's army 
was defeated, and Magdak stormed. Theodore died by Abyssinian 
his own hand, and was succeeded by his relative John, ^^P^'i't^o"- 
The British brought away King Theodore's only legitimate son, 
Alamayu, and he lived in England till his death in 1879. 

Meanwhile the state of Ireland had again begun to attract attention. 
After the failure of the insurrection of 1848 there was a cessation of 
plotting for some years ; but, in 1859, the Phoenix Club was 
founded by O'Donovan Kossa and Stephens. This became 
the nucleus of Fenianism, a name taken from the semi-mythical followers 
of an Irish king. At first this movement was unimportant, and though 
Rossa was tried for plotting and convicted, he was released ; but after 
the close of the American Civil War it became much more serious. 
Irishmen had taken a distinguished part on both sides, and when the 
armies were disbanded the Fenian leaders hoped to enlist the services of 
the Irish-American soldiers for service against the British government. 
During 1866 and 1867 there was considerable danger of this being 
effected ; but, in the sx)ring of 1867, a feeble attempt at rising in Ireland 
showed the hopeless weakness of the insurgents. Plotting, however, did 
not stop, and in December of the same year some Fenians, hoping to 
rescue an imprisoned comrade, blew up the wall of Clerkenwell Prison 
with gunpowder, and caused an explosion which destroyed no less than 
twelve lives. On this Mr. Gladstone, who described the Clerkenwell 
explosion as the ' ringing of the chapel bell,' which summoned the atten- 
tion of the people, decided to take up the cause of Ireland. 

The first grievance he proposed to deal with was the Irish Church. 
This body had been reformed in 1833, but it was as unpopular as ever 
with the Roman Catholics, especially with the j)riests, who The Irish 
regarded its existence as a state establishment as an insult Church, 
to their creed and nation. When Pitt had had to consider this grievance, 
he had proposed to settle it by a system of concurrent endowment, which 
should not only amount to a state recognition of the work of the Roman 
Catholic priests, but should also do away with the somewhat sordid, if 
natural, jealousy with which the poor church of the majority must regard 
the highly endowed church of the minority. Mr. Gladstone's plan was 
different. He proposed to produce equality by disestablishing the Pro- 
testant Episcopal Church of Ireland and depriving her of the greater 
part of her endowments ; by depriving the Irish Presbyterians of the 
Regium Donum, a state grant they had enjoyed since the time of 



] Q08 Victoria 1869 

William in. and by taking away from the Roman Catholics the state 
grant to their college of Maynooth. This plan was in accordance with 
a feelino- that had grown up since Pitt's time in the minds of many 
Liberals and of most Nonconformists, that the maintenance of any church 
by public money was undesirable. Accordingly Mr. Gladstone's plan 
was accepted by the Liberal party ; and, in 1868, he carried against the 
government a resolution in favour of the disestablishment of the Irish 
Church. Mr. Disraeli, who had become prime minister in February 
1868, when the ill-health of Lord Derby forced him to resign, imme- 
diately tendered his resignation, but was persuaded to remain in office 
till the impending general election should show the views of the country. 
The election of 1868 was fought mainly on the Irish Church question. 
It resulted in a decisive victory for the Liberals, who carried 393 seats 
A General against 265 held by the Conservatives, and Mr. Disraeli 
Election. ^^ ^j-^^g resigned. His place was taken by Mr. Gladstone, 
who became first lord of the treasury, surrounded by a band of re- 
markably able colleagues. Among them were Lord Gran- 
Gladstone's .■,-, n • . '' /-( T 11 1 Ti nr /-Nl 1 i 

first viile, foreign secretary ; Cardwell, who like Mr. Gladstone 

inis ry. ^^^ heen a Conservative and a Peelite, secretary for war ; 
Robert Lowe, chancellor of the exchequer ; John Bright, president of the 
Board of Trade ; W. E. Forster, vice-president of the council and 
practically minister of education ; G. J. Goschen, president of the Poor 
Law Board, afterwards first lord of the admiralty, and others. 

When parliament met in 1869 the government at once brought in a 
bill for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, based on Mr. 
Irish Gladstone's proposals. By this the Irish Church became a 

c urch Act. £j.gg Episcopal Church, and its bishops ceased to sit in the 
House of Lords. The fabrics of the churches and cathedrals, and all 
private endowments given since 1660, were allowed to be retained by the 
new Church. After compensation to the clergy and church officials for 
their life-interest, the remaining funds were to be applied, at the dis- 
cretion of the government of the day, to the relief of unavoidable sufler- 
ing. The bill passed the House of Commons easily, and though 
vigorously contested in the Lords, its second reading was passed there 
by 179 to 146, and the bill became law. 

The year 1870 was chiefly given to legislating on another Irish 

grievance, which, in the opinion of many acute observers, occupied a 

The ir" h ^^^g^r Space in the minds of the Irish people than that to 

Land which Mr. Gladstone had given his first attention. This 

was the land question. To understand this most difficult 

and thorny subject, it is absolutely necessary to bear in mind two 



1870 Gladstone 1009 

essential points : first, that from time immemorial it has been the oeneral 
practice in Ireland that land should be let, not as in England, properly 
fenced, drained, and provided with farm buildings at the expense of the 
landlord (see page 260), but in its natural state— buildings, fencing, 
and draining being done subsequently by the tenant, by his own labour' 
or at his own expense. The second point is that, whereas in England 
farming is one among a number of other industries, in the greater part 
of Ireland it is practically the only industry, and also that the Irish have 
inbred in them a keen desire to occupy land to which there is hardly 
anything analogous in England, though it exists to some extent in the 
agricultural parts of Wales. The consequence is that an Irish peasant 
is more prone than an Englishman or Scotsman to offer a rent which 
he cannot reasonably expect to pay. Another peculiarity of the 
Irish farmers was a widespread desire to break up their farms by 
giving sections to their sons during the lifetime of the father, and so 
to create tenancies too small to support a family in reasonable com- 
fort. These peculiarities of the Irish land question had been com- 
]3aratively unimportant till the operation of the Encumbered Estates 
Act (see page 972) had replaced many of the old Irish landlords — who, 
with all their faults, had understood and sympathised with the ideas of 
their tenants — by a new class of landholders, accustomed to English ideas 
of rent and farming, who had often been induced to purchase the pro- 
perty by the statement that the present rents were too low and could 
easily be raised. Both the virtues and faults of the new-comers led to 
trouble. Their attempts to introduce a higher standard of cultivation 
and improved methods of using land were resented, and their attempts 
to raise rents to what seemed to them the commercial value of the land, 
and the evictions to which these led, sometimes produced bloody reprisals. 
In Ulster, however, the presence of manufactures, and the thrifty and 
independent character of the farmers of Scotch and English descent, had 
introduced a modification of great value, called the Ulster custom of 
tenant-right, by which the interest of the farmer in the farm, caused by 
his having made or paid for improvements, was recognised, and a tenant, 
on leaving his property, received the value of his tenant-right. The 
plan, however, though customary, was not recognised by law ; and an 
attempt to get it legalised, made by Mr. Harman Crawford in 1852, was 
defeated. In 1860 Lord Palmerston's government took a step in exactly 
the opposite direction, by endeavouring to assimilate the Irish to the 
English system. Palmerston himself had declared that, in his opinion, 
* tenant-right meant landlord's wrong,' and an act was passed by which 
for the future the relations between landlord and tenant were to be based, 

3 s 



;[010 Victoria 1870 

not on custom or common law, but on contract. From an Irish point of 
view this made matters worse than ever ; and in 1870 Mr. Gladstone's 
government repealed Lord Palmerston's act, and passed another by which 
An Irish the Ulster tenant-right, and similar customs in other parts 
Land Act. ^^ Ireland, received a legal status. New rights were given 
to tenants with reference to compensation for disturbance for other 
causes than non-payment of rents, and on the termination of a tenancy 
compensation was given for improvements. In deference to the opinion 
of Mr. Bright, who believed that the real solution of the Irish land 
question was to be found in the creation of peasant-proprietors, a clause 
was added by which the government could advance money on loan to 
tenants who, with the consent of their landlords, were desirous of pur- 
chasing their farms. The weak point of Mr. Gladstone's act was that it 
made no provision to prevent a landlord raising the rent as the tenant's 
improvements made his holding more valuable, and ultimately of evicting 
the tenant if he could not pay — in which case, by Mr. Gladstone's arrange- 
ment, the tenant lost the whole value of his interest in his holding. 
This omission went far to destroy the value of the act, and to falsify 
Mr. Gladstone's confident assurances that the Church and Land Acts 
between them would settle the Irish question. 

While Mr. Gladstone was legislating for Ireland, Mr. Forster had 
passed through parliament the Elementary Education Act, the import- 
ance of w^hich it is difficult to over-estimate, as it set on foot a 

Elementary . 

Education national system of elementary national education. Since the 

Act 

first education grant was made in 1833, it became increas- 
ingly evident that, if the work of education was to be carried on efiec- 
tively, especially in populous districts, some system of state schools 
would have to be introduced. The prospect, however, excited a great 
deal of opposition— partly from Dissenters, who feared that in some 
way or other the new schools would be used to further the interests of 
the church ; partly from those who thought that the provision of educa- 
tion formed no part of the functions of government. Nevertheless, the 
work of the education committee steadily grew. Between 1833 and 1839 
the education grant had been administered by the Treasury, but in the 
latter year it was placed in the hands of a committee of the Privy Council, 
presided over by the vice-president. At the same time it was enacted 
that the grant might be used, not only to aid in the erection of new 
schools, to which it had been limited in 1833, but also to the main- 
tenance of existing schools, it being stipulated, however, that such 
schools were to be subject to government inspection. In 1846 one of its 
minutes defined their grants as of three kinds : (1) to training colleges ; 



1871 Gladstone 101 1 

(2) for the building of new schools ; (3) annual grants for the mainten- 
ance of existing schools. In practice the maintenance grants were paid 
in teachers' salaries. This practice proved more expensive than efficient. 
In 1839 the parliamentary grant was £30,000. In 1859-GO it was over 
a million ; while a commission held in that year reported that the teach- 
ing was often very bad. Consequently, in 18G2 Mr. Robert Lowe, when 
vice-president of the council, issued a revised code of instruction, and also 
devised the policy of making the annual grant depend on the success of 
the scholars in the annual inspection — a method defined by him as 
' payment by results.' This had the efi^ect of checking the rapidity of 
the increase, and in 1870 the grant had only increased to £1,225,000. 

Mr. Forster's plan was to allow any district to elect a school board, 
which should have the power to levy a rate, and to spend it either 
in aiding existing schools, or in erecting and managing The Eie- 
schools of their own. In these Board Schools it was n?5"tary 

fc-ducation 

enacted by the Cowper-Temple clause, that no ' catechisms Act. 
or distinctive dogmatic formularies ' were to be taught. For the pro- 
tection of Dissenters, it was also enacted that in all state-aided schools 
where religious instruction was given, such instruction must be placed at a 
definite time, at the beginning or end of school hours ; and that no child 
should sufter any disability from being withdrawn by its parent from 
such religious instruction. The bill was strongly opposed in detail by 
the Birmingham League — a body of Dissenters who held that all 
religious teaching should be excluded from Board Schools ; 

1 1 11-, • 1 i • p , 1 University 

but on the whole, it was received as a satisiactory settle- Tests aboi- 
ment of a very diflicult question. By an act passed in '^ ^ • 
1871, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were thrown open to 
Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters by the abolition of all 
religious tests. 

Meanwhile the reforming zeal, which, as in 1832, had followed a 
loweriug of the franchise, showed itself in a variety of ways. In 1870 
the majority of appointments in the civil service were thrown open 
to competition. In 1871 the Ballot Act was passed to 
protect voters from intimidation and to discourage bribery, 
by enabling them to vote secretly by using an unsigned voting paper 
instead of giving their votes verbally as heretofore. This had been one 
of the demands of the Chartists, and ])ills to establish it had several 
times been passed by the Commons, but hitherto had been rejected by 
the Lords. In 1858 another of the Chartist demands had been granted 
by the abolition of the property qualification for members of parlia- 
ment. 



1012 



Victoria I87i 



Ever since the Crimean war a strong feeling had been growing up that 

the purchase system, by which commissions in the army were bought and 

sold was unsatisfactory. By this plan a man who held a 

Army ' ••it ^ • ^ • • 

Purchase, lieutenant's commission had, on becoming by seniority 
entitled to a captain's commission, to purchase it at a price, the minimum 
of which was fixed, but the maximum varied in different regiments^ 
The system worked as a hindrance to poor men either entering the army 
or risino- in it ; while rich officers not only bought their commissions with 
ease but by a system of purchasing exchanges from one regiment to 
another, were able to secure rapid promotion^ Wellington, for example, 
was a lieutenant- colonel at twenty-three, a rank only reached by Sir Colin 
Campbell after twenty-seven years of distinguished service. The system, 
however, had many defenders, mainly on the ground that, having not 
worked so badly in practice as might be expected in theory, it was inad- 
visable to change it for some untried plan. Nevertheless, in 1871 
Mr. Cardwell passed a bill through the House of Commons for the 
reo-ulation of the army, of which the abolition of purchase formed part. 
The purchase section was, however, thrown out by the Lords, upon 
which Mr. Gladstone advised the cpieen to cancel the royal warrant 
which authorised the purchase of commissions. This the queen did, and 
the Lords then agreed to the bill, which contained a provision for the 
compensation of those officers who lost by the measure. The abolition 
of purchase formed only one part of a general system of army reform 
initiated by Mr. Gladstone's government In 1870 an Army Enlistment 
Act was passed, by which men, instead of pledging themselves to twenty- 
Short ^^^ years' actual service, were allowed to offer themselves for 
Service. j^ term of six years' regimental service, and a further period 
of six years in the reserve. The same year, by an order in council, the 
commander-in-chief was placed under the authority of the secretary of 
state for war, a regulation which did away with the division of authority 
between the Horse Guards, as the commander-in-chiefs department was 
generally called, and the War Office, which on many occasions had 
been found fruitful of trouble. In 1871 the crown re-assumed direct 
control over the militia and volunteers, which had been vested in the 
lords-lieutenant of counties. This made possible a scheme for the 
organisation of the regular infantry, militia, and volunteers on a terri- 
torial basis, by which the regiments of the regular infantry became 
known by territorial titles, such as the Dorsetshire or East Stafibrdshire 
regiments, and the militia and volunteers of each county became bat- 
talions of the regiment named from their districts. The advantages 
of this plan were seriously diminished by the abolition of the old 



1873 Gladstone 1013 

regimental numbers, under which many regiments had gained distinction 
in former wars, and whose loss was regarded with regret not only by 
soldiers but by the country at large. The abolition of purchase, the in- 
troduction of short service, and the beginning of the territorial system, 
make Mr. Curdwell's management of the War Office a critical period in 
the history of the British army. 

Mr. Gladstone's government also carried out an important reform 
in our judicial arrangements. The gradual development from the old 
curia regis of the courts of Exchequer, Common Pleas, King's 
Bench, and Chancery, had resulted in a hard and fast line Court of 
being drawn between them, which often resulted in con- J"^***^^- 
siderable inconvenience to judges, barristers, and suitors. It was de- 
termined, therefore, to unite them in one Supreme Court of Judicature, of 
which the four courts were to be regarded merely as divisions. For the 
accommodation of the new court, it was also decided to build a com- 
pletely new set of buildings, known as the New Law Courts. These 
were placed between Lincoln's Inn and the Temple, just outside Temjjle 
Bar ; and the concentration of all the civil courts under one roof has 
proved a great convenience to everybody. 

After the church and the land, the great Irish difficulty was the 
question of higher education. The Roman Catholic clergy have always 
held very strong views as to the undesirability of Roman ^.^^ r ■ ^ 
Catholic students attending not only colleges or universities University 
where Protestant teaching in religious subjects formed 
part of the course, but also those from whose curriculum religious 
education was altogether excluded. What they wanted was a Catholic 
university, where definite teaching of religion on Roman Catholic lines 
should form part of the ordinary curriculum ; and in this view the great 
majority of Irish Roman Catholics shared. No such university existed 
in Ireland. Trinity College was definitely Protestant ; Maynooth was 
merely a training college for priests, and had just been deprived of its 
grant. In 1845 Peel had tried the experiment of founding university 
colleges at Belfast, Cork, and Galway, under the title of Queen's 
Colleges. In these the education was to be purely secular. Unluckily, 
they were at once branded as ' Godless Colleges,' and the success they 
achieved was not great. In 1873 Mr. Gladstone brought forward his 
solution of the question. This was the foundation of a national univer- 
sity for Ireland, from which the teaching of theology, moral philosophy, 
and history was to be excluded. The plan pleased nobody. It was not 
what the Irish Roman Catholics wanted. A university which had no 
place for either theology, moral philosophy, or history, was laughed at by 



1014 Victoria . 1873 

the Protestants ; and, on the second reading of the bill, the government 
was defeated by two hundred and eighty-seven to two hundred and 
eio-hty-four. On this Mr. Gladstone resigned ; but, as Mr. Disraeli had 
no majority in parliament, he declined to take office ; and, after some 
readjustment of his cabinet, Mr. Gladstone resumed the reins. 

A general election, however, could not be long deferred. Mr. 
Gladstone's government had lost twenty-three seats since the last 

election ; it had brought forward or passed almost all the 
Gladstone measures that had then been before the country ; and 

Mr. Disraeli had jocularly described the occupants of the 
Treasury bench as 'a row of extinct volcanoes.' Accordingly, in 
January 1874, Mr. Gladstone dissolved parliament, announcing in his 
election manifesto that, if he were returned to office, the income tax 
should be abolished. The country, however, appeared to be tired of the 
heroic legislation of the last five years ; the extreme Nonconformists 
took little pains to support the government, which had offended them by 
its compromise on the education question ; while what Mr. Disraeli 
had once described as the ' harassed interests ' rallied vigorously round 
the Conservative banner. The result was that Mr. Disraeli came to 
parliament with three hundred and fifty followers, and Mr. Gladstone at 
once resigned. He was succeeded by Mr. Disraeli as prime minister, 
with Lord Derby foreign secretary, Lord Salisbury secretary for India, 
and Sir Staftbrd Northcote chancellor of the exchequer. 

During Mr. Gladstone's ministry several events of first-rate importance 
had occurred on the continent. In 1870 the Emperor of the French, 
^, ^ having armed his troops with the Chassepot breechloader, 

The Franco- ^ ^ ^ ^ ' 

German which had a longer range than the Prussian needle-gun, 

War. . & ' 

thought himself strong enough to enter on a war with 

Prussia, hoping that, in face of his attack, the German confederation of 
which Prussia was the head would fall in pieces. Bismarck was at 
least as eager as Napoleon to fight, and with better reason, for the 
German states — even including Bavaria, and the other states which 
had fought against her in 1866 — remained true to Prussia ; and 
Napoleon found that he had to do not merely with Prussia, but Avith the 
whole German nation outside Austria. Austria also remained neutral. 
Instead, therefore, of invading Prussia, he had to stand on the defensive. 
Even this did not save him. The imperial rule, Avhich had been based on 
a system of corruption and intimidation, proved to have sapped the mili- 
tary power of France. The Germans, admirably led l3y King William and 
Moltke, won victory after victory, and eventually forced the Emperor to 
surrender at Sedan. Upon this the French proclaimed a republic ; but this 



1874 Gladstone — Disraeli 1015 

failed to stay the German march. Metz fell ; Paris was l:»esieged, and after 
a defence of more than fonr months, it capitulated to the Germans. Such 
a glorious termination of a war— in which for the first time for centuries 
all Germans, outside the Austrian empire, had fought shoulder to 
shoulder — seemed a favourable opportunity for putting the key- 
stone to the slowly-wrought edifice of German unity. Accordingly, 
at the request of the other princes. King William took the title of 
German emperor ; and the German confederation was changed into the 
German empire. At the same time France was compelled to surrender 
the ancient German provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, and to pay 
^200,000,000 in gold as an indenmity to Germany. 

During the war the Italians had taken advantage of the weakness of 
the French to occupy Rome, which henceforth became the capital of a 
united Italy, and the temporal power of the pope came to 
an end. The unification of Germany and Italy are de- 
cidedly the two greatest European events of modern times, and have 
completely changed the character of continental j)olitics. During the 
war the neutrality of Belgium, which had been guaranteed in 1839, was 
in great danger of being violated ; but Mr. Gladstone's government, by a 
vigorous assertion of Great Britain's intention to maintain it, xhe Black 
obtained a declaration of its inviolability from both the • 
contending parties. Mr. Gladstone, however, was unable to prevent 
Russia decla.ring the neutrality of the Black Sea at an end (see page 991). 
Out of the war, also, arose a financial change, which has since proved 
of great consequence. For ages the commerce of the civilised world has 
been carried on in gold and silver, some nations using gold 
as their standard, some silver, and some both. Great Currency 
Britain, for example, uses gold as a standard, and has 
done so since 1816, the silver coins being merely tokens. France, since 
1785, had used both gold and silver, and Germany had used silver. In 
this way it happened that a practical equilibrium had been maintained 
between the purchasing power of gold and that of silver. In 1872 
Germany took advantage of the French indemnity to issue a gold coinage, 
and to make gold her standard ; and in 1873 France also ceased, as 
heretofore, to coin gold and silver indiscriminately, and began to coin 
gold only. The result was to increase the demand for gold and to 
diminish that for silver. That is, more goods had to be given for gold 
than formerly— or, in other words, a steady fall in prices set in. This 
was advantageous for all persons with fixed incomes, or who had interest 
to be paid to them in gold ; but it had a most serious eft'ect on ;dl 
manufacturers, because, in dealing with silver countries, the silver prices 



2015 Victoria 1874 

they had to charge for their goods were higher in order to get the same 
amount of gold in return : and also because manufacturers or producers 
in silver-usint'' countries, such as India, could afford to sell their goods at 
a lower rate in gold than formerly, thereby underselling British farmers 
in the home market and British manufacturers in the markets of other 
countries. The difficulty was further aggravated by the opening up 
about this time of immense silver mines in America and Australia, which 
of course tended still further to lower the price of silver. This fall in 
the value of silver as compared to gold has proved a most serious matter. 
It affects the whole relations between India, China, Japan, and the old 
countries of Europe, and how to deal with it is one of the most pressing 
problems of the day. 

The reforming zeal of the nation had spent itself during the five years 
of ]\Ir. Gladstone's administration, and under Mr. Disraeli little was 
Mr. done in the way of domestic legislation. In 1875 an Artisans' 

Seccmd'^ Dwellings Act was passed. This act, though not very far- 
Ministry, going in itself, is important because it may be taken as 
initiating a series of social legislation in the interest of the industrial 
classes, which is, perhaps, the most striking feature of modern legislation. 
It should be coupled with acts passed in 1871 and 1876, which removed 
the last vestiges of the law by which trades' unions were regarded as 
in themselves illegal combinations. In 1875 an important step wns 
taken in determining the relation of landlords and agricultural tenants, 
by which arrangements were njade for the compensation of out-going 
tenants for unexhausted improvements, in cases Avhere neither landlord 
nor tenant objected to coming under the act. This measitre was merely 
tentative and permissive, but it formed the starting-point for further 
changes. 

The real interest of the day was given to foreign afiairs. In 1875 an 

insurrection of the Christian population of European Turkey broke out 

^, in Herzegovina. This created a ferment of excitement 

The ® 

Eastern throughout the wliole Turkish empire, and it became clear 
that if the Turks did not quickly carry out such reforms as 
the Christians demanded, there would be a general insurrection, supported 
in all probability by such emancipated provinces as Servia, Montenegro, 
and Roumania, and possibly by Russia. For Great Britain, the diffi- 
culty of the situation lay in the facts that it was not easy to coerce 
Turkey without giving a free hand to Russia, which might result in the 
complete overthrow of the Turkish empire and the establishment of the 
Russians at Constantinople ; and on the other hand, that it was not easy 
to keep back the Russians without seeming to condone the evil govern- 



1876 Disraeli 1017 

ment of the Turks. At first the best plan seemed to be to secure the 
co-operation of all the great powers in enforcing reform on the Turks ; 
but in 1876 Mr. Disraeli refused to agree to what was called the Berlin 
note, which was presented to Turkey in the name of the great powers, 
and which urged on her the necessity of carrying out her promises of 
reform. In this way Great Britain retained a free hand, and avoided 
committing herself to any definite line of action. Unfortunately, almost 
at the same moment, the Turks roused a wave of indignation throughout 
Europe by the diabolical cruelty with which they put down an insurrec- 
tion of the Christians in the province of Bulgaria. This made it even 
more difficult, not only to hold back Russia from independent action, but 
also to take any steps at all without seeming to condone the action of the 
Turks. Probably the only really satisfactory course would have been to 
have sent an armed force to Constantinople and anticipated the designs of 
Russia by ourselves compelling the Turks to reform. Instead of doing 
this, however, Mr. Disraeli reverted to the idea of joint action, and a 
conference was held at Constantinople to again urge reform upon the 
Turks. The Sultan ajjparently acquiesced, and even granted a j^arlia- 
mentary constitution to his subjects, but had no real intention of doing 
anything. 

The opportunity of advocating the cause of the eastern Christians, in 
whom he had always been interested, coupled with the hope of discredit- 
ing the Conservative government, brought Mr. Gladstone Mr. 
into the field. Little more than a year before he had declared Gladstone, 
his intention of retiring from politics and had abandoned the leadership 
of the Liberal party ; but in September 1876 he again came forward, and 
addressing a great meeting on Blackheath denounced the Turks with all 
the resources of his eloquence and advocated the grant of autonomy to 
the Christian provinces of Turkey. Hitherto, Mr. Gladstone's power 
had been chiefly exercised in parliament ; but he now appeared as a 
platform orator, and men probably realised for the first time what an 
extraordinary magnetic influence his personality and eloquence exercised 
over a large body of his countrymen. 

Meanwhile, to add to Mr. Disraeli's difficulties, the Servians and 
Montenegrins, largely aided by Russian officers, declared war against 
Turkey in June 1876. The Turks, however, were excellent ^^^ 
soldiers, and had no difficulty in defeating them in the open oj?^^^^^ 
field, but the victories of the Turks roused still further the ° ^^''' 
indignation of the Russians and the Czar was implored to lead a crusade 
against the Turks. Accordingly, the Russian army was embodied and the 
Turks were requested to grant an armistice to the Servians and Monte- 



1018 Victoria 1876 

neorins. This was done, and it was during the armistice that the 
conference was held at Constantinople ; but as nothing came of it, the 
Kussians, in April 1877, crossed the Pruth, and passing 
Russians through Roumania invaded Turkey. Fur a time the Turks 
mvade were successful, especially at the great earthworks of Plevna, 
in checking the Russian advance, but in December Plevna 
was stormed, and the Russians, pouring over the Balkans, threatened to 
talie Constantinople itself. To stop this appeared essential to Mr. 
Disraeli, who had lately become Lord Beaconsfield, and therefore, in 
spite of the protests of Mr. Gladstone and the resignation of Lord 
Derby and Lord Carnarvon, two of his own cabinet, he sent a British 
fleet to Constantinople, called out the reserves, and brought a contingent 
of Indian troops to Malta. Meanwhile, the Russians had compelled the 
Turks to agree to the Treaty of San Stefano, the chief points of which 
were that Bulgaria should be made an autonomous province, with a port 
on the ^gean Sea, and that Russia should have a large slice of Turkish 
territory in Asia Minor, Lord Beaconsfield was under the impression 
that the new Bulgaria would, in practice, prove to be merely an outlying 
Treaty of province of Russia, which would be thrust like a wedge 
San Stefano. jjetween Constantinople and the rest of European Turkey. 
He therefore continued his preparations for war in spite of the protests 
of the opposition in parliament and Mr. Gladstone's agitation in the 
country. Seeing that the British government was in earnest, the 
Russians agreed to submit the treaty to be revised at a European 
Congress. Before this met at Berlin they entered into an agreement with 
Great Britain, by which they gave up the idea of what was called the 
'big Bulgaria,' and allowed it to be divided into two parts — one wholly, 
one only partially, independent of the authority of the Sultan. Servia 
and Roumania were to be wholly independent ; Russia was to have 
Kars and Batoum, but was not to fortify the latter. Turkey was to at 
once' carry out reforms which should secure the good government of 
Armenia. These provisions formed the gist of the great Treaty of Berlin, 
The Berlin which was negotiated by Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salis- 
^^^ ^' bury in person, and which was described by Lord Beacons- 

field on his return as 'peace with honour.' On the whole, the treaty 
effected a great deal. It secured the autonomy of the most important 
portions of the Christian population of European Turkey ; on the other 
hand, Russia had not established herself at Constantinople. The subse- 
quent history of the treaty has falsified many of the hopes and fears of 
both sides. The autonomous provinces did not prove so subservient to 
Russia as the Czar hoped and Lord Beaconsfield feared, and in 1885 the 



1879 Beaconsfield 1019 

two Biilgarias, with the goodwill of Great Britain, were practically united ; 
Batoum has been fortified by the Russians, while the Turks have not yet 
carried out their promised reforms in Armenia. Just before the Berlin 
Congress Great Britain entered into a treaty with Turkey, occupation 
by which, in consideration of being allowed to occupy and of Cyprus, 
administer the island of Cyprus, Great Britain guaranteed the integrity 
of the Asiatic dominions of the Porte. 

The check which Lord Beaconsfield's government had given to the 
forward policy of the Russians in Europe received its natural counter- 
blow in Asia, where it was easy for Russia to threaten the 
safety of British rule in India by entering into friendly 
relations with the ruler of Afghanistan. Accordingly, in the summer of 
1878, the Russians persuaded the Ameer to receive a Russian envoy. 
As this was certain to be rumoured throughout India in the form that 
the Afghans were in alliance with the Russians, Lord Lytton, Lord 
Beaconsfield's viceroy of India, demanded that the Ameer should also 
receive a British envoy. The mission, however, was stopped on the 
frontier, and the Indian government immediately ordered an invasion of 
Afghanistan. The military operations were carried out without difficulty ; 
tlie Ameer fled, and shortly afterwards died. In these circumstances the 
British set up a new Ameer, Yakoob Khan, who, on consideration of 
receiving J60,000 a year, agreed, by the Treaty of Gundamak, to receive 
an English envoy at Cabul, and to surrender the Kurum, Pishin, and 
Sibi valleys, which opened out into the valley of the Indus. Unfor- 
tunately, the Afghans showed themselves just as bitterly opposed to the 
idea of receiving a resident envoy as they had been in 1841, and in Sep- 
tember 1879 the British envoy. Sir Louis Cavagnari, was murdered in a 
popular outbreak. A second invasion followed. Cabul was again 
occupied, and Yakoob Khan imprisoned in India (see page 1021). 

Simultaneously with the fighting in Afghanistan we were also engaged 
in military operations in South Africa. Ever since we had taken over 
the Cape of Good Hope our relations both with the former south 
Dutch colonists and with the natives had been a constant 
source of trouble. The Dutch farmers, or Boers, did not like the ways of 
the British settlers and resented the interference of the government in 
their own dealings with their native servants. Accordingly, in 1837, a 
body of Dutchmen left Cape Colony and settled north of it in the district 
of Natal. They were not long alloAved to remain independent, but were 
again brought under British rule in 1844. However, the steady influx 
of British settlers into South Africa remained a constant source of irrita- 
tion, and another migration of Boers established the Orange Free State. 



1020 Victoria 1879 

This too, was annexed by Great Britain in 1848 ; but in 1853 it was 
thouo-ht better to allow the Dutch to have an independent territory, 
and British rule was withdrawn. Nevertheless, in 1861, another body 
of Boers pushed on into native territory and founded the Transvaal, 
which also remained independent till 1876. The expansion of a European 
colony must, in the nature of things, lead to fighting with the natives 
if they are strong enough to attempt resistance, and this led to the Kaffir 
wars of 1835 and 1853, in which, not without some difficulty, the natives 
were defeated. In 1876 an even more formidable danger threatened 
both the Dutch and British settlements. This was the rise of the Zulu 
power. The Zulus were a race of warriors, probably superior to any other 
African race, who, under a certain Chaka and his son Cetewayo, had been 
organised on a military basis which made them a terror to all their 
neio-hbours. One result of this was that in 1876 a considerable number 
of the Transvaal Boers were willing to accept the sovereignty of Great 
Britain. It is, however, an open question whether Cetewayo would not 
have left the Europeans alone had he been allowed a free hand to extend 
his dominions among the native states. Sir Bartle Frere, the Lord High 
Commissioner, thought otherwise, and in 1879 it was detennined to 
attack Cetewayo, and put a stop to his military power. The invasion 
was badly managed, and the British suffered a disastrous reverse at 
Isandhlwana ; though the courage of a handful of men, Avho held a post 
at Rorke's Drift against the whole Zulu army, somewhat redeemed the 
disgrace to our arms. Eventually an overwhelming force was collected. 
Cetewayo was defeated at the battle of Ulundi and afterwards taken 
prisoner, and the power of the Zulus was irretrievably broken. So soon 
as the danger from the Zulus was gone, the Boers of the Transvaal wished 
again to be independent, and received some countenance from Mr. Glad- 
stone and other members of the Liberal party. 

At home, the latter years of Lord Beaconsfield's administration were 
times of marked depression, both in manufactures and agriculture. This 
Depression was due to a series of causes, the effects of which are not 
of Trade. ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ly developed. Chief of these were : (1) the 
immense development of foreign and colonial competition in raw materials, 
such as corn, wool, and the like, which had the effect of lowering the 
price of British produe to a point far below that contemplated when 
Cobden and Bright advocated the system of free imports ; (2) the 
growth of foreign manufactures, stimulated by the system of protection 
which is in use in almost all countries except Great Britain, which 
enabled foreigners both to supply their own wants and to compete with 
us in neutral markets ; (3) the derangement of currency which set in 



1880 Beaconsfield — Gladstone 1021 

in 1873, and which had steadily oiven an advantage to our silver-using 
competitors, such as the Japanese, in all the markets of the world. 

The depression of trade, and the many vulnerable points in Lord 
Beaconsfield's foreign policy, enabled Mr. Gladstone to make out a strong 
case against the government, which he exhibited with won- a General 
derful energy and eloquence in a series of speeches in Scot- Election, 
land, known as the ' Midlothian Tour ' ; and in the general election 
of 1880 the Liberal leader carried all before him. No less 
than 349 Liberals were returned against 243 Conservatives second°"^ ^ 
and 60 Home Rulers, and Mr. Gladstone again became '^^"^^^'^y- 
prime minister, with Lord Granville as foreign secretary, SirW. Harcourt 
home secretary. Lord Hartington war secretary, John Brioht chancellor 
of the Duchy of Lancaster, W. E. Forster chief secretary to the lord- 
lieutenant of Ireland. Joseph Chamberlain, whose admirable work in 
connection with the local government of Birmingham had o-ained him a 
wide reputation, became president of the Board of Trade. His first 
attention was devoted to foreign aflairs. 

On coming into power, Mr. Gladstone's design was to reverse as far as 
possible the policy of Lord Beaconsfield. He emphasised his hostility 
to the Turks by inducing the Great Powers to bring armed ^ 

*' " => Foreign 

pressure to bear upon them to compel them to give up Affairs. 
Dulcigno to the Montenegrins, and to give an improved ^' 

frontier to the Greeks ; while, on the other hand, he did not compel 
them to grant the improved government to the Armenians, which had 
been stipulated for by the Treaty of Berlin. He decided to withdraw 
from further interference in the afluirs of Afghanistan. 

, .,. Afghanistan, 

However, the energy of the Afghans prolonged military 
operations for some time. A British force was defeated at Maiwand ; 
but the prestige of our arms was restored by General Roberts, who, after 
a brilliant march from Cabul to Candahar, defeated the enemy at Pir 
Paimal. Eventually, Abdurrahman Khan was recognised as the sole 
ruler of Afghanistan, and Candahar was handed over to him. The 
British then withdrew from the country, and have since been on most 
friendly terms with the Afghan authorities. Meanwhile, war had broken 
out in South Africa. The Boers of the Transvaal, disap- The Trans- 
pointel to find that the accession to jwwer of Mr. Gladstone ^^^'• 
was not immediately followed by the restoration of their independence, 
broke into rebellion, and invaded the colony of Natal. The British troops 
available for service proved unequal to the task of dislodging them, and 
the handling of our men compared most unfavourably with the practical 
skill shown by the Boers in irregular warfare. After sufi'ering several 



1022 



Victoria I88O 



reverses our commander, Sir George Colley, was killed, and a portion of 
the British force cut to pieces at Majuba Hill. By this time Mr. 
Gladstone was convinced that the Boers had right on their side, and 
thou oh an overwhelming force had been collected under Sir Evelyn 
Wood he aranted their demand for independence, merely retaining for 
Great Britain a nominal suzerainty over the Transvaal. 

The presence in the House of Commons of sixty Home Rulers mnrked 
a new stao-e in the history of the Irish question. In spite of Mr. Glad- 
stone's Irish reforms there was still a great deal of discon- 
tent. This arranged itself under two heads. First, there 
was a recrudescence of the sentiment of Irish nationality, which had 
always regarded with dislike the legislative union between Great Britain 
and Ireland. Second, the grievances of the farmers, mainly due to the 
same fall in the gold value of agricultural produce that had caused de- 
pression in England and which made rents increasingly difficult to pay. 
This led to evictions ; and as Mr. Gladstone's Land Act of 1871 had 
expressly denied to the tenant any right to compensation for disturbance 
in case of non-payment of rent, very great hardship resulted. Evictions 
were numerous, and, as is always the case in Ireland, under such provo- 
cation outrages multiplied. 

The revival of a Nationalist agitation took the form of a demand for 

Home Rule, by which was meant the estal^lishment of a subordinate 

Irish parliament, able to deal with exclusively Irish affiiirs, 

Home Rule. , , . , ' „ . . , , . . ' 

but leavmg all matters of imperial concern to the imperial 
parliament at Westminster. The desire for Home Rule was connected 
partly with the wave of national feeling, which during this century has 
played such an important part in European politics, partly with the 
feeling of dislike towards a highly centralised government, which is 
always more or less present in large and scattered states. To Englishmen 
the establishment of Home Rule appeared impossible on several grounds : 
(I) that if granted it would only be a step towards a demand for Irish 
independence ; (2) that without making a complete change in our system 
of government it was impossible to design a scheme of Home Rule that 
could be fair to both Great Britain and Ireland ; and (3) that a large 
part of the population of Ireland was utterly averse to anything of the 
kind. For many years these objections were regarded as insuperable by 
men of all political parties in Great Britain. 

The Home Government Association, afterwards the Home Rule 
League, was founded in 1870 ; and at the election of 1874 it succeeded 
in returning fifty-eight members to the House of Commons. These were 
led first by Mr. Isaac Butt, and afterwards by Mr. Shaw ; but the general 



1880 Gladstone 1023 

estiinate of Home Rule held at that time is shown by the fact that in 
1874 a motion of Mr. Butt's on the subject was defeated by 458 to 61 ; 
and one of Mr. Shaw's, in 1877, by 417 to 67. In 1877, 
however, a new phase of the question was introduced by of HomI 
Mr. C. S. Parnell, a young member of the Home Rule ^''^^" 
party, who, in concert Avith Mr. J. Biggar, began a course of ' obstruc- 
tion,' the object of which was to make the conduct of parliamentary 
business so difficult that either the Liberals or the Conservatives would 
have to come to terms with the Home Rulers. This policy, in spite of 
the passing of more stringent rules for the conduct of debate than had 
hitherto been necessary, had been steadily persevered in by its in- 
ventors, and though it made the Home Rulers detested in England, 
had certainly the effect of raising their consequence and popularity 
in Ireland. 

Hitherto the weak part of the Nationalist movement had been that it 
was almost confined to the town population, and received little support 
among the farmers. However, in 1879, Michael Davitt, The Land 
a Home Ruler, but not a member of parliament, saAv his ^^^gue. 
way to rectify this. It was a time of acute distress in Ireland. The 
steady fall in the price of produce made rents more difficult to pay, 
while a partial failure of the potato crop brought some districts to the 
verge of famine. Of this state of affairs Mr. Davitt took advantage to 
form a Land League, the great object of which was to obtain for the 
farmers a reduction of rent ; and by allying the agitation for diminished 
rents with the agitation for Home Rule, he succeeded in giving to both 
movements a strength which neither would have had by itself. The 
result was seen in the election of 1880, when sixty members were sent 
from Ireland explicitly pledged to support Parnell and Biggar, and bent 
on pressing forward land reform and Home Rule side by side. The 
importance of the new aspect of Irish affairs had been pointed out by 
Lord Beaconsfield in his election address and Mr. Gladstone found 
that his chief attention would have to be given to the afi'airs of that 
country. Accordingly he chose for chief secretary Mr. W. E. Forster, 
a statesman of the first rank in England, who was also recom- 
mended to the Irish by the prominent share he had taken, as a young 
man, in relieving Irish distress during the famine of 1846. 

The first object of the government was to terminate the land agitation 
by striking at the roots of discontent, and in bringing for- Mr. Glad- 
ward a measure for the relief of distress they introduced a j J?s"h ^ 
proviso known as the Compensation for Disturbance Clause, Policy, 
suspending, during 1880 and 1881, the clause in Mr. Gladstone's act 



1024 Victoria 1880 

which deprived tenants evicted for non-payment of rent of compensation 
for disturbance. The clause, however, was rejected in the House of 
Lords. Instead of insisting on the passing of a provision which he 
rec^arded as necessary for the preservation of peace, Mr. Gladstone 
accepted the rebuff. Then, as the agitation was growing more pro- 
nounced, and many outrages were taking place, Mr. Parnell and others 
were prosecuted for inciting to lawlessness ; but as the jury did not 
ao-ree, this abortive attempt only added to the popularity of the Irish 
leaders. When parliament met in 1881 a new departure was announced. 
In 1880 Mr. Gladstone had somewhat ostentatiously announced that the 
o-overnment would not renew the Peace Preservation Act, a measure 
passed by the late parliament to strengthen the hands of the Irish Execu- 
tive ; but he now came forward and persuaded parliament to pass a 
Protection for Life and Property Act, amounting to a suspension of the 
Habeas Corpus Act, by which the chief secretary was authorised to 
arrest and detain in prison, without trial, any one whose liberty he 
regarded as dangerous to the peace of the country. At the same time 
a Land Act was passed, by which a tribunal called a Land Court was set 
up in Ireland, Avith power to fix a judicial rent for any farm, the tenant 
of which made an application to the court. In spite, however, of the 
fact that the price of agricultural produce was steadily falling, Mr. 
Gladstone, instead of making judicial rents vary in proportion to the 
price of produce as was the case with the tithe, arranged that the 
judicial rents should be unalterable for a term of fifteen years, and so 
made it certain that any further fall of prices would result in an 
agitation against the judicial rents themselves. Moreover, he excluded 
leaseholders from the benefit of the act, though their rents, fixed when 
prices were higher, were often actually more unjust than those of 
ordinary farmers. Naturally the Home Rule leaders did not wish the 
Land Act to check the ardour of their new supporters, and did all they 
could to discredit it. On this, Mr. Gladstone denounced them as 
' marching through rapine to the disintegration of the empire,' and 
declaring that the 'resources of civilisation were not yet exhausted,' 
used the powers given by the recent Act of Parliament to shut up Mr. 
Parnell, Mr. Dillon, and other Home Eulers in Kilmainham Gaol. The 
Home Rulers replied by issuing a manifesto, in which they altogether 
forbade the payment of rent ; and on this the Land League was pro- 
claimed to be an ' illegal and criminal association.' However, in 1882, 
Mr. Gladstone again altered his tactics, and in spite of the remonstrances 
of Mr. Forster, released Mr. Parnell, it being understood at the same time 
that the Home Rulers would for the future support the government in the 



1882 Gladstone 1025 

passing of Liberal measures. This arrangement, subsequently known as 
the Kilmainham Treaty, was strongly condenmed by Mr. Forstei-, who re- 
signed his place in the government, and sternly denounced Mr. Parnell as 
the prime mover in outrage and violence. Upon Mr. Forster's resignation, 
Mr. Gladstone sent Lord Spencer as lord-lieutenant, and Lord Frederick 
Cavendish as chief secretary. It was understood that they were to carry 
out a conciliatory policy, but almost immediately on arriving in Dublin, 
Lord Frederick Cavendish was murdered by a ring of desperadoes, who 
called themselves the Invincibles, and the excitement was so fierce that 
Mr. Gladstone again fell back on a policy of coercion, and carried through 
parliament a Prevention of Crimes Act, the chief point of which was to 
enable the government to hold secret investigations into crimes and to 
facilitate convictions by trying prisoners before special juries. This 
Act was of course vigorously resisted by the Home Rulers, and was only 
passed after twenty-five of them had been 'suspended' under the new rules 
of the House of Commons. At the same time an Arrears Act was 
passed, by which money was voted to aid in paying ofi" the arrears of 
rent which had accumulated during the period of distress. Lord 
Frederick Cavendish liad been succeeded by Mr. (now Sir) G. Trevelyan, 
and under him and Lord Spencer, partly owing to the operation of the 
Land Act, partly to the energetic application of the new Crimes Act, the 
condition of Ireland steadily improved, though the Home Rulers in no 
way relaxed their effbrts either in parliament or in the country. 

In spite of the time taken up by Ireland, Mr. Gladstone's government 
contrived to pass a number of important English and Scottish measures. 

In 1880 an act known as the Hares and Rabbits Act was ^, ,. , 

English and 

passed, by which farmers were given an indefeasible right Scottish 
to kill ground-game on land in their occupation ; and in 

1883 an Agricultural Holdings Act was passed to entitle tenants to 
receive compensation from landlords for certain kinds of improvements 
on the termination of their tenancies. An improved Bankruptcy Act, 
introduced by Mr. Chamberlain, also became law ; a tax on beer was 
substituted for the malt-tax ; a Burials Bill was passed for the relief of 
Nonconformists ; and an Employers' Liability Bill, to make employers 
liable to damages in case of certain accidents happening to their work- 
people. The system of organising the land forces of the country on 
a territorial basis was also carried a step further. 

During the earlier part of Mr. Gladstone's ministry, he met with com- 
paratively little energetic opposition from the ofiicial leaders xhe Fourth 
of the Conservative party, who were disheartened by the ^^^^v- 
collapse of 1880, and the task of criticising his measures was left 

3t 



1026 Victoria 1882 

chiefly to Lord Randolph Churchill and his allies, Mr. A. J. Balfour, 
Mr. Gorst, and Sir Henry Drummond Woltf. The activity of these 
men and their independence of the official Conservatives, gained for them 
the name of the Fourth Party. 

This legislative activity, however, was thrown into the shade not only 
by the excitement engendered by Irish affairs but by a most difficult 
problem which had arisen in connection with Egyj^t. The 
causes of this dated much further back than Mr. Gladstone's 
accession to power. The opening of the Suez Canal, built chiefly with 
French capital in 1869, had given Great Britain a vital interest in 
Egypt, as holding the key of the shortest route to India, and in 1875 
Lord Beaconsfield's government had secured Great Britain a powerful 
voice in the management of the canal, by purchasing from the Khedive 
of Egypt a number of Suez Canal shares. Besides this, the Egyptian 
government had borrowed very large sums from European capitalists, 
chiefly Englishmen and Frenchmen, and the payment of the interests 
on these loans was therefore a matter of importance to a large and 
influential class. Moreover, the facilities offered by Egypt as a place 
of trade had led to the settlement of a large number of European 
merchants, whose rights and safety were secured by a series of ' Capitu- 
lations ' or agreements between various European powers and the 
Egyptian and Turkish governments, some dating from so far back as 
the sixteenth century. The existence of these various interests and 
rights gave the British and French governments great weight in Egyp- 
tian aflairs, and they had given Tewfik, the viceroy of Egypt, a sort of 
guarantee against deposition, so long as he followed their advice. The 
interference of foreigners was most distasteful to many Egyptians, 
especially to the official class, which felt wronged by the viceroy's 
practice of employing British and French officers both in the army and 
civil service. Accordingly Arabi Pasha, an Egyptian soldier, organised 
an insurrection, and took possession of the fortifications which com- 
manded the harbour of Alexandria. As his revolt threatened the throne 
of the viceroy and had led to riots and murders in Alexandria itself, the 
British government called on the French to make a joint interference. 
The French, however, refused ; so the British fleet was ordered to 
bombard the fortifications. This was done most effectively ; but as no 
troops were landed to keep order, the fugitives set the city on fire, and 
a great destruction of life and property followed. Mr. Gladstone's 
government, therefore, found it necessary to send troops ; and in 
September 1882, a British army, under General Wolseley, completely 
defeated Arabi at Tel-el- Kebir, and restored Tewfik's authority. These 



1884 Gladstone 1027 

events practically established a British protectorate in Egypt ; but 
Mr. Gladstone's policy was to limit British interference to a minimum. 
This proved, however, very difficult. Some time previously there had 
appeared in the upper valley of the Nile a religious fanatic, 
styling himself the Mahdi, who aimed at collecting an army 
of disciples and leading them to the conquest of Egypt, The disorders 
in Egypt had, of course, weakened the Egyptian hold over the Soudan 
or basin of the Upper Nile, of which Khartoum was the capital, which 
had long been under Egyptian rule. Hardly were the British established 
in Cairo, when it became known that the Mahdi was threatening to 
overwhelm the Egyptian garrisons and to conquer Khartoum. Accord- 
ing to Mr. Gladstone's theory, the action of the Egyptians in the Soudan 
was no concern of the British government ; and so when a miserably 
inadequate force of Egyptian soldiers under Hicks Pasha was sent by 
the Egyptian government to save the Soudanese garrisons, no remon- 
strance was made. As might have been expected, Hicks' force was 
annihilated, and the exultant Mahdists pressed on more fiercely than 
ever. This danger broke down the theory of non-intervention. The 
Egyptians were peremptorily ordered to abandon the Soudan, and in 
January 1883 the British government despatched to the Soudan a 
British officer. General Gordon, well known for his exploits in 
China, who had formerly served in the Soudan under the Egyptian 
government, with orders to make arrangements for the retreat of the 
Egyptian garrisons and officials. No troops, however, were sent with 
Gordon, and he was expressly told that no troops would be sent to his 
assistance. With curious inconsistency, however, an Egyptian army, 
under General Baker, was sent to Suakim, on the Red Sea, to rescue 
other Egyptian garrisons by force. Baker's army, however, being hope- 
lessly inefficient, was cut to pieces; while the Madhi's forces closed 
round Khartoum and compelled Gordon to take his choice between 
leaving the Egyptian garrisons and officials to the vengeance of their 
enemies standing a siege. Of course he chose the latter. Mr. 
Gladstone, therefore, was driven to further interference, and sent a 
British force, under General Graham, to rescue the garrisons near 
Suakim ; but he held to the plan of giving no aid to Gordon, declaring in 
parliament that, 'though hemmed in, he was not surrounded.' In 
February and March Graham's force, after some fighting, cleared the 
district round Suakim, and it was then proposed to send a fiying 
column across the desert to aid Gordon. The government, however, 
still held back, till public opinion insisted that Gordon should not be 
left to his fate, but it was not till August that an expedition was sent 



1Q28 Victoria 1884 

up the Nile. The advanced column of this, after the loss of many lives, 
fought its way to the Upper Nile in January 1885, only to find that it 
was unhappily too late ; for Khartoum fell, and Gordon was killed only 
two days before the first British soldier arrived within sight of the town. 
Upon this, further military operations were abandoned, and the British 
confined themselves to holding Wadi Halfii, on the confines of Egypt 
proper, and Suakim, on the Red Sea. 

The circumstance that the British were occupied in Egypt seemed to 
the Russians a favourable opportunity for improving their position in 
Asia. In 1884 they crossed the desert and occupied the 
Frontier oasis of Mcrv, which constitutes the military basis for opera- 

Question, tions against Afghanistan, and soon afterwards Russian 
troops appeared on the borders of that state. It became, therefore, 
necessary to have a clear understanding as to the exact frontier. Accord- 
intdy, a joint Russian and British commission was appointed for the 
purpose ; but as the Russians seemed to proceed on the principle of 
seizing any place they wished for and then declaring that it was on their 
side of the frontier, considerable friction followed. Eventually Britain 
and Russia were brought to the verge of war by a Russian attack upon 
an Afghan force at Penjdeh. The matter, however, was presently 
arranged, chiefly by granting all Russian demands ; and the frontier so 
settled was guaranteed by the British government to the Ameer. 

For some time there had been growing up a feeling in favour of further 
parliamentary reform. The spread of education since 1870 had removed 
Parliament- the chief argument against the extension of the franchise to 
ary Reform. ^|^g agricultural labourers, and in 1884 the government 
brought forward a measure for giving household sufirage to the counties. 
The principle of this, as applied to England and Scotland, was accepted 
by both political parties, but there was much difference of opinion as to 
the advisability of extending it to Ireland. It was, however, decided to 
do so. The government proposed to pass the Franchise Bill in 1884, but 
to postpone the Redistribution of Seats Bill, which was the natural 
corollary of such a measure, till 1885. When the bill reached the House 
of Lords, it was pointed out that if this were done, it might be possible to 
have a general election on the new franchise but with the old constitu- 
encies, in which case there would be the grossest anomalies in the relative 
value of votes between one constituency and another. The Lords conse- 
quently passed a resolution postponing the consideration of the Franchise 
Bill till the Redistribution Bill was also before them. At this there was 
considerable agitation in the country, many meetings being held to 
condemn or approve the action of the peers. Opinion being thus divided 



1885 Gladstone — Salkhury 1029 

Mr. Gladstone, though he held an autumn session to again pass the 
bill, decided to accept the view of the peers, and a Redistribution Bill 
having been drafted by the heads of both parties in consultation, the 
Franchise Bill was passed at the close of 1884 and the Redistribution Bill 
in the session of 1885. 

The same session saw the close of Mr. Gladstone's administration. 
The firm rule of Lord Spencer in Ireland, and Mr. Gladstone's uncompro- 
mising opposition to Home Rule, had so deeply offended the 
Nationalist members, that in 1885 they determined to take the^Govern- 
the first eligible opportunity to transfer their votes to the "^^"*^- 
Conservatives, in hopes of reaping their reward in obtaining from them 
a more favourable consideration for their proposals than they seemed 
at all likely to ol^tain from Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party. LTnder 
our system of party government no party is likely to put any unnecessary 
obstacle in the way of receiving votes which will place it in power, and 
when Mr. Gladstone exasperated the Home Rulers by declaring that he 
meant to re-enact some of the most important clauses of the Crimes Act, 
they retaliated by voting with the Conservatives against a clause in the 
budget which imposed additional beer, spirit and death duties. In conse- 
quence, Mr. Gladstone was beaten by eleven votes, and at once resigned. 

His place was taken by Lord Salisbury. Though Lord Salisbury did 
nothing for Home Rule, he decided to drop the Crimes Act, and a large 
sum was voted to enable the Irish farmers to ])urchase their 

1 • 1 T 1 * 1 1 Lord Salis- 

holdmgs under what is known as Lord Ashbourne s Act. bury's first 
Accordingly, when the general election began in November ' '^ ly. 
of the same year, the Home Rulers gave orders that all Irish voters in 
England and Scotland were to vote for Conservative candidates. Their 
object in doing this was to create as nearly as possible a balance of 
parties ; and Mr. Gladstone endeavoured to counteract their action by 
imploring the voters to give him such a majority as would make him 
independent of the Irish vote. 

In the election, the towns, influenced to some extent by the Irish votes, 
returned a much larger number of Conservatives than before, but the 
Liberals had a majority of supporters among the newly a General 
enfranchised labourers ; and when the results were counted, Election, 
it was found that the Liberals numbered 335 against 249 Conservatives. 
In Ireland the lowering of the franchise proved, as was generally 
expected, most fiivourable to the Home Rulers. Eighty-six of them 
were returned ; and it was at once evident that as the Conservatives and 
Home Rulers together exactly balanced the Liberals, the Home Rulers 
held the key of the situation. 



1030 Victoria 1886 

Hardly were these results known when the whole country was electri- 
fied by a rumour that Mr. Gladstone had become a convert to Home 
Rule ; and, though the accuracy of the story was indignantly 
m'^'dstone denied by leading Liberals and by the Liberal papers, it was 
accepts found before long to be true. Meanwhile the amount of 

lawlessness in Ireland had seriously alarmed the government, 
and when parliament met it was announced that a bill would be brought 
in to suppress the National League, which had taken the place of the 
Land League. Indignant at the action of their recent allies, and delighted 
with Mr. Gladstone's rumoured conversion, the Home Rulers now voted 
with the Liberals, and in the debate on the queen's speech the government 
was defeated by 331 to 252 on an amendment 'regretting that no 
measure was promised dealing with allotments.' Up to this time it had 
not been authoritatively stated that the rumour about Mr. Gladstone 
was true, but so strong suspicion of its truth existed that Lord Harting- 
ton, Mr. Goschen, and sixteen other Liberals declined to vote for the 
overthrow of Lord Salisbury's government. 

Even after the defeat of Lord Salisbury, it was uncertain how far Mr. 
Gladstone meant to go ; and though Lord Hartington and Mr. Goschen 
were, of course, omitted from the government, Mr. Chamberlain, who 
was one of the most thoroughgoing Radicals in the country, took office 
under him, in hopes that Mr. Gladstone's genius might prove capable of 
surmounting what seemed to be the insuperable difficulties in the way 
of constructing a workable scheme. Besides Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. 
Gladstone's chief colleagues were Lord Herschell, Lord Rosebery, Sir 
William Harcourt, Lord Spencer, Mr. Trevelyan, and Mr. John Morley. 
The latter, who was one of a very small band of Liberals who had advo- 
cated the granting of Home Rule at the recent election, was made chief 
secretarj'^ for Ireland. Having accepted the principle of Home Rule, Mr. 
Gladstone had before him two courses. He might either have requested 
the Nationalists to bring in a bill of their owuj in order to show exactly 
what it was they wanted and how the}'^ thought it could be secured in 
practice ; or he might devise a scheme himself, and try to persuade 
parliament to accept it. He chose the latter. 

However, when the details of his scheme were laid before the 
Cabinet, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Trevelyan, and other members of the 
o 1-. • .L government sent in their resignations. The result was a 

Splxt in the .... 

Liberal division in the old Liberal party, the majority of whom 

followed Mr. Gladstone in accepting Home Rule ; but a 

considerable minority, headed by Lord Hartington, Mr. John Bright, 

Mr. Goschen, Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Henry James, and Mr. Trevelyan, 



1887 Salisburi/— Gladstone 1031 

preferred to adhere to the old Liberal policy of regarding the main- 
tenance of the Legislative Union as a fundamental principle, but at the 
same time of persevering in the remedial legislation initiated by Mr. 
Gladstone, in the hope that, by removing all reasonable causes of 
grievance, the Irish people might be won over to accept the Union as 
the Scotch had been before them. The minority adopted the name of 
Liberal Unionists to distinguish them at once from the Conservatives 
and from the followers of Mr. Gladstone. 

It was obvious to everybody that one great difficulty in devising any 
Home Rule scheme lay in the question, Should or should Mr. Glad- 
not members for Ireland sit in the imperial parliament ? and 5t°"e's first 

. , , Home Rule 

there was great anxiety to know how Mr. Gladstone would ^iU- 
deal with the question. When he introduced his plan, it was found to 
consist of the creation of an Irish legislature at Dublin, capable of dealing 
with exclusively Irish subjects only. The legislature was to consist of 
two orders : one representing the householders, the other the propertied 
classes paying a rental of not less than £25. The legislature was pro- 
hibited from endowing any religious body or creating any religious 
disability. It was to have power to enrol a body of police. The repre- 
sentation question Mr. Gladstone proposed to solve by excluding any 
Irish representatives from sitting in the imperial parliament, but requir- 
ing Ireland to pay her quota towards imperial expenses. In introducing 
the bill, Mr. Gladstone made a powerful appeal to the British to grant 
the request of the Irish majority and expressed the profoundest belief in 
the efficacy of his bill to promote good feeling between the two countries. 
A few days later Mr. Gladstone brought in a Land Purchase Bill, by 
which £50,000,000 was to be advanced to the new Irish government to 
carry on the purchases begun under Lord Ashbourne's Act. In spite of 
Mr. Gladstone's appeal, his bill was severely criticised even by those 
who accepted the general principle of Home Rule. The special points 
attacked were the exclusion of the Irish members from the imperial 
parliament, which seemed not only to court separation but to violate 
the constitutional principle that those who pay taxes should have a voice 
in their expenditure. Radicals disliked his 'two orders'; Irish Pro- 
testants and anti-Home Rulers cried out that their rights were not 
sufficiently secured, while Home Rulers regarded the checks and balances 
contained by the bill as unnecessary, and as insulting to the Irish 
majority. The Land Purchase Bill was also severely attacked, chiefly 
on the ground that the security for the repayment of so large a sum 
seemed insufficient. In face of these objections, Mr. Gladstone offered 
to make great modifications in committee if only the principle of the 



1032 Vicimia 1886 

bill was adopted ; but at the second reading the bill was thrown out 
by 341 votes to 311, 93 Liberals voting in the majority. 

Upon this, Mr. Gladstone appealed to the country, and issued a 
powerful manifesto, in which he declared that the opponents of his 
The General measure consisted of ' class and the dependants of class,' 
Election. while his friends represented ' the upright sense of the 
nation,' Lord Salisbury, on the other hand, appealed for support on the 
ground that 'what Ireland wanted was government — government that 
does not flincli, that does not vary ; government that she cannot hope to 
beat down by agitations at Westminster ; government that is not altered 
in its resolutions or its temperature by the party changes that take place 
at Westminster.' The Liberal Unionists, on the other hand, while 
sidino- with the Conservatives on the fundamental question of Home 
Rule, laid stress in their addresses on the need for steady perseverance 
in the work of removing Irish grievances. The elections took place 
amidst great excitement, and resulted in the defeat of Mr, Gladstone, 
who came back to Westminster with only 191 Home Rule Liberals, 
against 316 Conservatives and 78 Liberal U^nionists, while the Irish 
Home Rulers numbered 85, 

Accordingly Mr. Gladstone resigned. There was then some talk of a 
coalition ministry composed of Conservatives and Liberal Unionists ; 
Lord Salis- l>ut eventually a purely Conservative administration was 
bury's formed, with Lord Salisbury as prime minister, and Lord 

Ministry. Randolph Churchill as chancellor of the exchequer and 
leader of the House" of Commons, This arrangement, however, did not 
last long. Before the close of the year Lord Randolph Churchill, finding 
himself unable to get his own way in regard to the reduction of the 
army and navy estimates, threw up his post. His place was taken by 
Mr. Goschen, who had the reputation of being, next to Mr. Gladstone, 
the greatest financier of his time, and who had held cabinet office in Mr. 
Gladstone's government of 1868-1874. Mr. Goschen, however, had 
opposed the lowering of the county franchise, and had not been included 
in the ministry of 1880-1885. At the same time, Mr. A, J. Balfour 
became chief secretary for Ireland. 

Naturally the chief attention of the new ministry was attracted to 
Ireland. The difficulty of governing that country had been much 
increased by the disappointment caused by the rejection of 
the Home Rule Bill, and the Nationalist leaders declared it 
their policy to prove that to govern Ireland under the legislative union 
was 'impossible.' Moreover, the ill effects of Mr. Gladstone's method 
of fixing rents in 1881 were beginning to show themselves. The judicial 



1887 Glachtone — Salisbury 1033 

rents being fixed in money were leally to be estimated at the amount of 
produce, the sale of which would produce that sum. If, for example, 
a farmer could reckon that tlie sale of one pig would in 1882 produce 
his rent, and if the price of pigs went down 50 per cent., then he would 
have to feed and sell two pigs in order to produce the same sum. As 
prices had steadily decreased since 1881, and were still decreasing, the real 
pressure of the judicial rents was therefore steadily increasing. Rents, 
therefore, which had formerly been fair now became impossible, and the 
position of the leaseholders, whom Mr. Gladstone had excluded from 
the act of 1881, was even more distressing than that of the ordinary 
farmers. Fairness demanded that Mr. Gladstone's mistake should be 
set right, but when Mr. Parnell brought in a bill for the abatement of 
rents fixed before 1885, it was rejected by 297 to 202. The Home 
Rulers retaliated by devising the Plan of Campaign, by The Plan of 
which all the tenants on certain estates acted together, paid Campaign, 
such rent as they said they could into a common fund, and used it to 
maintain a struggle agninst tlie landlords. This caused an embittered 
contest between the landlord and tenant class, and evictions on one side 
and outrages on the other did infinite harm to the prospects of peace. At 
the same time the disturl)ed state of the country aff'orded the Govern- 
ment an excuse for postponing the grant of local government to Ireland, 
on which the Liberal Unionists had always laid stress, and which in 
August 188G the government had officially promised to bring The Crimes 
before parliament in the spring of 1887. Instead of this, ^'^*- 
ministers brought forAvard a Crimes Act. Previous acts of this nature 
had been passed for a short term of years and this had aftbrded a con- 
stant temptation to politicians to buy Irish votes by allowing them to 
drop. To this both parties had fallen victims. It was, therefore, pro- 
posed to make the act perpetual, but to make its provisions applicable to 
any district only on the proclamation of the lord-lieutenant. The chief 
point of the bill was to avoid the risk and delay of jury trials, which ex- 
perience had shown to be most uncertain, by enabling resident magistrates 
to try prisoners accused of certain classes of crime by summary jurisdiction. 
Secret inquiries also might be held, and venue of trials changed with a 
view to finding a fairer jury. The act was opposed by the Irish Home 
Rulers and by Mr. Gladstone and his followers ; and so prolonged was the 
debate that a time having been fixed when it must cease, fourteen out of 
twenty clauses in the bill were passed without any discussion at all. 

The same session another Irish Land Act was passed. Tiiough 
Mr. Parnell's bill had been rejected so lately as the autumn l^efore, the 
government had now been convinced that justice demanded an immediate 



1034 Vidmia 1887 

revision of Mr. Gladstone's Act of 1881. Accordingly, by the new 
act leaseholders who had been excluded in 1881 were, on the strong 
An Irish representation of the Liberal Unionists, admitted to its 
Land Act. ^^enefits ; and judicial rents fixed before 1886 were to be 
revised in accordance with the change in the price of agricultural produce. 
At the same time further provisions to facilitate purchase were introduced. 
The effects of this act were admirable, and might have been even better had 
the arrears, which had accumulated under the pressure of the old rents, 
been vigorously dealt with. Unfortunately, the omission to deal with 
these, the trouble on the Plan of Campaign estates and the existence of 
a large body of tenants who had been evicted from their holdings through 
being unable or unwilling to pay the old rents, militated against the res- 
toration of peace, and brought about a bitter conflict between Mr. Balfour 
and the Irish leaders, many of whom were convicted of conspiracy and 
sent to prison by the resident magistrates. In 1888 a further sum of 
ten millions was voted for Irish land purchase on the lines of the Ash- 
bourne Act, and in 1889 money was voted to develop the drainage of 
_, Ireland, and to facilitate trade and locomotion by the intro- 

The Par- ' . . . ^ 

neii Com- duction of light railways. In 1888, m consequence of 
some facsimile letters having appeared in the Times pur- 
porting to have been signed by Mr. Parnell and other Irish leaders, 
inciting to the murder of Mr. Forster and approving that of Lord 
Frederick Cavendish, a commission was appointed by parliament to 
inquire into the whole question of the connection of the Home Rulers 
with crime. It was stoutly resisted by the Home Rulers ; but in the 
event it was shown conclusively that the letters were forgeries, and 
though, as was to be expected in such an extensive organisation, some 
of the Nationalists had compromised themselves with the committers 
of crime and outrage, the parliamentary leaders came well out of the 
ordeal. At the close of 1890 the revelations with regard to the private 
character of Mr. Parnell, made in the O'Shea divorce case, led to a split 
in the Irish party ; and a majority of the members of parliament, 
encouraged by Mr. Gladstone, declined to act any longer under his 
leadership. He was, however, supported by an energetic minority, and 
the strife between the two factions became so acute as to seriously 
mjure the Home Rule cause. From one cause or another an un- 
deniable improvement in the condition of Ireland took place under 
Mr. Balfour ; but no attempt was made to deal with the local govern- 
ment question till 1892, when a bill creating a limited foim of county 
government was introduced. It was, however, not popular with the 
Conservatives, especially the Ulsteimen ; and as it was scouted by the 



1892 Salisbury 1035 

Nationalists and severely criticised by the Gladstonians, it was soon 
withdrawn. 

Besides their Irish legislation, the government passed a great deal of 
legislation for Great Britain, much of which, owing to the alliance 
with the Liberal Unionists, was of a decidedly Liberal British 
character. In 1887 were passed an Allotments Act, ad- legislation, 
mitting the principle of the compulsory purchase of land for this purpose, 
a Coal Mines Regulation Act, and the Merchandise Marks Act. In 1888 
Mr. Goschen carried out a plan for reducing the interest on much of the 
National Debt from 3 to 2f per cent., and afterwards to '21 per cent., 
whereby a great saving was effected for the nation. In 1889, owing to 
a widespread feeling that the country was not paying so much towards 
the navy as the magnitude of our empire and commerce demanded, an 
expenditure of £21,500,000 was authorised on the building of seventy 
more vessels of war. In 1890 a new Education Code was issued, abolish- 
ing Mr. Lowe's system of ' payment by results,' as estimated by the 
examination of individual pupils, and the goveriuuent grant based for 
the future on the general condition of the school. In 1891 pree Edu- 
a bill was passed creating free education, with certain '^^^'O"- 
modifications, in elementary schools in England and Wales. In 1888 a 
most imjjortant bill was carried by the consent of all parties for the estab- 
lishment of an elective county government. The bill was 

. . County 

based on the lines of the Corporation Bill of 1835, and con- Councils 

Act 

tained provisions for the creation of a class of aldermen 
elected by the councillors (see page 951). In 1890 a sum of money 
arising from a spirit duty, which had been designed to be Technical 
used for the extinction of licences, was given, to the councils Education, 
of counties and county boroughs for the purpose, if they so chose, of pro- 
moting technical and intermediate education. 

The period of Lord Salisbury's administration is also remarkable for 
the holding of a Colonial Conference in London for the purpose of dis- 
cussing matters of common interest. This conference was ^he 
the outcome of a great change that had taken place in Colonies, 
regard to the feeling of the home country towards the colonies. At the 
time when the right of self-government was granted to the Australian 
colonies, there is no doubt that most British statesmen expected the 
change to work in the direction of independence, and expected that when 
the time was ripe the colonies would, without objection from the mother- 
country, declare their wish to be independent states ; and a bill was 
actually drafted, but not presented to parliament, to facilitate the pro- 
cess. In time, however, opinion on this subject underwent a complete 



1036 



Victoria 1892 



transformation, partly owing to the increased communication and 
enormous orowth of trade with our colonies, and also between the 
colonies tliemselves, partly owing to the protection policy of the European 
nations and of the United States, partly also to a higher conception of 
the possibilities of the British Empire as a great agency for good and 
especially for the preservation of peace. Not only was the value of the 
colonies much better understood, but the importance of the empire as a 
whole much better appreciated, and a new class of statesmen arose, con- 
spicuous among whom were Mr. Forster in this country. Sir John Mac- 
donald in Canada, and Sir Henry Parkes in Australia, who set a high value 
on national unity, and wished to see the integrity of the Empire preserved 
intact. Mr. Forster devoted much energy to pushing his views ; and 
after his death in 1886, his place was taken by Lord Rosebery. In 1884 
their efforts were much aided by the publication of Professor John 
Seeley's great work on The Expansion of England. In 1885 a strong 
impetus was given to the movement when New South Wales sent a 
contingent to Suakim, and Canadian boatmen were employed in the 
Nile Expedition ; in 1886 by the holding of a Colonial and Indian 
Exhibition, which was itself an object lesson in the value of the colonies ; 
and in 1887 by the heartiness with which the queen's jubilee was cele- 
brated in every part of the Empire. Seizing on this favourable moment 
for promoting common action, INIr. Stanhope, the colonial secretary, 
summoned the first colonial conference ; and another was, in 1894, held 
at Ottawa, in Canada. 

In 1889 an important forward step was taken in African affairs by the 
granting of a charter to the British South Africa Company, When the 
present queen came to the throne our knowledge of the interior of Africa 
and of the courses of the Elvers Zambesi, Congo, and the upper waters 
of the Nile was almost a blank ; l)ut by the efforts of a number of great 
Englishmen, of whom the names of Livingstone for the Zambesi, Burton, 
Speke, Grant, and Baker for the Nile valley, and Stanley for the Congo, 
will always be remembered, the interior was explored in every direction, 
and, much of it being found suitable for colonisation, settlements of 
British, Germans, and Belgians were founded in various parts. The 
formation of the South African Company was mainly due to a great 
Englishman, Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who had become prime minister of Cape 
Colony, and under his energetic direction it has already pushed far into 
the interior, and extended British influence in South Africa from the 
Cape of Good Hope to the shores of Lake Tanganyika. On the other 
hand, the East African Company, starting from near Zanzibar, has occu- 
pied the lands explored by Burton, Speke, and Grant. Its territory 



1892 Salisbury 1037 

reaches inland to the Victoria Nyanza, and the carrying of a railway 
from the coast to the lake is expected to open up a most valuable terri- 
tory to the energy of British commerce and colonisation. 

In foreign affairs, the period of Lord Salisbury's ministry was very 
quiet. An oflensive and defensive alliance between Germany, Austria, 
and Italy, tended much to the preservation of peace. A yot&i 
small war with Bulgaria and Servia was happily prevented Affairs, 
from developing into a European conflict ; and in India and the colonies 
there was profound peace. The British occupation of Egypt still con- 
tinued ; and in spite of the manifold difficulties created by the extra- 
ordinary system of Egyptian government, the good work done by 
British officials in the army, the finance, the administration of justice, 
and in developing the material resources of the country, has become a 
source of pride to their countrymen. 

The split in the Home Kule party, the improving fortunes of the Irish 
farmers, couj)led with the popularity of much of the legislation of 
Lord Salisbury, militated against the success of the 
Gladstonian Liberals at the next election ; and though Mr. castle Pro- 
Gladstone was convinced that ' the flowing tide was with S'"^""'"^^- 
him,' some of his ablest followers saw that the cry of ' Home Rule,' 
by itself, would never carry the country. Accordingly a manifesto, 
known as the Newcastle Programme, was formulated, to embody the 
whole policy of the Gladstonian Liberals. It included Home 
Rule for Ireland, the disestablishment of the Episcopal Church in 
Wales, greater powers for the London county council, the establish- 
ment of District and Parish Councils, the direct Popular Veto on the 
liquor traffic, the ' ending or mending ' of the House of Lords, payment 
of members, ' one man one vote,' and other proposals. 

Accordingly, in the general election of 1892, the Gladstonians laid 
stress on the Newcastle Programme as a whole ; the Unionists on the 
maintenance of the legislative union with Ireland and ^ General 
the general success of Lord Salisbury's administration at Election, 
home and abroad. The voting gave Mr. Gladstone a majority of 40— 
made up of 274 British Home Rulers, 72 Anti-Parnellites, and 9 Parnell- 
ites, as against 269 Conservatives, and 46 Liberal Unionists. Mr. Glad- 
On the meeting of parliament, a vote of want of confidence, 1,°^^^ 
proposed by Mr. Asquith, was carried by 350 to 310. Lord Ministry. 
Salisbury resigned ; and Mr. Gladstone came back to power with Lord 
Rosebery as foreign secretary. Sir William Harcourt chancellor of the 
exchequer, Mr. Asquith home secretary, and Mr. John Morley as 
secretary for Ireland. 



1038 Victoria 1892 

A Home Eule Bill was soon introduced. When it appeared, it was 
found that the chief change in it was that the Irish members, instead of 
being excluded from all share in imperial affairs as in the 
Home Rule bill of 1886, were to sit in the Imperial Parliament but 
^'^^' only to vote on imj)erial matters. This proposal, however, 

created much opposition among Mr. Gladstone's followers, on the ground 
that it would throw the working of the Imperial Parliament into com- 
plete confusion, and on that ground a similar proposal had been ridiculed 
by Lord Rosebery in 1886. Accordingly, Mr. Gladstone reversed his 
policy, and accepted a proposal that Ireland should be represented in the 
Imperial Parliament by eighty members, whose votes should be of equal 
value with those of English and Scottish members, not only in imperial 
affairs but also in exclusively English and Scottish matters as well. 
The new proposal was inserted in the bill by 327 votes to 300. With 
this alteration the Home Rule Bill was carried through the House of 
Commons after no less than eighty-two days' discussion ; but when it 
reached the House of Lords, it was thrown out on the second reading by 
419 to 41. 

On this, two courses presented themselves to the government — either to 

dissolve, as Lord Grey had done in 1831, or to carry the remainder of the 

_ . , Newcastle Programme. The latter was preferred ; and in 

The Parish ° • i ^ • • 

Councils an autumn session, a Parish Councils Bill, the prospect of 
which had proved most popular in the rural districts, was 
passed through both Houses. This act, which established parish councils 
in the larger parishes, and parish meetings in the smaller, and also district 
councils to stand between the parish councils and the county councils, 
completed the process of re-creating the self-government of the country, 
which had been begun by the Reform Act of 1832, the Corporation Act 
of 1835, and the Act creating County Councils in 1888. Its passing 
effected little less than a revolution in rural life, in which its effects, 
both for good and evil, have still to be developed. 

Besides passing the Parish Councils Bill, the government also passed 
an Employers' Liability Bill, but dropped it because the House of Lords 

_ , , introduced a ' contracting-out clause,' giving liberty to any 

Employers ° j to )-> j j 

Liability body of workmen to form an insurance society of their own, 

if certified as satisfoctory by the Board of Trade. A Liquor 

Traflfic Bill was also introduced, giving facilities for the entire prohibi- 

Local Veto ^i^n of 'public-liouses' in limited areas by a popular vote. The 

bill, however, was not carried to a second reading. In the 

spring of 1 894 Mr. Gladstone, being then in his eighty-fifth year, and having 

sat in parliament almost continuously since 1832, decided finally to retue 



1895 Gladstone — Rosebery —Salisbury 1039 

from politics. He therefore resigned, and his place was taken by Lord 
Rosebery, with practically the same cabinet as before. 

After Mr. Gladstone's resignation Lord Rosebery's government fol- 
lowed his policy of abandoning Home Rule for the moment and devoting 
their attention to British legislation. In 1894 the great 
achievement of the Session was the passing of Sir William °"^ "sion. 
Harcourt's budget, in which he largely increased the death duties on 
large properties as a substitute for a gi-aduated income-tax. In 1895 the 
government, as their chief measures, brought forward a Welsh Church 
Disestablishment Bill and a Liquor Traffic Bill, and announced their 
intention of carrying in the House of Commons a resohition condemning 
the right of the House of Lords to reject bills passed by the House of 
Commons. All this time, however, their majority was steadily diminish- 
ing. The nine Parnellite members had voted against them ever since 
Home Rule had been allowed to fall into the background ; they lost 
many seats at by-elections ; and by June 1895 their normal majority 
was reduced to less than ten. In these circumstances they were defeated 
by a majority of seven in a vote connected with the administration of the 
army and immediately resigned. 

Lord Rosebery's place as Prime Minister was then taken by Lord 
Salisbury, at the head of a cabinet composed not only of Conservatives, 
but also of Liberal Unionists. He himself became prime minister and 
secretary of state for foreign affairs. Mr. Balfour was made first 
lord of the treasury and leader of the House of Commons, the Duke of 
Devonshire, formerly Lord Hartington, became president of the council, 
Mr. Goschen, first lord of the admiralty, Mr. Chamberlain colonial 
secretary, and Sir Henry James (now Lord Aylestone), chancellor of the 
duchy of Lancaster. As parties were so evenly balanced in the House 
of Commons, a dissolution was absolutely necessary, if the affairs of tlie 
country were to be managed efficiently, and the new government imme- 
diately announced their intention of appealing to the country. 

No lack of questions for solution await this and future governments. 
Among others there are such world-wide questions as the future organisa- 
tion of the British Empire, *the greatest secular agency for good now 
known to the world,' as Lord Rosebery has called it, and the dislocation 
of trade, caused by the financial changes which set in in 1873 ; while, 
among merely local problems, there are the proper amount of local 
government which shall best accord Avith the best interests of Ireland 
and of Great Britain ; the proper relations of church and state ; 
the education of the people ; the tremendous questions involved in the 
relations between employers and employed ; and the discovery of the 



1040 



Victoria 



1895 



organisation of society which shall give the best results in promoting 
the moral and material condition of the public. Such are the problems 
Avhich await solution at their hands, and on these every self-respecting 
man will be obliged to form an opinion. In the past, the British people 
have shown themselves well able to cope with the problems of their own 
day. It remains to be seen whether their descendants will prove worthy 
of the inheritance bequeathed to them, and be able to hand on to 
their children as worthy a record of noble ideal and successful per- 
formance as their ancestors have left to them. 



CHIEF DA TES. 



Household Suffrage in towns, 
Irish Church disestablished, 
Elementary Education Act, 
First Irish Land Act, 
Ballot established. 
Treaty of Berlin, 
Second Irish Land Act, 
Occupation of Egypt, 
Death of Gordon, 
Household Suffrage in counties, 
Mr. Gladstone accepts Home Rule, 
First Home Rule Bill rejected, 
First Colonial Conference, 
County Councils established, . 
Second Home Rule Bill rejected, 
Parish Councils established, 



A.D. 

1867 
1869 
1870 
1870 
1872 
1878 
1881 
1882 
1885 
1885 
1885 
1886 
1887 
1888 
1893 
1894 



INDEX 



Abel, 420 
Abercromby, 795 
Abercrombie, Sir Ralph, 375 
Abei'deeii, battle of, 573 

, Lord, 950, 963, 981, 982, 988, 989 

Abernethy, 96 

Aberystwith, 216 

'Abhorrers,' 637 

Absalom and AcMtopJiel, 640 

Abdurrahman Khan, 1021 

Achard, 165 

Acolytes, 140 

Acre, capture of, 160, 161 

Acre, siege of, 872, 873 

Act against Occasional Conformity, 742 

of Explanation, 625 

of Indemnity and Oblivion, 614 

of Settlement of Charles ii., 625 

(English), 699 

(Irish), 676 

of the Six Articles, 420 

of Union, 717 

of Louvain, 111, 123, 125. 

Addington, 880, 882, 889 (see Sldmouth, 

Lord) 
Addison, 734, 742 
Adela of France, 155 
Adelaide, 962 
Aden, 962 

Adjutators, the, 578 
Adrian iv., 147 
Adrianople, Treaty of, 933 
Adventurers, the Irish, 553, 603, 624 
' Adullam, Cave of,' 1005 
Advowsons, 141 
Adwalton Moor, 562 
iElfgar, 79 
^Ifgifu, 74 
iEthelings, 47 

Afghanistan, 964, 965, 1019, 1021, 1028 
Agilbert, 32 

Agincourt, battle of, 318-320 
Agnes of Meran, 168 
Agricola, 14, 15 
Agricola's Forts, 15 
Agricultui'al Holdings Act, 1025 
Aquinas, Thomas, 188 
Aidan, St., 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 
Aids, 177 
Ailmar, 192 

Aislabie, 742, 744, 746, 748 . 
Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of, 785 
Akbar Khan, 965 
Alabama, The, 1000 
Alamayu, 1007 



Albany, Duke of, 301, 308, 359, 368 
Albemarle, George Monk, Duke of, 614, 615, 

616, 622, 625 
Alberoni, 739, 740 
Albert the Great, 188 
Albion, 7 

Albuera, battle of, 900 
Alcantara, 900 
Alcuin, 38 
Aldermen, 952, 1035 
AlenQon, Count of, 255 

, Francis, Duke of, 462, 467 (see Anjou) 

Alexander ii., 180, 217 

II., Pope, 91 

III., 217 

III., Pope, 135 

Bishop, 126 

Alexandria, battle of, 875 

Bombardment of 

Alexius Comnenus, 109 
Alfonso of Castille, 209 
Alfred the Great, 53-60, 74 

, the Atheling, 81 

Alfred's Translations, 58 

Algiers, bombardment of, 910 

Allegiance, 269 

Allen, William, 463 ' 

Allibone, Judge, 658 

Allotments Act, 1035 

Alma, battle of, 984 

Almanza, battle of, 720 

Almarez, 900 

Almeida, 899, 900 

Almenara, battle of, 721 

Alnwick, 106, 151 

Alod, 48 

Alphonzo of Navarre, 168 

Attainder, Acts of, 344 

Althorp, Lord, 932, 939, 948, 949, 950, 952 

Alva, 459 

Amboyna, 596 

American Colonies, 811 

Amherst, Jeflrey, 794, 795, 796 

Amiens, Mise of, 196 

Treaty of, 875 

Ammianus Marcellinus, 21 

Andre, Major, 831 

Angles, 21, 23 

Anglesea, 137, 214 

Anglia, 23 

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 121 

Anjou, 118, 135, 138, 167, 170 

_— Francis, Duke of, 467 (see AlenQon) 

Margaret of, 332, 338, 341, 342, 345, 

346, 347, 348, 350, 353, 356, 357, 358 
U 



1042 



An Advanced Histm-y of England 



Anlaf, 64 
Annates, 410, 411 

Anne, daughter of James ii., 620, 662, 673, 
686 

, reign of, 705, 730 

Annual Register, 820 
Anselm, 108, 112, 113, 114,^115^ 
Anson, Commodore, 767, 771, 772, 785 
Ante-nati, the, 491 
Anti-Corn Law League, 958 
Antioch, siege of, 109 
Appledore, 59 
Apprenticeship Act, 480 
Aquitaine, Duchy of, 264 
Arabi Pasha, 1026 
Arcot, siege of, 799 
Arden, Forest of, 41 
Ardriagh, 147 
Argaum, battle of, 887 
Argyll, John Campbell, Duke of, 729, 734, 
738 

, Archibald Campbell, Earl of, 533, 546, 

573, 582, 590, 623 

, Archibald Campbell, Earl of, the 

younger, 641, 647, 673, 674 

, George Douglas, Duke of, 981 

Arkwright, Richard, 851 

Arietta of Falaise, 77 

Arlington, Lord, 625, 626, 627, 629, 630, 631 

Armada, the, 470, 471 

Armagh, 147 

Armagnacs, 308 

Arms Act, 972 

Army Pay, 316 

Plot, the, 543 

Arnold, Benedict, 825, 831 

Arragon, Katharine of, 388, 393, 402, 413 

Arran, Earl of, 454 

Arras, Congress of, 328 

Array, Commission of, 555 

Arrow, the Lorcha, 992 

Arsuf, battle of, 161 

Artevelde, James van, 248, 252 

Arthur of Brittany, 154, 167, 168, 169, 170 

, son of Henry vii., 376, 388 

Articles of Religion, the, 450 

Articuli super cartas, 209 

Artisans' Dwellings Act, 1016 

Arundel, 461 

, Archbishop, 290, 291, 292 

, Castle, 104 

, Richard Fitz-Alan, Earl of, 285, 287, 

290 

, Sir Humphrey, 430 

Aryans, 4, 5 

Aschaifenburg, 770 

Ascue, 595 

Ashbourne's, Lord, Act, 1029 

Ashburton, Lord {see Dunning), 833, 836 

Ashdown, battle of, 54 

Ashley, Baron, 614, 615 (see Shaftesbury). 

, Lord, 625, 627 

Aske, Robert, 416 

Askew, Anne, 424 

, Bishop of Salisbury, 337 

Asquith, H„ 1037 

Assandun, battle of, 71 

Assaye, battle of, 887 

Asser, 57 

Assiento, the, 726 

Assize of Arms, 153, 211 



Astley, Sir Jacob, 575 

Aston, Sir Arthur, 588 
Atheluey, 55 
Athelstan, 39, 63 
Athlone, capture of, 679 

, Ginkell, Lord, 697 

Atterbury, 728, 729, 749 
Auberoche, battle of, 252 
Auchterarder Case, 968, 
Audley, Lord, 343 

, Lord (another), 380 

Aughrim, battle of, 680 
Augustine, 27, 28, 29, 35 
Augustinians, 187, 273 
Auldearn, battle of, 573 
Aulus Plautius, 13 
Aumale, William of, 184 
Aurelius, 22 

Austerlitz battle of, 888 
Austin Canons, 120 
Australia, 849, 961, 975 

, South, 961 

Australian Colonies, 975 
Austria, Don John of, 462 
Austrian Netherlands, 864, 937 
Aidohiograpliy of a Radical, 917 
Auverquerque, 697 
Avice of Gloucester, 169 
Avranche, Hugh of, 82 
Axtel, 615 
Aymer de Valence, 229 

Babington, Anthony, 469, 695 

Bacon, Sir Francis, 479, 500, 501, 502, 505 

, Nicholas, 449 

, Roger, 188, 273 

Badajos, 899, 900 
Badby, John, 303 
Badlesmere, Lady, 237 

, Lord, 237 

Bagnal, Sir Henry, 478 

Bagot, Sir William, 290 

Bailiff, 43 

Baillie, 566, 581 

Baird, Sir David, 875, 886, 887 

Baker, Major, 677 

, Sir Samuel, 1036 

, General, 1027 

Balaclava, battle of, 986, 987 
Baldwin, Archbishop, 160, 169 

I., 155 

of Flanders, 77, 81, 118 

Balfour, Arthur James, 1026, 1032, 1034, 1039 

of Burley, 573 

, Sir William, 549, 560 

Ball, John, 280 
Ballingarry, 974 
Balliol, Edward, 245, 264 

, John (the elder), 195 

, 217, 218, 220 

Ballot, the, 957, 1011 

Balmerino, Lord, 776, 781 

Baltimore, Lord, 531 

Bamford, Samuel, 917 

Bamborough, 70, 106, 137 

Banaster, Ralph, 367 

Banbury, 559 

Bancroft, Bishop of London, 489, 491 

Bangor, 28 

in Ireland, 147 

Bank of England, 688, 689 



Index 



1043 



Bankruptcy Act, 1025 

Barbadoes, 498 

Barbarians, 19, 24 

Barbarossa, Frederick, 123, 142, 155, 160 

Barbon, Praise-God, 599 

Barcelona, 712 

Barclay, Sir George, 694, 695 

Bardolph, Lord, 307 

Barillon, 646 

Barlow, Bishop, 451 

Barnard, Sir John, 765 

Barnes, Dr., 420 

Barnet, battle of, 355 

Barnveldt, the Dutchman, 495 

Barons, conspiracy of, 149 

Barre, Colonel, 811, 812, 815, 817, 818, 823, 

832, 844 
Barrier Treaty, 735 
Barrows, 4 
Barton, Andrew, 379 

, Elizabeth, 415 

, Robert, 379 

Basing, battle of, 54 

Basques, 5, 6 

Bastille, the, 858 

Bastwick, John, 527, 528, 541 

Bate's Case, 494 

Bath, John Granville, Earl of, 647 

, Lord (see Pulteney), 768, 784 

Batoum, 1018, 1019 
Batten, Vice-Admiral, 571 
Battle, town of, 84 
Bayeux, Odo of, 82, 92, 95, 98 
Baylen, 894 
Bavaria, 1001, 1014 

, Louis of, 248, 252 

, Maximilian of, 707, 708, 709 

Baxter, Richard, 602, 618, 647, 654 

Beachy Head, battle off, 681 

Beaconsfield, Earl of (see Disraeli), 1018, 

1019, 1021 
Bearroc Wood, 41 
Beaton, Cardinal, 423 
Beauchamp, Anne, 540 
Beaufort, Cardinal Henry, 311, 313, 320, 

324, 328, 331, 333 

, Duke of, 776 

, Edmund, 330, 333, 338, 339, 341, 342 

, John, 290, 800, 311, 356 

, Jane, 325. 

, Henry, Duke of Somerset, 345 

, Margaret, Countess of Stanley, 331, 

332, 366 

, Thomas, 311, 321 

Beauforts, the, 289 

Beaumaris, 216 

Beauge, battle of, 322 

Beaumont, Lieutenant-Colonel, 660 

Bee, Monastery of, 108 

Becket, Gilbert, 136 

, (see Thomas, Archbishop) 

Beckford, Alderman, 766 

Bedchamber Question 959, 960 

Bede, 18, 22,23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 3() 

Bedford, 62 

, John, Duke of, 306, 324, 328, 329 

, Duke of, 769, 809 

, Earl of, 535, 539 

, John Russell, Duke of, 813, 818 

, siege of, 185 

Whigs, the, 809 



Bedloe, William, 635 
Beer Riots, 760 
Begums, the, 841, 845 
Behar, 839 
Bek Antony, 206 
Belgte, 9, 11 
Belgium, 937 

Neutrality of, 1015 

Bell, Andrew, 945 
Bellingham, John, 902 
Benedict Biscop, 33, 34 

X., 81 

Benedictines, 120, 121 
Benefit of Clergy, 408 
Benevolences, 385 
Bengal, 800, 839 

Bennet, Henry (see Arlington), 625 
Bensington, battle of, 38 
Bentham, Jeremy, 940 
Bentinck, 697, 702 

, Lord George, 971, 976 

, William the younger, 697 

Beornwulf, 39 
Berengaria of Navarre, 160 
Bergen-op-Zoom, siege of, 784 
Berkeley, Judge, 530, 541 
Berkhampstead, 87 

Berlin Note, 1017 
Treaty, 1018, 1021 

Bernicia, 47, 56 

Bertrand of Born, 154 

Berwick Castle, 152 

, capture of, 220 

, Duke of, 660, 684, 694, 720 

Bessieres, 900 

Bhurtpore, 964 

Bible, Wyclifs, 311 

, Authorised Version, 489 

, Matthew's, 420 

, 'the Great,' 420 

, Tyndal's, 419 

Bidasoa, 903 

Biddle, 604 

Biggar, J., 1023 

Bigod, Roger, 176, 179, 221 

Bill of Security, 716 

Billings, Sir Richard, 626 

Birch, Colonel, 630 

Birinus, 31 

Birkbeck, Doctor, 924 

Birmingham, 940, 942, 943 

League, the, 1011 

Bishop's Court, 140 

War, first, 534 

, second, 536 

Bismarck, Count, 1001, 1014 

Bithoor, 963, 994 

Black Death, 257 

' Black Fridav.' 777 

Hole of Calcutta, 800 

Prince, 266, 275, 276 

Blackheath, battle of, 380 

Bladensburg, battle of, 904 

Blake, Robert, Admiral, 506, 587, 590, 595, 
596, 597, 599, 605, 606 

Blakeney, General, 778, 791 

Blanche of England, 168 

ofCastille, 168, 183 

of Lancaster, 272 

Taque, 253 

' Blanketeers,' 910 



1044 



An Advanced History of England 



Blenheim, battle of, 70S 
Bloody Assize, the, 649 
Blore Heath, battle of, 343 
Bliicher, Marshal, 906 
Blunt, Sir John, 744 
Boadicea, 14 

Board of Control, the, 844 
Bocland, 48 

Bohemia, Anne of, 284, 289 
Bohemia, John of, 255 
Boheraund of Taranto, 109 
Bohun, Henry of, 176, 179 

, Humplirey de, 221, 229 

Bohuns, pedigree of, 229 

Bois-le-Dixc, battle of, 865 

Boleyn, Anne, 403, 405, 409, 410, 413. 

Bolingbroke, Henry of, Earl of Derby, 284, 

286 (see Henry iv.) 
, Henry St. John, Viscount, 727, 729, 

735, 736, 748, 749, 753, 786 
Bolivar, 927 
Bolton, Dulce of, 759 
Bombay, 620, 797 
Bonaparte, Joseph, 894, 897 
, Louis Napoleon, 979, 982, 996, 999, 

1014 
, Napoleon, 865, 870, 873, 874, 882, 896, 

902, 903, 905, 910 
Bond, Oliver, 877 
Boniface, 34 

of Savoy, 191 

VIII., 221, 224, 225 

IX., 284 

Bonner, Bishop of London, 419, 433, 442 
Book of Common Prayer, 429, 434, 601, 605, 

618 
Booth, Sir George, 610 (see Lord Delamere) 
Boroughbridge, battle of, 237 

,567 

Boscawen, Admiral, 801 

Boston, 821, 822 

Bos worth, battle of, 371 

Bothwell Brigg, 637 

Bothwell, James Hepburn, Earl of, 455, 456 

Boucher, Joan, 434 

Boufflers, Marshal, 686, 719 

Boulogne, Eustace of, 82 

Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, 342, 

343, 347, 364 

, Lord, 342, 343, 345, 355 

, Robert, 251 

Bourkes, the, 381 

Bouvines, battle of, 175 

Bowring, Sir John, 992 

' Boys, The,' 765, 768 

Brackenbury, Sir Robert, 371 

Braddock, General, 790, 794 

Bradshaw, John, 584, 598, 600, 609, 010, 

611, 614 
Braniliam Moor, battle of, 307 
Brandon, 4 

Breadalbane, John Campbell, Earl of, 675 
Breakspear, Nicholas (Adrian iv.), 147 
Brember, Sir Nicholas, 285, 286 
Brentford, battle of, 71 
Brenville, battle of, 118 
Breteuil, Roger of, 
Bretiguy, Peace of, 264 
Brett, Lieutenant, 771, 773 
Bretwalda, 29 
Brian Boru, 147 



Brian, Fitz-Count, 127, 129 
Bridgenorth, 62 

, siege of, 113 

Bridgwater, 698 

canal, 852 

Brigantes, 15 

Brigham, treaty of, 217 

Bright, John, 959, 963, 909, 973, 992, 997, 

1005, 1010, 1021, 1030 
Brihuega, battle of, 721 
Brihtnoth, 70 
Brindley, James, 852 
Bristol, 74, 92, 562 

, Digby, Earl of, 507, 539, 548 

British and Foreign School Society, 945 

Colonial Empire, 961 

Britons, 7 
Brittany, 252 

, John of, 206, 226 

, Alan of, 82 

, Anne of, 386 

Broad-bottomed Ministry, 769 

Broe, Ralf de, 143, 144 

Broi, Philip de, 141 

Brooklyn, 825 

Brooke, George, 488 

Brook, Robert Greville, Lord, 535, 539, 547, 

562 
Brougham, Henry, Lord, 912, 915, 923, 931, 

938, 939, 940, 941, 945, 951, 956 
Brown, Robert, 464 
Browne, Sir Anthony, 426 
Browning, Micaiah, 678 
Bruce, Edward, 235 

, Robert, 217, 218 

(the younger), 226, 232, 233, 234, 

243 
Brueys, Admiral, 872 
Brunanburh, battle of, 63 
Brunswick, Caroline of, 921, 922 
Brydon, Dr., 966 
Brynglas, battle of, 304 
Brythons, 7, 9, 11, 25 
Buckingham, Humphrey Stafford, Duke of, 

342, 345 

, Henry Stafford, Duke of, 362 

, George Villiers, Duke of, 506, 510, 

513, 514, 515, 516, 518 
, George Villiers the younger, Duke of, 

580, 625, 627, 629, 630, 631, 632. 

, George Grenville, Duke of, 925 

Bulgaria, 1017, 1018, 1037 

Bunker's Hill, battle of, 824 

Buonaparte, Napoleon, 865, 870, 873, 874, 

882, 896, 902, 903, 905, 910 
Burdett, Sir Francis, 917, 930 
Burford, battles of, 37, 588 
Burgh-on-the-Sands, 226 
Burghersh, Bishop of Lincoln, 250 
Burgos, siege of, 901, 902 
Burgoyne, Sir John, 825 
Burgundians, 308 
Burgundy, Anne of, 325, 327 

, Charles, Duke of, 352, 353, 357 

, Margaret of York, Duchess of, 352, 

379 

, Philip, Duke of, 322, 325, 330 

Burh, 43 
Burh-ed, 54 
Burhgerifa, 43 
Burials Bill, 1025 



Index 



1045 



Burke, Edmund, 814, 817, 818, 820, 823, 829, 
832, 833, 835, 836, 838, 840, 841, 845, 846, 
861, 863, 874 

Burleigh, William Cecil, Lord, 469, 472 

Bui-ley, Sir Simon, 284, 285 

Burmah, 964 

Burnell, Robert, 206, 209, 218 

Burnes, Alexander, 964, 966 

Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, 644, 659, 660, 
661, 670, 671, 683, 713 

Burns, 852, 924 

Burrard, Sir Harry, 896 

Burton, Henrv, 527, 541, 547, 671 

, Sir R. F., 1036 

Busaco, battle of, 899 

Bussy, or Bushy, Sir John, 290, 292 

Bute, John Stuart, Earl of, 805, 806, 807, 808 

Butt, Isaac, 1022, 1023 

Butler, Lady Eleanor, 364 

Butlers, the, 381 

Buttington, battle of, 59 

Buxar, battle of, 839 

Bury St. Edmunds, Parliament at, 221 

' By,' 56 

Bydel, 42 

Byland, Abbey, 238 

Byng, Admiral Sir George, 709, 71S 

John, 791 

Byron, Loi-d, 924 

, Sir John, 558, 564 



Cabot, John, 390 

, Sebastian, 390 

Cabul, 964, 965, 1019, 1021 

Caedmon, 34 

Caen, 95 

Cade, Jack, 336, 337 

Cadiz, 511 

Cadoudal, Georges, 883 

CadoL'an, General, 719 

Cadwallon, 25, 30, 31 

Calais, 330 

, loss of, 446 

, siege of, 255 

, surrender of, 256, 257 

Calamy, Edward, 545, 618 

Calcutta, 797 

Calder, Sir Robert, 884 

Calicut, 475 

Calvin, 452 

Cam bray. League of, 394 

Cambridge, 54, 62, 92, 557 

, Richard, Earl of, 316 

Camden, battle of, 831 

, Lord, 815, 836, 843 

Cameron of Lochiel, 774 

, Dr., 781 

Cameronian Regiment, 674 
Canierons, the, 673 
'Campaign, Plan of,' 1033 
Campbell, Captain, of Glenlyon, 675 

, Sir Colin, afterwards Lord Clyde, 986, 

995, 996 
Campbells, the, 673, 675 
Campeachy Bay, 766 
Campeggio, Cardinal, 403, 404 
Camperdown, battle of, 866 
Campion, 463 
Camulodunum, 13, 14 
Canada, 790, 797, 911, 955, 956, 1006, 1036 



Canals, 852 

Candahar, 964, 965, 96G, 1021 

Canning, 882, 883, 892, 898, 912, 917, 925, 926, 

927, 928, 931, 932, 940 

, Lord, 995 

Cannon, 674 

, General, 990 

Canon Law, 140 
Canterbury Tales, 289 
Cantreds, the four, 213, 216 
Canute of Denmark, 99 

, 71, 72-74 

Cape Colony, 911, 1019, 1036 

Capel, Lord, 581 

Cape Passaro, battle of, 740 

Cape of Good Hope, 869, 905 

Cape St. Vincent, first battle of, 834 

, second battle of, 866 

Caractacus, 13 

Carberry Hill, 456 

Carbisdale, battle of, 590 

Cardiff Castle, 114 

Cardigan, Lord, 987 

Cardwell, E., 977, 1008, 1012, 1013 

Carew, Sir Peter, 430, 440 

Carey, John, 947 

Carlsbrook, 580 

Carlisle, 106, 137, 457 

Carmartlien, Marquess of, 629, 672 (see 

Danby), 683 
Carmelites, 187, 273 
Carnarvon, 216 

, Earl, 1005, 1018 

Carpenter, General, 738 

Carolina, 788, 999 

Caroline of Anspach, 756, 757, 765 

Carr, Robert, 500, 501 

Carstares, William, 674 

Carteret, Lord, 748, 750, 752, 757, 768, 770, 

771, 782 
Cartwright, 577, 851 

, Thomas, 464 

Carucate, 163 

Cashel, 147 

Casket Letters, the, 457 

Cassivellaunus, 10, 13 

Castile, Constance of, 273, 289 

Castillon, battle of, 339 

Castlebar, 878 

Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, Lord, 879, 

883, 892, 898, 902, 910, 912, 917, 920, 925 
Castles, 154. 

Cateau Cambresis, Treaty of, 453 
Catesby, 479 

Robert 492 

' Sir William, 367, 369, 371 

Cathcart, Lord, 892 
Catherine ii. of Russia, 848 
Catholic Emancipation carried, 934 
Cato Street Plot, 920 
Catuvelauni, 10 
Cavagnari, Sir Louis, 1019 
Cavalier, 550 
Cavendish, Lord, 630, 634 

, Lord Frederick, ]025 

, Lord John, 809, 833, 836, 838 

Cavemen, 4 

Cavour, Count, 998, 999 
Cawnpore, 994 
Caxton, William, 390 
Ceawlin, 23, 24, 29, 37, 38 



1046 



An Advanced History of England 



Cecil, Sir Edward, 512 

, Sir Robert, 48(5 

, Robert, 472 

, William, 449, 465 (see Burleigh) 

Celtic invasion, 4 

Celts, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 

Ceorls, 47 

Cetewayo, 1020, 1025, 1030, 1039 

Ceylon, 8C9, 905 

Chad, St., 33 

Chaderton, Master of Emmanuel College, 

Cambridge, 489 
Chalgrove Field, 561 
Chalmers, Thomas, 968 
Chalon, the little battle of, 206 
Chains, 165 

Chamberlain, Joseph, 1021, 1025, 1030, 1039 
Chambers, Alderman, 518, 526, 541 
Chancery Court, 212 
Chandernagore, 797 
'Chandos Clause,' 943, 949 
Channel Islands, 170 
Charlemont, Lord, 836 
Charles the Great, 38, 39 

the Simple, 64 

Charles i., 506, 507 

, reign of, 509-585 

, Prince, Charles ii., 552, 588, 590, 591, 

594, 611 

II., reign of, 613-643 

Edward, Prince, 772, 773, 779 

, Archduke, 707, 726 

VIII. of France, 358, 369, 879, 387 

v., Emperor, 400, 401, 415, 423, 439, 

440, 443 

XII. of Sweden, 740 

Albert, 973 

Charlotte, Princess, 921 
Charnock, Sir Robert, 694, 695 
Charter of Forests, 184 

of the Forest, 222 

of Henry i., referred to, 175 

of Liberties, 112 

-, The People's, 957 

Charters, Confirmation of, 223 

to towns, 164 

Chartists, the, 957, 974 

Chateau Gaillard, 163, 170 

Chatham, Earl of (see Pitt), 815, 816, 818, 

827, 828 

, Earl of, son of above, 897 

Chatrys, William, 302 
Chaucer, 259, 288, 289 
Chesapeake, the, 903 
Cheshire, 69 
Chester, 62, 74, 93 

, battle of, 24, 25, 26, 37 

Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl 

of, 750, 759, 768, 769, 783, 784, 786, 798, 

809, 835, 857 
Cheriton, battle of, 565 
Cheyte Singh, 845 
Chichele, Henry, 315 
Chichester, Arthur, 496, 497 
Chillian wallah, battle of, 967 
Chiltern Hills, 41 
China War, first, 960 

, second, 992 

Chinon, 150 
Chippenham, 55 
election, 768, 819 



Christianity, introduction of, 17 

Roman, 26 

Christina, 79 

Chronicle, Anglo-Saxon, 58, 67 

Church, influence of, on national life, 35 

Churchill, Admiral, 722 

, Arabella, 660 

, John, Lord, afterwards Marlborough, 

628, 648 659, 661, 671, 672, 681, 686, 696, 

698 

, Lord Randolph, 1026, 1032 

, the Poet, 810 

Cider Tax, the, 808 

Cinque Ports, 196 

Circuits, 145 

Cistercians, 120 

Ciudad Rodrigo, 899, 900 

Civil jury, 145 

Clare election, the, 933 

, Richard de, 148 

, Thomas of, 199 

Clarence, George, Duke of, 352, 353, 355, 

356, 358 

, Lionel, Duke of, 272 

, Thomas, Duke of, 312, 322 

Clarendon, Assize of, 145 

, Constitutions of, 141, 145 

, Council of, 141 

, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 614, 622 

, Henry Hyde, 645, 664 

, G. W. Villiers, 972 

Clark, Anne, 898 

Clarkson, Thomas, 847, 890, 945 

Claypole, Elizabeth, 608 

Clement vii., Pope, 403 

Clericis laicos, 221 

Clerkenwell Explosion, 1007 

Clermont, Council of, 109 

Cleveland, 83 

Cleves, Anne of, 421 

Clifford, Lord, 342, 345, 346 

, Sir Thomas, afterwards Lord, 625, 626, 

627, 630 
Clifton, skirmish at, 778 
Clinton, General, 825, 831 
Clive, Robert, 799, 839, 840 
Clonmacnoise, 147 
Cloumel, 589 
Clontarf, battle of, 147 

, meeting at, 967 

Clugniacs, 120 

Clugny, 67 

Coa, combat of, 899 

Coal Mines'Regulation Act, 1035 

Cobbett, William, 914, 917, 944 

Cobden, Richard, 958, 959, 963, 969, 970, 

973, 978, 992, 998 
Cobham, Eleanor, 332 

, Lord, 479, 487, 488, 759 

Coehorn, 682 
Cochrane, Admiral, 927 
Code Napoleon, 874 
Codriugton, Sir Edward, 982 
Coffee Houses, 632 
Coifi, 30 

Coinage, debasing of, 423 
Coke, Edward, 501, 502, 504, 506, 510, 512, 
515 

, American Methodist, 763 

Colbert, 626, 627 
Colborne, Sir Thomas, 908 



Index 



1047 



Colchester, 13 
Coldstream Guards, 616 
Coleman, 635 
Colepepper, William, 702 
Coleridge, 852, 924 
Colet, John, 389 
Coligny, Admiral, 458 
College, Stephen, 640 
Colley, Sir George, 1022 
CoUiugwood, Admiral, 884, 885 
Colman, 32, 33 

Colonial Conference, 1035, 1036 
Colonies, 473, 497, 788, 812, 816 
Columba, St., 26, 27, 33 
Coluniban, St., 27 
Combermere, Viscount, 964 
Comines, Philip de, 357 

, Robert of, 93 

Common Pleas, Court of, 153 

Communa, 164 

Companies, trading, 499 

Comprehension Bill, 626 

Compton, Bishop of London. 651, 652, 659, 

662 

, Sir Spencer, 756, 768 

Compurgation, 145 

Compurgators, 49 

Comyn, John, 225, 226 

Concord, 823 

Conde, Prince of, 458 

' Confederates,' 564, 566, 575 

Confederate States, the, 999, 1000 

Congregation, Lords of the, 454 

Congress of Vienna, 905 

Connaught, 147 

Connecticut, 788 

Conrad of Montferrat, 161 

Conservatives, numbers of, 944, 950, 96-i, 

1008, 1014, 1021, 1029, 1032, 1037 
Consillt, battle of, 137 
Conspiracy to Murder Bill, 997 
Constable, Sir John, 416 
Constance of Brittany, 135, 167 
Constantine, 17, 63 
Continental War, Frederick's, 802 
Contract, the Great, 494 
Conventicle Act, 619 
Convention, the, of 1660, 611 

, the, of 1688, 663 

Convocation of Canterbury, Constitution of, 

302, 303 

, discontinued, 762 

Conway, 216 

, General, 809, 812, 813, 815, 817, 832 

Cony, 605 

Conyers, Sir John, 352 

Cook, 615 

Cooke, Captain, 849 

Cooper, Sir Antony Ashley, 599, 600, 614 

(see Shaftesbury) 
Coote, Colonel Eyre, 800, 841 
Cope, Sir John, 774, 775, 776 
Cork, 147, 679 

, Robert Boyle, Earl of, 523 

Cornbury, Lord, 662 
Corn Laws, the, 915, 957, 963, 970 
Coruwallis, Lord, 831, 832, 888 
Cornwall, Richard, Earl of, 193, 194, 197 

, Henry, Earl of, 195 

Corporations, 619 
Act, 671, 863 



Corunna, battle of, 896 

Cosin, Bishop of Durham, 517 

Cottenham, Lord, 951 

Cotton, Sir John Hynde, 769 

Council of the North, 417, 422, 544 

Counter Reformation, 463 

' Country Party,' the, 630 

County Councils, 1035 

Coupland, 256 

Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, 283 

, Edward, Earl of Devon, 439, 440, 

441 
Court of Chancery, 602 

of Common Pleas, 178 

of High Commission, 451 

Courtrai, battle of, 225 

Coventry, 558 

Coverdale, Miles, Bishop of Exeter, 419, 433 

444, 451 
Cowper, 734, 764 
Cowper-Tomple Clause, 1011 
Craft Guilds, 165 
Craftsman, the, 753 
Craggs, 746, 748 

Cranborne, Lord (see Salisbury) 
Cranfield, Lionel, 508 
Cranmer, Thomias, 409, 410, 419, 420, 426, 

429, 442, 444 
Crauford, Robert, 899 
Crawford, Earl of, 546 
Crecy, battle of, 253 
Crefeld, battle of, 802 
Cressinghain, 224 
Crevant, battle of, 325 
Crew, Chief- Justice, 513 
Cricklade, 61 
Crimea, 983-991 
Crimes Act, Gladstone's, 1025 

, Salisbury's, 1033 

Criminal Code, the, 919 

' Criminous clerks,' 140, 141 

The Crisis, 728 

Croke, Judge, 530 

Croker, J. W., 941 

Crompton, 851 

Cropredy Bridge, battle of, 566 

Cromwell, Henry, G02, 609 

, Lord, 335 

, Richard, 609, 610 

, Thomas, 412, 415, 416, 419, 421 

, Oliver, 539, 542, 545, 557, 558, 560, 561, 

562, 563, 565, 566, 568, 569, 570, 572, 578, 

582, 583, 584, .587, 588, 590, 591, 598, 599, 

600, 607, 608, 609, 614 
Crowland, 53, 67 
Crowmer, 336 
Crown Point, 790 
Crusade, causes of, 108 

, the tirst, 108 

, the third, 160, 161 

Cuesta, General, 897 

Culloden, 779 ; battle of, 780 

Culpepper, 550 

Cumberland, William, Duke of, 771, 772, 

778, 779, 791, 792, 793, 811, 813 

, William, Duke of (another), 953 

Cunedda, 23, 26 

Cunningham, Colonel, 677 

Cunobelinus, 13 

Cur Deus Homo, 108 

Curia Regis, 116, 117, 152, 177, 185 



1048 



Jn Advanced History of England 



Currency question, 1015, 1020 

, state of, 690 

Curtis, Captain, 834 
Customary service, 139 
Customs duty, 271 
Custom, tlie great, 223 
Custozza, battle of, 1002 
Cuthbert, 34 

Cutts, General Lord, 686, 709 
Cyprus, Isle of, 160, 161 

D'Alembert, 857 
Dalhousie, Lord, 993 
Dalrymple, Sir John, 674, 675 

, Sir Hugh, 896 

Damme, 174 

Danby, Earl of (see Latimer), 629, 631, 632, 

633, 646, 656, 659, 662, 664, 668, 672 (see 

Leeds) 
Danegeld, 73 
Danes, 51 

Danelaw, 56, 64, 69 
Dangerfield, 635, 646 
Danish boroughs, 62, 64 
Danton, 859, 869 
d'Arcon, 834 
Dare, Jeanne, 327 
Darey, Lord, 416 
Dare of Taunton, 048 
Darien Scheme, 714 
Darnley, Henry, 455, 456 
Darrein lyrcsentvunt, 178 
Dashwood, Sir Francis, 808, 820 
Dauphin, 264 
David, King of Scotland, 98, 111, 123, 124, 

128 
— , Prince of Wales, 214, 216 

of Scotland, 256, 264 

, St., 26 

Davis, Jefferson, 999 
Davis, John, 466 
Davison, 469 
Davitt, M., 1023 
Dawstone, battle of, 24, 25 
Deane, Admiral, 587, 596 

, Archbishop of Canterburj', 395 

De donis conditionalihus Statute, 209, 210 

d'Enghien, Duke, 883 

d'Estaing, Admiral, 827 

d'Estrees, Admiral, 628 

d'Ewes. Sir Simon, 539 

Declaration of the Army, 579 

of Breda, 614 

of Indulgence of Charles ii., 627, 629 

, the first, of James ii., 654 

, the second, of James ii., 656 

of Right, English, 664 

, Irish, 836 

Defoe, Daniel, 697, 702 

De Hceretico Combiirendo, 302 

Deira, 24 

De la Clue, Admiral, 801 

Delamere, Booth, Lord, 614 

, Lord, 662, 672 

Delaval, 684 
Delaware, 789 
Delhi, 994, 995 
Denewulf, 57 
Denham, Judge, 530 
Denissburn, 31 
Den man, 928 



Denmark, Prince George of, 662, 722 

Derby, 62 

, Henry, Earl of, and Duke of Lancas- 
ter, 248, 252, 257 

, Stanley, Earl of, 488 

, Earl of, 593, 594, 595 

De religiosis, 209 

Dermot Macarthy, 149 

Macmorrough, 148 

De Ruyter, 596, 621, 622, 628 

Derwentwater, Lord, 739 

Desborough, 598, 599, 600, 607, 610 

Desmonds, the, 478 

Desmoulins, Camille, 858 

Despenser, Hugh le, 195 

, elder, 236, 238, 239 

, younger, 236, 238, 239 

, Bishop of Norwich, 281 

Lord, 300 

De Tcdlagio non Concedendo, 223, 515 

Dettingen, battle of, 771 

De viris religiosis, statute of, 209 

Devonshire, William Cavendish, Earl of, 
651, 655, 662, 742 

, Duke of, 808, 809 

, 1039 (see Hartington) 

Devorgil, 148 

De Witt, 596, 621, 628 

Dhuleep Singh, 967 

Diderot, 857 

Dieskau, 790 

Digges, Sir Dudley, 513 

Digby, Lord, 539, 541, 545, 551, 652, 572 

Dighton, 366 

' Directory,' 601 

' Disinherited,' the, 199, 200 

Dispensing power, the, 651 

Disraeli, 971, 978, 980, 997, 1005, 1006, 1014, 
1016, 1017, 1018 (see Beaconsfield) 

Distraint of knighthood, 211 

, 521 

' Disturbance, Compensation for,' Clause, 
1023, 1024 

Division lists published, 953 

Doddington, Bubb, 769 

Dodwell, 669 

Dol, castle of, 151 

Dominicans, 188, 272 

Dom Pantaleone Sa, 604 

Donauwerth, battle of, 708 

Donell, O'Brien, 149 

Doomsday Book, 99 

Dorchester Heights, 825 

Dore, 62 

Dorislaus, 696 

Dorset, Earl of, 549 

, Marquis of, 394 

Douai, College at, 463 

Douglas, 243, 245 

, Earl of, 303, 305 

, Margaret, 455 

, Andrew, 678 

Douro, passage of the, 897 

Dover, 77, 87, 92 

, battle of, 183 

, treaty of, 626 

Drapier's Letters, the, 751 

Drake, Sir Francis, 466, 469, 470, 473 

Drogheda, siege of, 588 

' Drop Shuttle,' 851 

Druids, 11, 14 



Index 



1049 



Drumclog, 637 

Drnraniond, Sir John, 777, 778 ; Lord, 780, 

781 
Dryden, 682 
Dublin, 147, 149 
Dubois, Abbe, 739 
Dudley, Sir Edmund, 385, 393 

, Lord Guildford, 436, 439 

, Lord Robert, 437, 438 

, Dud, 851 

Duffy, C. G., 973 

Dulcigno, 1021 

Duleek, 679 

Dunbar, battles of, 220, 591 

, George of, Earl of March, 301 

Duncan, Admiral, 866, 867 

Dundalk, 588 

Dundas, Henry, 843, 844 

Dundee, Viscount, 673, 674 

Dunes, battle of the, 608 

Dunkeld, 674 

Dunkellin, Lord, 1005 

Dunkirk, 470, 608, 620 

Dunmail, 64 

Dunning, 829, 833 

Dunois, Count, 326 

Duns Scotus, 188 

Dunstan, 33, 65-70 

Dupleix, 799 

Dui^plin Moor, battle of, 245 

Dutch, wars with, 596, 628, 827, 806 

Durham, 93, 151 

, Earl of, 95(3 

Dyckveldt, 656 

Dyrham, battle of, 24, 25, 26 



Eadric, Streona, 70, 71, 72, 73 

the Wild, 92 

Ealdorman, 44 
Ealdred, SO 
Ealdgyth, 81 
Earldoms, 95 
East Angles, 23 

India Company, 474, 499 

Retford, 933 

Saxons, 23 

Eaton, Sir John. 530 
Ecclesiastical Commission, the, 652 

Courts, 140, 408 

Holdings, 107 

Polity, the, 465 

Eddington, battle of, 55 
Eddisbury, 62 
Edgar, 66 

Atheling, 79, 81, 86, 87, 92, 93, 96 

Edgecote, battle of, 352 

, 559 

Edgehill, battle of, 559 

Edinburgh, Castle of, 152, 220, 232, 775 

Letter, 970 

Edith, 76, 77, 78 
Edmund, 63, 64 

, Archbishop, 193 

, Ironside, 71, 72 

, Crouchback, 229 

, of Lancaster, 206 

Edred, 65 

Education, Elementary, 945, 961, 1010, 1011, 

1035 
Edward the Confessor, 74, 76, 81 



Edward i., 196, 197, 198, 199, 200 ; reign oif, 

205-227; character of, 205 ; compared with 

Henry ii., 205 

the Elder, 61, 62, 63 

II., 217, 222 ; reign of, 228-241 

II. and Richard ii. compared, 293 

III., 239 ; reign of, 242-277 

IV,, 343, 346, 847 ; reign of, 348-360 

v., reign of, 361-364 

VI., reign of, 426-436 

of Hungary, 79, 81 

the Martyr, 67 

Prince, 340, 341, 345, 357, 366 

son of Malcolm in., 106 

Edwards, 920 

Edwin of Northumbria, 24, 25, 29, 30, 31, 

37, 38, 39 

, Earl, 79, 83, 84, 87, 91, 92, 93 

Edwy, 66, 72 

Effingham, Lord Howard of, 469, 470, 473 

Egbert, 38, 39, 40 

Egfrith, 34, 37 

Egremont, Thomas Percy, Earl of, 345 

, Lord, 807, 809, 810 

Eikon Basilike, 585 

Eikonoklastes, 585 

Elcho, Lord, 573 

Eleanor of Acquitaine, 128, 135, 151, 157, 

167, 168, 169 

of Brittany, 162 

de Montfort, 214 

of Provence, 191 

Elfric, 70 

Eldon, Lord, 880, 892, 911, 931, 934 

Eliot, Sir John, 510, 512, 513, 515, 519, 520 

Elliott, Governor, 833, 834 

, Captain, 960 

Elizabeth, 410, 430, 441 ; reign of, 448-481, 

405 
Ella, 29 

EUandun, battle of, 39 
Ellenborough, Lord, 889 
Elmete, 41 

Elphinstone, General, 965 
Elswitha, 53 
Ely, 67, 75 

, Isle of, 93 

, Thomas, Bishop of, 285 

Emma, 70, 73, 74, 97 
Emmett, Robert, 880 
Employers' Liability Acts, 1025 

Bill, 1038 

Empson, Sir Richard, 385, 393 

Encumbered Estates Court, 972 

Encyclopaedists, the, 856 

Engagement, the, 580, 601 

' Engagers,' 590, 593 

Enniskillen, 676 

Entail, 210 

Eorls, 47 

Erasmus, 389 

Eric, 73 

Ennine Street, 16 

Erskine, Sir Thomas, 487 

, Lord, 862 

Esnes, 47 

Essex, Countess of, 500 

, Robert Devereux, Earl of, 4r2, 47o, 

478 479 

1 , the younger, 500, 512, 535, 539, 

543, 551, 559, 561, 563, 566, 569, 570 



1050 



An Advanced History of England 



Essex, Arthur Capel, Earl of, C33, 634, 639, 

641 
Estates General, the, 858 
Etaples, Treaty of, 386 
Ethelbald, 37, 53 
Ethelbert, 53 

, of Kent, 23, 27, 28, 29 

Ethelburga, 29, 30, 31 
Ethelfleda, 57. 61 
Ethelfrith, 24, 28, 31, 32, 37, 38 
Ethelmar, 192 
Ethelred of Kent, 37 

I., 53, 54 

, Ealdormau, 57, 59 

the Unready, 69, 71 

Ethelwald, 61 
Ethelwold, 65, 67 
Ethel wulf, 39, 53 

, Ealdormau, 52, 54 

Eugene, Prince of Savoy, 707, 709, 712, 718, 

719, 720, 726 
Eugenius iv., 328 
Eustace, son of Stephen, 129 

of Boulogne, 77, 92, 104 

the Monk, 183 

de Vesci, 176, 179 

Eva, 148 

Evangelical Party, 764 

EveljTi, Sir John, 644, 650, 661, 746 

Evertsen, Admiral, 681 

Exchequer, Court of, 117, 152, 178, 212 

, stop of, 617 

Excise Scheme, 758 
Exclusion Bill, the, 638 
Exeter, 55, 63, 92, 562, 563, 661 

, George Neville, Bishop of, 345, 347 

, Duke of, 341, 345 

, Henry Courtenay, Marquess of, 419 

Exhibition, the Great, 976 

Exmouth, Lord, 910, 911 

Exorcists, 140 

Expansion of England, The, 1036 

Eylau, battle of, 890 

Eyre, Governor, 1004 

Factory Acts, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, 946 

-, Fielden's, 972 

Paddiley, battle of, 24 

Fagher, battle of, 235 

Fairfax, Ferdinand, Lord, 509, 539, 561, 568, 

593, 614 
, Sir Thomas, 561, 565, 566, 568, 569, 

571, 572, 578, 680, 582, 583, 584, 587, 591, 

611 
Fairs, 260 

Falaise, Treaty of, 152, 158, 216 
Falkes de Breaute, 176, 179, 184, 185 
Falkirk, battles of, 225, 778 
Falconbridge, William, Lord, 340, 347, 348, 

349 
Falkland, Henry Carey, Lord, 522 
, Lucius Carey, Lord, 539, 541, 544, 545, 

550, 556, 563 
Family Compact, the, 806 
Famine of 1315, 235 
Farmer, Anthony, 653 
Fastolf, Sir John, 326 
Faversham, 663 
Fawkes, Guy, 492 
Fealty, 269 " 
Fee, knight's, 138 



Fenwick, Sir John, 696 

Felix, 31 

Fell, Dr. , Dean of Christchurch, 651 

Ferdinand of Brunswick, 802 

of Styrla, 504 

Ferguson, 647, 648, 662 

Ferozeshah, battle of, 967 

Ferrand, Count of Flanders, 175 

Fenn, the, 164 

Ferrar, Bishop of St. David's, 443 

Featherstone, 420 

Feudal array, 153 

Feudalism, 100 

Feudal dues, 107, 177, 494 

commuted, 615 

Feversham, Earl of, 648, 659 
Field of the Cloth of Gold, 401 
Fiennes, Lord, 584 

, Nathaniel, 555, 557, 558, 562, 607 

Fifth Monarchy, 597 
Finch, Judge, 541 

, Lord, 539 

First-fruits, 410, 411 

' P'irst tonsure,' 140 

Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 411, 412 

Fitzalan, Richard. Earl of Arundel, 285, 287, 

290, 301 
Fitz-Geralds, the, 422 
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 877, 878 

, Maurice, 148 

, Vesey, 933 

Fitzherbert, Mrs., 921 
Fitz-Nigel, Richard, 158 
Fitz-Osbern, William, 82, 92, 95, 97 
Fitz-Osbert, William, 164 
Fitz-Stephen, Robert, 148 
Fitz-Urse, Reginald, 143 
Fitz-Walter, Robert, 176, 179, 183 
Fitz-William, Earl, 882 
Five-Mile Act, 619 
Flammock, Thomas, 380 
Flanders, Philip of, 150 

, Count of, 96, 221 

Fleet, Alfred's, 57, 58 

Fleetwood, Charles, 591, 593, 598, 599, 602, 

607, 610 
Flemings, 114 (see Netherlands) 
Fletcher, Colonel, 899 

, Andrew, of Salton, 647, 674 

Flodden, battle of, 397 

Florida, 790 

Flushing, 898 

'Fly Shuttle,' 850 

Flood, Henry, 835 

Folkland, 46, 48 

Fontenoy, battle of, 772 

Forbin, 718 

Forbes, Duncan, 775, 781, 795 

Fornham, battle of, 151 

Forest, 366, 521 

, the New, 101, 110 

Forster, Thomas, 738, 739 

W. E., 1004, 1008, 1010, 1011, 1023, 

1024, 1025, 1036 
Fort Augustus, 676, 774 

Duquesne, 790 

Fortescue, John, 357 

, Sir John, 490 

Fort William, 676, 774 
Fosseway, 16, 24 
Fotheringay, 469 



Index 



1051 



Fouclie, 874 

'Fourth Party, The,' 1025 

Fox, Richard, 360, 393, 395 

, Henry, 7S2, 783, 784, 787, 788, 791, 

792, 808, 810 
, Charles James, 820, 823, 828, 829, 832, 

833, 835, 836, 837, 838, 842, 843, 844, 845 
, 846, 847, 849, 850, 860, 861, 

863, 882, 889, 890, 955 
Fox's India Bill, 841 

Libel Act, 819 

Franchises, 43 

Francis i., 398, 410 ; policy of, 399 

II. of France, 453 

Alban, 652, 653 

, Sir Philip, 840, 841, 845 

Franciscans, 188, 273 
Framlinghani, 151 
Frank almoign, 139 
Franklin, Benjamin, 814, 822 
Frank pledge, 145, 270 
Frederic i.. Emperor, 135 

II., Emperor, ISO, 209 

, Prince of Wales, 765, 768, 786 

the Great, 769, 794, 802 

, Elector Palatine, 495, 504 

William iv., 973 

Free Socage, 139 

French language, use of, 232 

Revolution of 17S9, 854, 869 

1830, 937 

Frere, Sir Bartle, 1020 

Friedland, battle of, 890 

Friedlingen, 707 

Frobisher, Sir Martin, 466, 470, 473 

Frontinus, 14 

Frost, Mr., 958 

Fuentes De Ofioro, battle of, 90O 

Fulford, battle of, 83 

Fulk of Anjou, 118, 119, 155 

Fyrd, 44, 58, 153 

Gaedels, 7 

Gaels, 7 

Gage, General, 823, 824 

Gainsborough, 53, 502 

Gall, St., 27 

Gallic Invasion, The, 682 

Galloway, 152 

Galway, Lord, 712 

Gambler, Admiral, 892 

Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, 409, 419, 

421, 433, 439, 440, 441, 442, 444 

, Colonel, 775, 776 

Garibaldi, 999 
Gascony, 195, 257, 267 
Gascoigne, General, 941 
Gatton, 940 
Gaultier, Abbe, 726 
Gaunt, Elizabeth, 649 

, John of, 267, 272, 275, 277, 282, 286 

Gaveston, Piers. 230, 231 

Gay, John, 745, 757 

'General Wan-ants,' 814 

Geoffrey of Anjou, 81, 118, 119, 127, 128, 155 

, the younger, 138 

Fitzpeter, 163, 165, 175 

, son of Henry ir,, 135, 150, 154, 155, 

160, 162 
George i., reign of, 734-755 
II., 742, 745, 754 ; reign of, 756, 803 



George iii., reign of, 804-919 

IV., 849 ; reign of, 920-935 

- — , Prince of Wales (George iv.), 849 

Georgia, 789 

Gerald the Welshman, 18, 171, 172, 273 

Gerard, 420 

Germaine, Lord George (see Sackville), 827 

Geraldines, the, 381 

Gerberoi, Castle of, 98 

Ghuznee, 9d4, 965 

Gibraltar, 726, 755, 832, 911 

Gibbon, E., 852 

Giffard, Bonaventura, 653 

Gilbert Foliot, 139, 142, 143 

of Sempringham, 129 

, Sir Humphrey, 473 

Gildas, 22, 23 

Ginkell, 679, 680, 697 (see Lord Athloiic) 

Gladstone, W. E., 945, 950, 961, 963, 970, 
977, 978, 980, 981, 982, 989, 991, 992, 997, 
998, 999, 1000, 1002, 1004, 1005, 1007, 
1008, 1010, 1013, 1014, 1015, 1017, 1018, 
1020, 1021, 1022, 1024, 1025, 1026, 1027, 
1029, 1030, 1031, 1032, 1033, 1034, 1037, 
1038 

Glamorgan, Edward Somerset, Earl of (see 
Worcester), 575 

Glastonbury, 65 

Glanville, Ralf, 150, 158, 160 

Glenshiel, 740 

Gloucester, 55, 557, 562, 563 

, Henry Stuart, Duke of, 620 

, Earl Gilbert of, 227, 230, 231, 233, 234 

, Gilbert de Clare, Earl of, 196, 199 

, Humphrey, Duke of, 325, 326, 328, 

331, 332, 333 

, Margaret of, 230 

, Richard de Clare, Earl of, 195, 196 

, Richard, Duke of, 354, 356, 359, 362, 363 

, Thomas of, 284, 286, 290 

, William, Duke of, 698 

Goderich, Lord (see Robinson), 931, 932, 939 

Godfrey of Bouillon, 109 

, Sir Edmund Berry, 634 

, Michael, 689 

Godolphin, Sidney, Lord, 645, 063, 669, 096, 
698, 706, 721, 722, 724, 748 

Godwin, 73, 74, 76, 77-79, 92 

Goidels, 7, 11, 12, 25, 26 

Gondomar, 506, 507 

Goodman, 696 

Goodwin, John, 576 

, Sir Francis, 490 

Goojerat, battle of, 967 

Goorkas, the, 995, 996 

Gordon, Lord George, 830 

, Katharine, 379, 380 

, General C. G., 1027, 1028 

Goree, 800 

Goring, General, 557, 568, 572 

Gorst, Sir John, 1026 

Goschen, G. J., 1004, 1008, 1030, 1032, 1039 

Gough, Lord, 967 

, Matthew, 336 

Gower, Earl. 809 

Grafton, Duke of, 813, 815, 816, 817, 818, 
833, 836, 843 

Graham, General Sir Gerald, 1027 

, Sir James, 948, 963, 981 

, John, 637 (see Dundee) 

, Sir Thomas, 902 



1052 



An Advanced History of England 



Grammont, Duke of, 770 
Grampound, 924 
Granby, Marquess of, 802, 807 
Grand Jury, 145 

Remonstrance, 548, 549 

Grandval, 694 

, General Ulysses, 1000 

Granville, 784,1792 (see Carteret) 

, Earl George, 1008, 1021 

Grasse, Count de, 832, 833 
Grattan, Henry, 835, 836, 924 
Graves, Admiral, 832 
Gray, John de, 172, 173 
Great Charter, 176, 184, 222, 636 

Council, 116, 118 

Fire, 622 

Meadow, 790 

Mogul or Padishah, 799 

Plague, 622 

Scutage, 138 

Greeks, the, 927, 931, 932, 1021 
Green, General, 831 

Sir Thomas, 290, 202 

Gregory vn., Pope, 81, 91, 96 

VIII., Pope, 155 

IX,, Pope, 186 

X., Pope, 206 

xni,, Pope, 786 

the Great, 27, 28, 34 

Grenville, Sir Bevil, 561 

, George, 769, 792, 806, 807, 810, 812, 

813, 817, 818 
— -, W. W., Lord, 882, 889, 890, 911, 912 

, Sir Richard, 473, 474 

Whigs, 890 

Grey, Mr. (see Earl Grey), 863, 882, 889, 

898, 911 (see Howick) 
, Earl (see Howick) 931, 938, 939, 941, 

942, 943, 948 

, Earl, son of above, 970, 972 

, Sir George, 995 

, Lady Jane, 398, 436, 437, 439, 440, 441 

, John of Groby, 351 

, Katharine, 436, 449, 455, 485 

, Lord, of Wark, 647, 648 

, Sir Richard, 362, 363 

, de Ruthin, Lord, 304 

, Sir Thomas, 316 

Thomas, Earl of Dorset, 362, 363, 367, 

369 

, Lord William. 446 

de Wilton, William, Lord, 429, 430, 488 

Griffith (son of Llewelyn), 79, 80, 81 

Grindal, 450, 464 

Grim, Edward, 144 

Grimbald the Frank, 57 

Groby, Lord Grey of, 583, 584, 604 

Grocyn, 389 

Grossetete, Robert, 187, 193, 259 

Grouchy, 866 

Grove, a Jesuit, 635 

Gruffydd, 80 

Guadaloupe, 800 

Gualo, 184 

Guesclin, Bertrand de, 266 

Guienne, Duke of, 110 

, 394 

Guildfort Court-house, battle of, 831 
Guilds, disendowment of, 428 
Guiscard, Robert, 78, 109 
, Roger, 109 



Guise, Francis, Duke of, 458 

, Mary of, 423 

Guises, the, 472 
Guinegaste, battle of, 395 
Gundamak, Treaty of, 1019 
Gunpowder, introduction of, 390 

Plot, 492 

Gurthrigernus, 22 

Guthrie, 624 

Guthrum, 52, 54, 55, 56 

Guy of Lusignan, 155, 160, 161 

Gwynne. Nell, 620 

Gyrth, 79, 84, 86 

Gytha, 73, 92 

Gwalior, 995 

Habeas Corpus Act, 178, 631, 636, 917, 1024 
Hacker, Colonel, 615 
Haddington, 429 
Hadrian, 15, 17, 19 

, Pope, 38 

IV., Pope, 135 

Hadrian's Wall, 15 
Hadwisa of Gloucester, 169 
Hainault, Jacqueline of, 326 

, Philippa of, 239, 256, 275 

, William of, 248 

Hales, Sir Edward, 651, 654, 663, 672 

, Sir Robert, 281 

Halfdene, 54, 56 

' Half-Timers.' 946 

Halidon Hill, battle of, 245 

Halifax, Charles Montagu, Earl of, 699, 

707, 724, 734 
, George Savile, Marquis of, 634, 645, 

650, 651, 656, 659, 662, 664, 669, 672 

, George Montagu, Earl of, 809, 810 

, town, 785 

Hall, Bishop of Exeter, 545 

Hallam, Robert, Bishop of Salisbury, 320 

Hamilton, Marquess of, 533, 546, 580, 581, 

594, 595, 678 

, Richard, 678 

Hamiltons, the, 457 

Hammond, 580 

Hampden, John, 529, 539, 543, 548, 550, 

555, 557, 559, 561, 564 

, John, the younger, 630 

Hampton Court, 579 

Hanau, 770 

Handel, 757 

Hanover, Treaty of, 755 

Hansard, Messrs., 962 

Harclay, Sir' Andrew, 237, 238 

Harcourt, 724 

, Sir W. v., 1021, 1030, 1037, 1039 

Hardlcanute, 74, 75 

Harding, Stephen, 120 

Hardinge, Colonel, 900 

Hardmcke, Lord Chancellor, 768, 787 

Hardy, Thomas, 863 

Hares and Rabbits Act, 1025 

Harfleur, capture of, 317 

Hargreaves, 851 

Harlech, 216 

Harley, Robert, 689, 713, 714, 721, 722, 724, 

725, 726 (see Oxford) 
Harold i, 74, 75 ; reign, 79, 86 
, Godwin's son, 77, 78, 79, 80 ; reign of, 

80-86 



Index 



1053 



Harold Hardrada, 78, 82, 83 

Harris, General, 886 

Harrison, General, 584, 591, 597, 598, 599, 615 

Harrowby, Lord, 883, 920, 942 

Harthacnut, 74, 75 

Hartington, Lord (see Devonshire), 1021, 

1030 
Hastenbeck, battle of, 793 
Hastings, 59, 60, 92, 105, 106, 114 

, battle of, 84, 86 

, John, 217, 218 

, Lord, 354, 356, 358, 362, 363, 364 

, Warren, 839, 841 

Havelock, General H., 992, 995 

Haviland, 796 

Havre, 458 

Hawarden Castle, 216 

Hawke, Sir Edward, 785, 801 

Hawkesbury, Lord, 883, 892 (see Liverpool) 

Hawkins, Sir John, 466, 470, 473 

Hawley, General, 778 

Haxey, Sir Tliomas, 290 

Hazelrig, Sir Arthur, 539, 542, 545, 550, 587, 

598, 604, 606, 607, 609, 610, 611, 615 
Heads of the Proposals, 579 
Hebert, 869 

Hedgeley Moor, battle of, 350 
Hedges, Sir Charles, 707, 713 
Hein, Peter, 606 
Heinsius, 707 
Heligoland, 892, 905 

Henderson, Alexander, 532, 533, 516, 571 
Hengist's Down, 52 
Henrietta Maria, 508, 510, 511, 512, 543, 

562 
Henry i., 101, 103 ; reign of, 111-122 
II., 119, 127, 128, 129; reign of, 135- 

156 

, of France, 452, 458 

III., reign of, 182-200 

, of France, 461, 472 

■ IV., Emperor, 91, 103, 111 

, 279 ; reign of, 299-312 

, King of Navarre, 467, 472, 475 

v., Emperor, 111, 117 

, 302, 303 ; reign of, 313-323 

VI., reign of, 324-347, 348, 350, 354 

, Emperor, 162, 163 

VII., 350, 357, 367, 369, 370, 371 ; reign 

of, 376-391 

VIII., reign of, 392-425 

, of Huntingdon, 36, 121 

, the Lion of Saxony, 163 

. Patrick, 812 

, son of Henry ii., 143, 150, 154 

, Prince, son of James i., 495, 496 

of Winchester, 125, 126, 127, 139 

Herat, 964 

Herbert, Admiral, 659, 668, 681 

, Chief Justice, 651, 652, 672 

, Lord (see Earl of Glamorgan), 436, 

455, 555 

, Sir Edward, 551 

— , Sidney (afterwards Lord Herbert of 

Lea), 990, 1002 
Hereford, 79 
, Humphrey, Earl of, 227, 231, 233, 

234 

, Duke of, 291, 292 

, Roger of, 137 

Hereward the Wake, 93 



Heriot, 107 
Herleva of Falaise, 77 
Herries, J. C, 932 
Herschell, Lord, 1030 
Hertford, 62 

, Edward Seymour, Earl of, 423, 426 

, Lord, 455 

Hesse-Darmstadt, Prince of, 709 
Hetherington, H., 958 
Hexham, battle of, 350 
Hides, 99 

High Commission, 544 
Highlanders, 573, 676, 730, 774, 782 
Hildebrand, 81, 96 
Hill, General, 902 

• , Abigail, 721 

, Rowland, 960 

History of the Great Rebellion, 623, 737 

Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor, 762 

Hoche, 865, 869 

Hodson, of Hodson's Horse, 995 

Hohenlinden, battle of, 874 

Holbein, 389 

Holborne, 529 

Holkar, 887, 995 

Holland, Lord, 580 

, Henry Fox, Lord, 809 (see Fox) 

, Richard, Lord, 544 

Hollands, the, 290, 291, 300 

Holies, Denzel, 519, 520, 539, 550, 555, 557, 

565, 570, 579, 582, 584, 614, 615 

, Lord, 630 

Holloway, Judge, 658 
Holmby House, 578, 579 
Holmes, Sir Robert, 621, 028 
Holy Alliance, 910 
Homage, 269 
Home, Earl of, 397 
Home Rule League, 1022 

Rule Bill (1886), 1031 ; (1893), 1038 

Homildon Hill, battle of, 303 
Hone, William, 917 

, 641 

Hong Kong, 960 

Hooker, Richard, 465 

Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, 433, 443 

Hopton, Sir Ralph, 539, 561 

Horner, Francis, 912, 915 

Horrocks, 851 

Horton, Colonel, 581, 590 

Hospitallers, Knights, 240, 241 

Hotham, Sir John, 554, 562 

Hough, John, Bishop of Oxford, 653, 661, 

669 
House-carls, 73 
Howard, Sir Edmund, 422 

, Sir Edward, 395, 397 

, John, 358, 362, 365 (see Norfolk) 

, Katharine, 422 

, Lord, 641 

, Lord Thomas, 473 

, Thomas, 393, 395 (see Duke of Norfolk), 

397 
Howe, Captain, 790 

, Commodore, 801 (see Admiral), 834 

, General, 824, 825 

, Jack, 707 

, Lord, 795 

Howick, Lord (see Grey), 890 
Hozier, Captain, 755 
Hubba, 55 



1054 



An Advanced History of England 



Hubert de Burgh, 180, 183, 184, 185, 186, 

189, 191, 193 

, Walter, 158, 1(31, 163, 164, 165, 168, 172 

Huddleston, John, 642 
Hudson's Bay, 726 
Hugh of Avalon, 165 
Hugh of Avranches, 95 
Hugh Bigod, 149, 150, 151 
Hugh the Brown, 169 
Hugh of Chester, 149, 150, 151 

of Durham (see Puiset), 151, 158, 162 

the Great, 64 

de la Marche, 191 

Mortimer, 137 

de Morville, 143 

de Puiset, 150 

Hughes, Admiral, 841 
Huguenots, 458 
Huldyard, Robert, 352 
Hull, 546, 554, 555, 557, 562 
Humbert, General, 878 
Humble Petition and Advice, 607 
Hume, David, 754 
Humphrey de Bohun, 151 
Hundred, 43, 163 

, Court of the, 116 

Huut, Henry, 918, 944 
Huntly, Earl of, 397 
Hurst Castle, 583 
Hutchinson, Colonel, 557, 587 

, General, 875 

, Governor, 822, 823 

Huntingdon, John Holland, Earl of, 284, 

300 
Huskisson, 892, 928, 929, 931, 932, 933, 937, 

938, 940 
Hutton, Sir Christopher, 465, 472 

, Judge, 530 

Hyde, Anne, 620 

, Edward, 539, 541, 545, 550, 554, 571 

(see Clarendon) 
Hyder Ali, 841 
Hyderabad, battle of, 966 

Iberians, 5 

Iceni, 14 

Icknield Street, 16, 41 

Ictis, 8 

Iden, Alexander, 337 

Impey, Chief-Justice, 841 

Inchiquin, Lord, 588, 590 

Income Tax, 903, 981, 1014 

Indemnity Act, 933 

Independence, Declaration of, 825 

India, 797, 801 

Indian Mutiny, 992, 993, 994, 995, 996 

Ingeborga of Denmark, 168 

Inglis, Sir R., 934, 943 

, Brigadier, 994 

Ingoldsby, General, 773 
Inkerman, battle of, 987, 988 
Innocent iii., 146, 173, 175, 179 

IV., 186 

Inquest, Sworn, 145 
Instrument of Government, 600 
Intelligence Domestic and Foreign, 693 
Inveraray, 675 
Inverlochy, battle of, 573 
Inverness, 676, 774 
Investiture Question, 114 
Ionian Islands, 905 



Ireland, 235, 635 

, conquest of, 146 

at the Restoration, 624 

in 1782, 835 

• under Cromwell, 602 

Ireton, Henry, 572, 583, 584, 587, 590, 614 
Irish Brigade, 680, 773 
Irish Church, 773, 948, 1007, 1008 
Irish Famine, 961, 971 

Land System, 477 

Acts, 1860, 1009 

, 1870, 1010 

, 188], 1024 

Rebellion, 1641, 547 ; 1798, 877, 878 ; 

1848, 974 

University Question, 1018, 1014 

' Ironside,' 570 
Isaac of Cyprus, 162 

Comnenus, 160 

Isabella, daughter of Charles vi., 289 

of Angouleme, 169, 191 

of France, 224, 230 

Isandlwana, battle of, 1020 

Isla, Earl of, 760 

Ismail, 848 

Ivernians, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 25 

Ivo, of Grantmesnil, 113 

Ivry, battle of, 475 

Jackson, General, 904 
Jacobites, 698, 749 
Jacobitism, 737 
Jamaica, 605, 911, 959, 1004 
James of Scotland, 308 

IV. of Scotland, 379 

V. of Scotland, 397 

VI. of Scotland, 485 

I., reign of, 485-508 

, Duke of York, afterwards James ii., 

614, 617, 620, 621, 625, 626, 628, 629, 633, 

641 ; reign of, 644-665, 676, 685, 694 

the Deacon, 32 

, Sir Henry, 1030 (afterwards Lord 

Aylestone), 1039 
Jane of England, 243 
Jargeau, battle of, 327 
Jarl, 47 

Jassy, treaty of, 849 
Jedburgh, 220 

Castle, 152 

Jeffrey, Lord, 928 

Jeffreys, Judge, 641, 642, 647, 649, 652, 663 

672 
Jellalabad, 966 
Jena, battle of, 890 
Jenkins' Ear, 766 
Jennings, Sarah, 705 
Jermyn, Henry, 649 
Jerome, 420 
Jervis, Admiral, 866 
Jersey, Lord, 698 
Jerusalem, 161 

, capture of, 109 

Jesuits, 463 

Jews, expulsion of, 212 

• , persecution of, 159 

Jhansi, Ranee of,. 993, 996 

Jocelyn, Bishop of Salisbury, 143 

Joan, 217 

John, son of Henry n., 150, 159, 102, 163 ; 

reign of, 167-181 



Index 



1055 



John, the Old Saxon, 57 

— I. of France, 246 

— II. of France, 257, 261 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 819, 852 
Johnstone of Warriston, 532, 533, 546, 565, 

624 
Jones, Michael, 588, 590 
Joseph, Michael, 380 
Joyce, Cornet, 579 
Judicature, Supreme Court of, 1013 
Judith, 97 
JugduUuk Pass, 966 
Julius Csesar, 9, 10, 18 
Julius II., Pope, 394 
'Junius,' 817 
Junto, the, 687 
Jury, civil, 146 

, petty, 146 

of Presentment, 146 

Justice, administration of, 48 

Justice, Lord Chief, 116 

Justices-in-eyre, 144, 145, 163 

Jutes, 23 

Juxon, Bishop of London, 517, 527, 539 



Kars, 991 
Katharine, 419 

of Braganza, 620 

of France, 322 

Keble, John, 968, 969 

Kemp, Cardinal, 833, 337 

Ken, Bishop of Bath and "Wells, 657, 669 

Kendal, Duchess of, 749 

Kenmure, Lord, 738, 739 

Kent, Edmund, Earl of, 227, 229, 242, 243, 

244 

, Joan of, 280 

, Thomas, Earl of, 284, 800 

— , Earl of, 469 
Kentish Petition, the, 553 

, another, 702 

Kenwulf, 88 
Keppel, 697 

, Admiral, 832, 833, 836, 838 

Keroualle, Louise de, 620 
Ket, Robert, 431, 432 

, William, 431, 432 

Keymis, Captain Lawrence, 474, 503 
Khartoum, 1027, 1028 
Kidd, Captain, 702 
Kildare, Earl of, 382 

, Earls of, 475 

Kilkenny, 589 

, Statute of, 381 

Killiecrankie, battle of, 674 

Kilmarnock, Lord, 776 

Kilsyth, battle of, 573 

Kimbolton, Edward Montagu, Lord, 539 

(see Manchester), 550 
Kineton, 559 
King, the, 46 
King's Bench, Court of, 152, 178, 212 

Council, 116 

County, 477 

Friends, 809, 814 

Horse Guards, 616 

peace, 46, 145 

revenue, 46 (see Feudal dues, Customs, 

Income-tax) 
thegns, 46. 



Kinsale, 676 

Kirkby, John, 206 

Kirke, Colonel, 649, 659, 678 

Klosterseven, Convention at, 793 

Knight service, 94, 139 

Knights of St. John, 129 

Hospitallers, 240, 241 

Templars, 129, 240, 241 

Knox, John, 442, 454 

Koniggnitz, battle of, 1001 

Koord Cabul Pass, 966 

Kossuth, Louis, 973 

Kutchuck Kainardji, Treaty of, 982 

Kymri, 25 

Kyriel, Sir Thomas, 337 

Labourdonnais, 797 
Lacy, Roger de, 170 
Lafayette, 831 
Lagos, battle off, 801 
La Hogue, battle of, 683 
Lake, Bishop of Chichester, 657 

, Colonel, 991. 

, General, 878, 887 

Lally, Count, 800 

Lamb, 988, 949 (see Melbourne, Lord) 

Lambert, General, 588, 591, 592, 593, 599, 

600, 607, 610, 611, 615 
Lambeth, Treaty of, 184 
L'Ambigu, 881 
Lanark, 546 
Lancaster Castle, 158 
— , Edmund, Earl of, 192, 219. 220 

, Henry of, 242, 244, 292, 293 

, Joseph, 945 

— , Thomas of, 229, 230, 231, 236 

(see Bolingbroke, Derby, Hereford, 

Henry iv.) 
Land League, the, 1023, 1024 

Purchase Acts, 1029, 1034 

Gladstone's Bill, 1031 

Landen, battle of, 684 
Landlessmen, 48 

Lanfranc, 95, 96, 98, 103, 106, 108 
Langdale, Sir Marmaduke, 572, 581 
Langland, William, 288, 289 
Langport, battle of, 575 
Langside, battle of, 457 
Langton, Simon, 180 

, Stephen, 173, 174, 176, 179, 184, 186 

, Walter, 206 

Lansdown, battle of, 561 
La Rochelle, 511, 512, 514 

, battle of, 267, 275 

Laswaree, battle of, 887 

Lateran Council, 146 

Lathom House, siege of, 567 

Latimer, Hugh, 413, 419, 420, 430, 442, 444 

, Lord, 275, 276, 277 

, Lord, 629 (see Danby) 

Laud, Bishop, 516, 517, 519, 520, 526, 527, 

529, 530, 581, 539, 540, 541, 576 
Lauderdale, Maitland, Earl of, 565, 571, 594, 

595, 623, 625, 627, 629, 631 
Lauffeld, battle of, 784 
Lauzun, General, 679 
Lawrence, Bishop of Canterbury, 29 

, Sir Henry, 967, 994 

, Sir John, afterwards Lord, 967 

Lawson, Admiral, 621 

Leake, John, Captain, 678, 724 



1056 



An Advanced Histm'ij of England 



Leeds, 924 

, Castle of, 237 

, Duke of, 688 (see Carmarthen) 

Legion Memoricd, 703 
Lennox, Earl of, 456 
Leicester, 62 

, Robert of Ferrers, Earl of, 136 

, Robert of Ferrers, Earl of, son of above, 

149, 150, 151 
, Robert Dudley, Earl of (see Dudley), 

455, 468, 469, 470, 472 

House, 754 

Leighton, Dr., 526 
Leinster, 147 
Leipzig, battle of, 903 
Lenthal, William, 551, 615 
Leo IV., Pope, 53 

X., Pope, 398 

Leofric, 76, 77, 79, 81 
Leofwine, 73 

, Godwin's son, 79, 84, 86 

Leopold, Duke of Austria, 162 

Lepanto, battle of, 462 

Leslie, Alexander, 533, 534, 536 (see Leven) 

, David, 566, 568, 573, 591, 594, 595 

Leuthen, battle of, 794 

Letters on the Present State of Ireland, 478 

Leven, Alexander Leslie, Earl of, 546, 566, 

568, 591 (see Leslie) 
Levis, Count de, 796 
Lewes, battle of, 197 

, Mise of, 197 

Lewis, Sir George Cornwall, 1002 

Lexington, 824 

Libel Act, Fox's, 863, 917 

Liberals, numbers of, 944, 950, 962, 1008, 

1014, 1021, 1029 

Gladstonian, numbers of, 1032, 1037 

Liberal Unionists, numbers of, 1031, 1032, 

1037 
Liberties, 43 
Light Railways, 1034 
Ligny, battle of, 906 
Ligonier, Marshal, 772 
Lilburne, John, 541, 587, 588 
Lille, 683 

, siege of, 719 

Limerick, 147 

, first siege of, 679 

, second siege of, 680 

Limoges, massacre at, 266, 267 
Linacre, 389 
Lincoln, 62, 92 

, Abraham, 999, 1000 

, Earl of, 221, 223 

Fair, 183 

, John de la Pole, Earl of, 362, 367, 378 

Lindisfarne, 52 
Lisle, Alicia, 649, 671 

, John Dudley, Lord, 423, 426 

, Sir George, 581, 607 

' Little Parliament,' 600 

Littleport, 916 

Littleton, 948 

Liverpool, Lord, 898, 902, 91 1 

and Manchester Railway, 937 

Livery, 383 

Livingstone, David, 1036 
Llewelyn, Prince of Wales, 173 

ap-Gruffydd, 197, 200, 214, 216 

Llewelyn ap-Iorwerth, 214 



Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph, 657 

Local Veto Bill, 1037, 1038 

Lochiel, Cameron of, 781 

Lochleven Castle, 457 

Locke, John, 691 

Lockhart, ambassador, 608 

Lollards, meaning of, 284 

Lombards, 213 

London, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 178, 347, 

428, 522, 563, 585, 640, 663, 777, 843, 953 

Corresponding Society, 862 

Lord Mayor of, 164 

— — rebuilt, 58 

University, 923 

Londonderry, 676, 677 

, siege of, 677 

, Marquess of (see Castlereagh), 951 

Longchamp, William, 158, 159, 160 
Long Island, 825 
Loosecoat Field, battle of, 353 
Lords Appellant, 285 

, House of, 1039 

Lieutenant, 553 

Lostwithiel, 566 
Lothian, 152 

, Earldom of, 96 

Loudon, Lord, 779, 794 

Loughborough, Lord, 879 (see Wedderburn) 

Louis VI., Ill, lis, 123 

VII., 123, 128, 135, 150 

VIII., 180, 182 

IX., 209 

X., 246 

XI., 353, 357, 358 

XII., 388 

XIV., 621, 660, 676, 701 

XV., 726 

XVIII., 904 

Philippe, 937, 973 

Louisbourg, 785, 794 

Louisiana, 790 

Lovat, Simon Eraser, Lord, 781 

Lovel, Francis, Lord, 371, 378 

Lovett, 958 

Lowe, Robert, afterwards Lord Sherbrooke, 

1005, 1008 
Lucan, Lord, 987 
Lucas, Sir Charles, 581 
Lucknow, 994 
Lucy, Richard de, 136 
Ludd, 913 
Luddites, the, 918 
Ludlow, 672. 
, Edmund, 590, 598, 604, 606, 609, 610, 

611, 614 
Luggershall Castle, 168 
Lumley, Lord, 659, 662 
Luneville, Treaty of, 874 
Lundy, Colonel, 677 
Lunsford, 549, 5.50, 556 
Luttrell, Colonel, 817 
Luxembourg, Jacquetta of, 327 

, Marshal, 682, 684, 686 

Lyme, 648 

Lyndhurst, Lord, 950 
Lynn, 180 
Lyons, Council of, 187 

, Richard, 275, 276 

Lytton, Lord, 1019 

Macarthy, General' 678 



Index 



1057 



Macaulay, T. B., 941, 964, 968, 972 

, Zachary, 945 

M 'Donalds, the, 673, 675, 774, 780 
Macdonald, Alister, 573 

, Flora, 780 

, Sir John, 1006, 1036 

Macduff, 218 

Machiavelli, 649 

Mackay, General, 673, 674, 679 

Mackays, the, 775 

Mackintosh, Brigadier-General, 738, 739 

, Sir James, 861 881, 924 

Macnaughten, Sir W., 965, 966 

Madoc, 219, 220 

j\Iadras, 797 

Magenta, battle of, 998 

Magna Carta, 515 

Magnum Concilium, 116, 117, 537 

Magnus, 74 

Maguire, Lord, 548 

Mahdi, 1027 

Mahomet Ali, 931 

Mahrattas, the, 798, 887, 963 

Maida, battle of, 892 

Maidstone, battle of, 580 

Maine, county of, 81, 101, 103, 135, 138, 

170 
Maintenance, 383 
Mainwaring, 517, 539 
Maitland, General, 908 
Majuba Hill, 1022 
Malcolm, King of Scots, 64, 72 

III., 91, 93, 96, 103, 106 

IV., 123, 135, 137 

Malet, William, 92 
Mallory, 506 
Malmesbury, Lord, 870 

, son of above, 980 

, William of, 121 

Malplaquet, battle of, 719 
Malta, 871, 876, 881, 905, 911 
Malthus, T. R., 853 
Maltote duty, 222, 223 
Maltravers, Sir John, 240 
Malvoisin, 106 
Jlanchester, 62, 776, 918, 943 

School, the, 992, 997 

, Edward Montagu, Earl of, 557 

Kimbolton), 562, 565, 566, 568, 569, 

607, 611, 614, 615 
MandeviUe, William, 150, 158 
Manila, 807 

Manny, Sir Walter, 247, 257 
Manor, 42, 101 
Manorial system, 258 
Mansfeld, Count, .508 
Mansfield, Chief- Justice, 818, 830 
Mantes 253 

Mar, John Earl of, 728, 737, 738, 739 
Marat, 859 
March, Roger, Earl of, 284, 287 

, Edmund, Earl of, 304, 316, 321 

Marchmont, Earl of, 759 
Marches of Wales, 213, 216 
Marden, battle of, 54 
Mardyke, 608 
Mare, Peter de la, 276, 280 
Marengo, battle of, 874 
Margaret, 79, 96 

, daughter of Henry in., 217 

, daughter of Henry vii., 388, 485 



16'? 



(see 
570, 



Margaret of France, 151 

of France (another), 224 

, Maid of Norway, 217 

Margrave Louis of Baden, 707 

Maria Theresa, 769 

Marie Antoinette, 857 

Marignauo, battle of, 399 

Marlborough, John, Duke of, 706, 709, 710, 

718, 719, 720, 722, 724, 725, 729, 734, 748 

, castle of, 158 

, Duchess of, 721, 724, 768 

, statute of, 200 

Marniont, 901 
Mar-Prelate Tracts, 466 
Marriage, 107 

Act, 787 

Marseilles, 78 

Marshall, Earl Richard, 191 

, William (see Earl of Pembroke), 155, 

157, 168 

, the younger, 190 

Marsin, Marshal, 708, 709 

Marston Moor, battle of, 567 

Marten, Henry, 583, 584, 586, 587, 596, 598, 

604, 606, 614 
Martyr, Peter, 442 

Mary of England, 398 ; reign of, 437-447 
, Queen of Scots, 440, 441, 448, 452, 454, 

457, 459, 461, 462, 468 
, daughter of James ii., 620, 632, 640, 

659 ; reign of, 667-668 

IT., 685 

, daughter of Charles i., 552 

Maryborough, 477 
Maryland, 531 
Maserfield, battle of, 31, 37 
Masham, Francis, 721 
- — , Lady, 729 

, Mrs., 724 

Massachusetts, 788 

Massena, 869, 873, 898, 899, 900 

Massey, 651 

IVTissilia 7 

Matilda of Flanders, 81, 91, 98, 99 

- — ; daughter of Henry ii., 163 

, Empress, 117, 118, 123, 124, 125, 126, 

127 

of Boulogne, 123, 127 

of Scotland, 111, 113, 117 

Matthew of Boulogne, 150, 151 

Maudelyn, 300, 301 

Maurice, Prince, 562 

Mauritius, 893, 905, 911 

Maximilian of Austria, 386, 387, 395, 400 

Mayflower, 498 

Maynard, Sir John, 651, 669 

Maynooth Grant, 968, 1008 

Mazzini, G., 973, 998, 999 

Meaux, fortress of, 322 

Meagher, T. F., 973, 974 ^ 

Melbourne, Lord (see Lamb), 939, 955, 9o6, 

959, 960, 962, 970 
Mechanics' Institutes, 924 
Medici, Katharine de, 458 
Medina Sidonia, 470, 471 
Meeanee, battle of, 966 
Meerut, 994 
Meldrum, 561 

Melville, Lord (see Dundas), 883, bbb 
Mendoza, 468 
Menschikov, Prince, 986, 988 

3x 



1058 



An Advanced History of England 



Menteith, Sir John, 225 

Meonwaras, 40 

Mercadier, 167 

Merchandise INFarks' Act, 1035 

Merchants, 178 

Merchant Guild, 165 

Mercia, 66 

Mercians, 23, 91 

Merke, Thomas, Bishop of Carlisle, 300 

Merton, Walter de, 206, 273, 274 

Merv, 1028 

Mesne tenants, 100, 179 

Metcalfe, John, 853 

Methodists, 761 

Methuen, John, 710 

, Paul, 710 

Miehell, Sir Francis, 505 

Middlesex, Earl of, 508 

Mitldleton, General, 603 ; afterwards Earl 

of, 623 
Midland-Angles, 23 
Midlothian Tour (Gladstone's), 1022 
Miles of Hereford, 124, 125, 126 
Milicent, 155 
Military roads, 15 
Militia, 153 

Acts, 792, 079, 980 

Bill, the, 553 

Millenary Petition, 488 

Miller, 819 

Milner-Gibson, 992 

Milton, John, 526, 545, 576, 587, 615 

, Lord, 943 

Minden, battle of, 802 

Minorca, 720, 726, 791, 832, 837, 911 

Mirabeau, Count, 858, 859 

Miranda, General, 927 

Mir Cassim, 838 

Jaffier, 838, 839 

Mirebcau, castle of, 150, 169 

Mitchel, J., 973, 974 

Model Parliament of 1295, 219, 220 

Modest Proposal, 752 

Mogul, Great, 790, 839, 963, 994, 995 

Moleyns, Bishop, 333, 335 

Moltke, Count, 1001, 1014 

Molhvitz, battle of, 769 

Mompesson, Sir Giles, 505 

Monasteries, 67, 120, 398, 414 

, Alfred's, 59 

, lesser, dissolved, 414 

, surrender of the greater, 417 

Money grants, 360 

Monk, George, 588, 591, 592, 593, 596, 597, 

598, 599, 603, 607, 610, 611, 612, 614 (see 
Albemarle) 

Monmouth, Duke of, 628, 639, 641, 640, 647, 

648 
Monopolies, 480, 505, 508 . 
Mons, 683 

Graupius, battle of, 15 

, siege of, 720 

Montagu, John of, 352 

, Charles, 687, 688, 689, 691, 702, 744 (see 

Halifax) 
Montague, Bishop of Chichester, 511, 517, 

519, 539 
, Edward (afterwards Earl of Sandwich), 

599, 600, 611 

, Henry Pole, Lord, 419 

- — , John, Earl of Salisbury, 300 



Montague, Sir R., 632 

, Thomas, Earl of Salisbury, 325, 326 

Montcalm, Count, 794, 795, 796, 802 
Monteagle, Lord, 479 
Montebello, battle of, 998 
Montereau-faut-Yonne, 321 
Montfort, Hugh of, 82 

■, Simon de, 195, 196, 198, 199,214, 219 

Montgomery, General, 825 

, castle of, 105 

, Robert of, 82 

, Roger of, 95, 104, 105 

Montreal, 795 
Montrose, Earl of, 532 

, Marquess of, 573, 574, 590 

, Duke of, 759 

Moodkee, battle of, 967 

Moore, Sir John, 806 

Morcar, 80, 81, 83, 84, 87, 91, 92, 93 

Mordaunt (afterwards Earl of Peterbor- 

ough),651, m'i*, 672 
More, Hannah, 764 

, Roger, 547 

, Sir Thomas, 405, 408, 409, 411, 412 

Moreau, General, 869, 874, 883 
Morgan, Colonel, 603, 608 
Morley, John, 1030, 1037 
Mornington, Lord {see Wellesley), 886 
Mortain, William of, 113 
Mortimer, Anne, 316 

-, Elizabeth, 305 

, Hugh, 137 

, Sir Edmund, Earl of March, 304, 305 

, Roger, elder, 236 

, younger, 236, 239, 242, 244 

(another), 279, 292 

Mortimer's Cross, battle j3f, 346 
Mortmain, statute of, 209, 210 
Morton, James Douglas, Earl of, 457 
, John, Bishop of Ely, 357, 362, 364, 366, 

367, 377, 382, 385 
Morton's Fork, 385 
Mortuaries, 408 
Mount Badon, battle of, 22, 23 
Mountjoy, Lord, 479, 481, 496 
Mountmorris, Lord, 525 
Mousehold Hill, 431 
Mowbray, John, Earl of Norfolk, 340, 341, 

347, 348, 349 

, Sir Philip, 233 

, Robert, 149, 150, 151 * 

, Thomas, Earl of Nottingham, 306, 307 

Muir, Thomas, 862 

Municipal Reform Act (English), 951 

(Irish), 962 

Munro, 564 

, Major, 830 

Munster, 147 
Murphy, John, 878 
Murray, Sir Andrew, 224 

-, Caiitain, 677 

, Douglas, Earl of, 235 

, Earl of, 457 

, Lord George, 775, 777, 778, 780, 781 

, John, of Broughton, 774, 781 

— — , General, 796 
Murtogh O'Lochlainn, 148 
Mutiny Act, 670 

at the Nore, 867 

at Spithead, 866 

Myton-on-Swale, battle of, 235 



Index 



1059 



'Nabobs,' 840 
Nagpore, 993 
Namur, (383 

, capture of, 686 

Nana Sahib, 994 
Nanfaii, Sir Richard, 395 
Nantes, 101, 138 

, Edict of, 475, 650 

Nantwich, battle of, 565 

Nanuk, 966 ^ 

Napier, Admiral Sir Charles, 983 

, General Sir Charles, 966 

Naseby, battle of, 572 

Natal, 962, 1019 

Nation, The, 973 

National Debt, 688, 744, 785, 847, 868, 1035 

Society, 945 

Navarette, battle of, 265 

Navarino, battle of, 932 

Navigation Acts, 596, 928, 975 

Naylor, a Quaker, 604 

Necker, 858 

Nectansmere, 37 

Neerwinden, battle of, 684 

Neill, Bishop of Winchester, 517, 527 

Nelson, Horatio, 866, 870, 875, 884, 885 

Nennius, 22, 23 

Neolithic men, 4, 5, 6 

Nesbit Moor, battle of, 303 

Netherlands, 462 

, I'cvolt of, 459 

, trade Avith, 207 

Neville, Anne, 358 

, Archbishop, 285, 286 

, George, Bishop of Exeter, 345 

, Isabel, 352 

— — , John, Lord, 275, 276, 277 

-, Lord Montagu, 341, 345, 350, 354, 

355, 356 

, Ralph, 256, 307 

, Earl of Westmoreland, 340 

, Richard (the elder), 340 

(the younger), Earl of Warwick, 

340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 350, 351, 

352, 353, 355, 356 
Neville's Cross, battle of, 256 
New Amsterdam, 499, 788 
Newark, 181, 567 
Newburgh, William of, 171 
Newbury, first battle of, 563 

, second battle of, 569 

Newcastle, 98, 137 

, Henry Pelham-Clinton, Duke of, 942, 

944 

, Duke of, (sou of above), 981, 990 

, Thomas Pelham, Duke of, 767, 768, 

787, 792, 794, 806, 807, 811, 813 
, William Cavendish, Earl of, 554, 561, 

564, 566, 567, 569 

Programme, the, 1037 

Newcomen, 851 
'New Model," the, 571, 577 
New England, 498, 499 
Newfoundland, 726 
New Jersey, 788 

Law Courts, 178 

Plymouth, 498 

Salem, 530, 822 

South Wales, 849, 911 

Zealand, 849, 962 

Newman, J. H,, 968, 969 



Newport, 958 
Newspaper duty, 952 
Newspapers, 693 
Newton, Isaac, 691, 751 

, John, 764 

Newtown Butler, battle of, 678 
New York State, 788 

Zealand, 849 

Ney, Marshal, 899 

Niagara, 790 

Nicaja, battle of, 109 

Nicholas, Czar, 982, 990 

Nicholson, John, 995 

Nigel-le-poer, 124, 136, 171 

Nightingale, Miss Florence, 990 

Nile, battle of, 871, 872 

Ninias, 26 

Nisi prius. Court of, 212 

Noailles, Marshal, 770 

Nolan, Captain, 987 

Nonconformists, 452 (see Puritans) 

Nonjurors, 669 

Nootka Sound, 848 

Norfolk, John Howard, Duke of, 365, 371 

, Thomas, Duke of, 416, 421, 424, 433, 

439, 441 

, Howard, Duke of, 457, 459, 461 

Mowbray, Duke of, 291, 292 

, Earl of, 227, 229, 242, 243 

Norham, 151 

Normandy, 92, 170 

Norris, Sir John, 473, 478 

North, Lord, 815, 816, 818, 820, 821, 832 

836, 837, 838, 849 

, Roger, 640 

, Sherifi", 640 

North's Regulating Act, 840 
Northallerton, 151 

, battle of, 125 

Northampton, 62, 558 

, Assize of, 146, 152 

, Council of, 142 

, George Compton, Earl of, 655 

, treaty of, 243 

North Briton, 810 

Northcote, Sir Stafford, 1014 

Northern Star, 958 

Northmen, 51 

Northumberland, Henry Percy, Earl of, 301, 

305 
, Earl of, Hotspur's son, 321, 342, 

345 

, son of above, 355, 362, 371, 385 

, Thomas Percy, Earl of, 460 

, John Dudley, Duke of, 436, 437, 439, 

459 
Northumbria, 93 
Northumbrians, 23, 91 
Norwegians, 51 
Norwich, 92, 98 

, George Goring, Earl of, 581 

Nott, General, 966 
Nottingham, 62, 92, 556 

Castle 158 

, Daniel Finch, Earl of, 651, 656, 659, 

662, 664, 669, 682, 683, 688, 706, 713, 725, 

734, 742 
, Thomas Mowbray, Earl of, 285, 287. 

290 
Noureddin, 154 
Nova Scotia, 726 



1060 



An Advanced History of England 



Novara, battle of, 973 

Novel disseisin, 178 

Noy, Attorney-General, 528, 529 

Nuncomar, 840 

Nun of Kent, 415 

Nye, Philip, 576 

Gates, Titus, 646 

Oath of Non-resistance, 631 

O'Brien Smith, 973, 974 

O'Briens, the, 292, 381 

'Occasional Conformity,' 713 

Occasional Conformity Bills, 725 

Ockham, William of, 188 

Ockley, 52 

O'Coigley, 877 

O'Connell, Daniel, 930, 933,934, 948, 95/, 

961, 967, 968 
O'Connor, Arthur, 877 

, Feargus, 958, 974 

, Roderic, 148 

Octennial Bill, Irish, 835 
Odo, Archbishop, 66 

of Bayeux, 82, 92, 95, 98, 99, 104, 105 

O'Donnell, 496 
Offa. 37, 38, 39, 52 
Offa's Dyke, 38 
Oglethorpe, General, 789 
Olaf, 70 

the Saint, 83 

Oldcastle, Sir John, 314 

Oliver, 916 

O'Neal, Hugh, 478, 496 

, Sir Phelim, 547 

O'Neals, the, 381 
O'Neil, Owen Roe, 590 
Opdam, 621 
Orange, William of, 467 

Free State, 1019 

Ordeal, 145, 146 

Ordeals, 49 

Ordinary Council, 153 

Ordovices, 14 

Orford, Edward Russell, Lord, 699, 707, 

722, 724 

, Walpole, Earl of, 768 

Orissa, 839 

Orkney, Elizabeth Villiers, Lady, 697 

Orleans, siege of, 326 

, Henrietta, Duchess of, 626 

, Maid of, 327 

, Duke of, 331 

Orleton, Adam, Bishop of Hereford, 239, 

240, 242, 250 
Orniesby, 224 
Orinond, Earl of, 564, 566, 574, 588, 590, 624, 

662 

, Duke of, 684, 724, 725, 727, 736, 740 

Ormonds, the, 478 

Ornaments Rubric, 450 

Orsini, G., 996, 997 

O'Ruarc, 148 

Osborne, Sir Thomas, 029 (see Leeds) 

O'Shea case, 1034 

Osric, 52 

Ostiarii, 140 

Ostmen, 147 

Ostoriui Scapula, 13 

Osulf, 6-'; 

Oswald, Bishop 67 

Oswald, 31, 37 



Oswin, 32 

Oswy, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37 

Otford, battles of, 37, 71 

Othere, 57, 58 

Otho, Cardinal, 187 

O'Tooles, 292 

Ottoi., 64,66 

IV., 163, 16^,. 175' 

Oijde, 841, 845, 99.3, 994, 995', 

, Nabob of, 846 

Oudenarde, 719 
Outram, Sir James, 992, 995 
Overbury, Sir Tltomas, 501 
Owen Glendower, 302, 306, 307 

, Prince of North Wales, 137 

Oxford, 74, 557, 561, 566, 572, 640, 737 

, Vere, Earl of, 263 

, Robert de Vere, Earl of, 284, LifS '• 

, John de Vere, Earl of, 354, 355,.36l\'383. ' 

, Robert Harley, Earl of, 727, Z§i>, 736 

Parliament, 639 

, University of, 121, 273,274,652, 653, 

934, 1002, 1.011 

Paget, Sir William, afterwards Lord, 426, 

442 
Paine, Thomas, 861, 862 
Pains and Penalties, Bill of, 922 
Paita, 771 

Pakenham, Sir John, 901, 904 
Pale, the, 381 
Palmer, 852 

, Barbara, 620 

Palmerston, Lord, 898, 912, 931, 932, 939, 

970, 972, 977, 978, 979, 980, 981, 983, 989, 

990, 992, 996, 997, 998, 1002 
Paleolithic men, 3, 4 
Pampeluna, 902, 903 
Pandulf, 179, 184 
Paniput, battle of, 838 
Papacy, tribute to, John's, repudiated, 

269 
Papineau, 955 

Paraphrase of the New Testament, 047 
Parliament, Addled, 501 

of Bury St. Edmunds, 332 

— — of Coventry, 344 

-, the Good, 276 

-, Long, 537 

, Mad, 194 

, Short, 534 

of 1265, 197 

, Constitution of, in 1295, 219 

, Constitution of, in 1304, 249 

^ , Condition of, under Henry vii., 384 

, Constitutiun of, in 1529, 406 

, Elections regulated, 329 

, private grants forbidden, 270 

, Petitions of the Commons, 315 

Parliamentary grants, Henry v.'s, 316 
Reform, 828, 846, 917, 924, 939, 940, 957, 

977, 997, 1005, 1006, 1028 
Paris, George van, 434 

Treaty of 1259, 206 ; 1856, 991, 992 

Parish Councils Act, 1038 

Registers, 416 

Parker, Dr., Bishop of Oxford, 651, 653 

, Sir Hyde, 875 

, Matthew, 431, 449, 450, 451, 455, 463 

, Richard, 867 

Parkes, Sir Henry, 1036 



Index 



1061 



Parkhiirst, Bishop, 464 

Parma, Alexander Farnese, Duke of, 462, 

468, 470, 471, 475 
Parnell, C. S., 1023, 1024, 1025, 1033, 1034 

, Sir Henry, 938 

Parning, Sir Robert, 251 

Parochial Schools Act, 760 

Parr, Katharine, 422, 430 

Parret, river of, 55 

Partition Treaties, 701 

Paston, John, 334, 359 

Patay, battle of, 327 

Paterson, William, 689, 714, 715 

Patrick, 26 

' Patriot King; 805 

Paulinas, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34 

Pavia, battle of, 401 

Paxton, Joseph, 976 

Peachell, Dr., 652 

Peckham, Archbishop, 209, 213 

Pecocke, Bishop of Chichester, 315 

Pedro the Cruel, 265 

Peel, Sir Robert, elder, 946 

, the younger, 898, 925, 931, 932, 

933, 934, 941, 943, 949, 950, 951, 955, 959, 

960, 961, 962, 963, 968, 969, 972, 976 
Peerage Bill, the, 743 
Peishwah, the, 963 

Pelham, Henry, 768, 769, 785, 786, 787 
Peltier, Jean Joseph, 881 
Pembroke, Earl of, 230, 231 

, Jasper Tudor, Earl of, 367, 370 

, Earl of, 170, 176, 179, 182, 183, 184 {see 

William Marshall) 

, Herbert, Earl of, 352 

, William Herbert, Earl of, 43:!, 438 

, Earl of, 192 {see. William of Valance) 

Penjdeh, 1028 
Penda, 30, 31, 32, 37 
Pen Selwood, battle of, 71 
Penn, Admiral, 605, 654 

■ , William, 654, 788 

Pennsylvania, 788 

Penruddock, 604, 605 

Peoiyle, Agreement of the, 587, 600 

Peuryn, 933 

Pepys, Sir Charles, Lord Cottenham, 951 

, Samuel, 617 

Perceval, 881, 892, 898, 902 

Perch, Count of, 1831 

Percies, rebellion of, 304 

Percy, Henry Lord, 256 

, Henry, Earl of Nortlmmberland, 277, 

287 292 

, ' , Hotspur, 302, 305, 306 

, Thomas, 492 

Perpetuation Bill, the, 597 
Perrers, Alice, 275, 276, 277 
Persian War, 992, 995 
Perth, Articles of, 532 

, Duke of, 781 

Peter the Hermit, 109 

de Rivallis, 190 

of Savoy, 191 

of Wakefield, 173 

Peter's Pence, 407, 410 
Peterborough, 53, 67 

, Charles Mordaunt, Earl of, 712, 720 

, chronicle of, 99 

Peterloo Massacre, 91 7 
Peters, Hugh, 615 



Petition of Right, 223, 515 

' Petitioners,' 637 

Petitions to parliament, 828 

Pett, 617 

Petre, Edward, 649, 654, 661, 668, 672 

Pevensey, S3 

Peveril of the Peak, William, 137 

Phelips, 506, 510, 512, 513, 515 

Philip Augustus, 135, 154, 155, 157, 160, 162. 

167, 169, 173, 175, 180 
II. of Spain, 440, 441, 443, 445, 452, 465, 

475 

III. of Spain, 475 

IV., the Fair, 219, 221, 224, 246 

v., 246, 257 

I. of France, 91, 101, 103, 105, 111 

of Valois, 246 

Philiphaugh, battle of, 573 

Philip's Norton, 648f 

Philipstown, 477 

Philipot, John, 280 

Phillips, Mr., 958 , 

Pichegru, 865 

Pickering, 035 

Picquigny, treaty of, 358 

Picts, 19, 20, 22 

Piers Ploughman, Vision of, 272, 289 

Pindarrees, the, 963 

Pinkie, battle of, 429 

' Pious Fraud,' the, 808 

Pir Paimal, battle of, 1021 

Pitsligo, Lord, 776 

Pitt, William, 768, 782, 784, 788, 792, 800, 

808, 811, 813, 814, 815 {see Chatham) 
, the younger, 835, 836, 842, 844, 846, 

847, 848, 850, 863, 864, 867, 882, 940 
Pitt's India Bill, 844 

war policy, 864 

Pius v., 460 

Plantagenet, Edward, 367, 378 

Plassey, battle of, 800 

Plegmund, 57 

Plevna, siege of, 1018 

Plot, the Bye, 487 

, the Main, 487 

Ploughlands, 99 
Plunket, 925 
Pluralities, 408 
Plymouth, 562, 563 
Pocahontas, 498 
Poitiers, battle of, 262 
Pole, Michael de la, 284 

, GeofiYey, 419 

, Reginald, 418, 439, 442, 443, 444, 

447 

, Sir Richard, 402 

, William de la, 251 

Pollock, General, 966 

Pomeroy, SirT., 430 

Pompadour, Madame de, 79 

Pondicherry, 797 

Ponthieu, county of, 81, 207, 264, 26( 

Ponsonby, General William, 908 

, George, 913 

Pontefract, 581 
Poor Law, 481 

the new, 946 

Board, 947 

Pope, Alexander, 745 
Pophani, Admiral, 587 
, Sir H<?me, 893, 



1062 



A 71 Advanced History of England 



Porson, 852 
Porteous, Captain, 761 
Porter, Gilbert, 438 
Portland, Weston, Earl of, 529 

, William Bentinck, Earl of, 669, 699 

, W. H. Cavendish-Bentinck, Duke of, 

809, 836, 838, 892 
Port Mahon, 720 
Porto Bello, 767 
Porto Novo, battle of, 841 
Portsmouth, Louise de Keroualle, Duchess 

of, 626 
Portugal, 893, 897 
Portus Itius, 8, 9 
Posidonius, 8 
Post, Penny, 960 
Pottinger, Eldred, 964 
Powel, 420 
Powell, Judge, 658 
Powis, Attorney-General, 658 
Powys, 11 
Poynings' Acts, 382 
Poynings, Edward, 369, 382 
Fro'munire, 403, 411, 442 

, Acts of, 407 

Pratt, Chief- Justice, 810, 815 (see Camden, 

Lord) 
Prayer-book, uses of, 424 

, first, of Edward vi., 429 

, second, of Edward vi., 434 

Prestonpans, battle of, 775 

Preston, Viscount, 694 

Press, freedom of, 692 

Pretender, the Old, 718, 727, 739, 781 

, the Young, 749, 772-781 

Prcvost, Sir George, 904 

Pride, Colonel, 583, 602, 607, Oil, 614 

Priestley, Dr., 862 

Printing, 390 

Prior, Matthew, 687, 726 

Privy Council, 384 

Provisions of Oxford, 195 

Provisors, Act of, 407 

Prussians, the, 769, 791, 807, 859, 869, 890, 

902, 908, 973, 1001, 1014, 1015 
Prynne, William, 526, 527, 528, 541, 576 
Public Advertiser, 817 
Pullein, Robert, 121 
Pulteney, William, 742, 748, 752, 767, 768 

(see Bath) 
Punjab, 964, 966, 995 
Purchase of Commissions, 1012 
Purveyance, 178, 494, 616 
Pusey, E. B.,968, 969 
Pym, John, 506, 507, 510, 513, 535, 539, 540, 

542, 543, 548, 550, 555, 556, 563, 565 
Pyramids, battle of, 872 
Pyrenees, battle of, 903 

, Peace of, 620 

Pytheas, 7, 8, 12 

QuATRE Bras, 906 
Quebec, 795 

Act, 824 

Queen's Colleges, the, 1013 

County, 477 

Quia emptores, 209 
Quiberon Bay, 865 

, battle of, 801 

Quo warranto inquiry, 211 
writs, 642 



Radcot Bridge, battle of, 285 

Radicals, 949, 957 

Raglan, Lord, 983, 987, 990 

Ragusa, 162 

Raikes, Robert, 945 

Rajpoots, 798 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 465, 472, 473, 474, 478, 

486, 487, 488, 502, 503 
Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 465, 472 
Ralf or RoUo, 60 

of Chester, 176, 179, 184, 186 

Ralph of Wader or Guader, 97, 98 

, Earl, 77 

Ramillies, battle of, 710 

Randolf of Chester, 126 

Randolph, 235 

Ransom, 107 

Ranulf Flambard, 77, 105, 106, 107, 111, 

112, 113, 124 
Ratcliffe, Charles, 781 

, Sir Richard, 369, 371 

Rathmines, battle of, 588 
Ravenspur, 355 
Raymond Berenger, 191 

of Toulouse, 138 

Readers, 140 

Reading, 54 

Recognition, method of, 163 

Redistribution of Seats Bill (1868), 1006; 

(1885), 1029 
Redwald, 29 

Reflections on the French Revolution, 801 
Reformation, the, defined, 406 
Reform Bill of 1832, 943 

, Lord Derby's first, 997 

of 1866, 10O5 

of 1867, 1006 

of 1885, 1028 

Regiments : The King's Horseguards, 616 ; 

the Coldstream Guards, 616 ; Royal 

Artillery, 616; the 39th, 800; the 33rd, 

887 ; the 52nd, 908 ; the 93rd, 986 
Regimental numbers altered, 1012 
Reginald, sub-prior, 172 
Regium Donum, 1007 
Regulators, the, 655 
Relief, 107, 108, 112, 177 
Remonstrance of the Army, The, 583 
Renaissance, 389 
Renard, 439", 440, 441 
Rescission Act, 623 
Revenge, The, 473 
Revolution, the French, 854 
Reynolds, Archbishop, 236 

President of Corpus Christi College, 489 

Rheims, Council of, 137 
Rhe, Isle of, 514 
Rhuddlan, 216 
Rich, Colonel, 640 

, Edmund, 191 

Richard i., reign of, 157-166 

II., 276 ; reign of, 278-294 

III., reign of, 365-371 

, Bishop of London, 136 

, son of Henry ii., 150, 155, 159 

, Earl of Cornwall, 191, 192 

Prince, 366 

Richard's Castle, 77 

Richelieu, 511, 512 

Richmond, Henry Tudor, Earl of, 366, 367, 

368, 369, 370 (see Henry vii.) 



Index 



1063 



Eichmond, Charles Lennox, Duke of, 809, 

818, 827, 828, 829, 832, 833, 83(5 
Ricliemont, Arthm- of, 325 
Ridley, Nicholas, Bishop of Rochester, 429, 

433. 442, 444 
Ridolfi, 4G0 
Rigby, Richard, 809 
Rigge, Peter, 283 
Rights of Man, 861, 862 
Riot Act, the, 737 
Riots, Gordon, 830 
Ripon, Earl of, 948 (see Goderich) 

, Treaty of, 587 

River-drift men, 4 

Rivers, Anthony, Earl of, 362, 363 

Richard Woodville, Lord, 352 

Rizzio, David, 455 

Robert iii., 301 

— — , Count of Mortain, 94 

d'Oilly, 126 

, Duke of Normandy, 98, 103, 104, 105, 

106, 109, 111, 118, 114 

Mowbray, 104, 105, 106 

of Bellenie. 98, 104, 113 

of Cricklade, 121 

of Gloucester, 121, 124, 125, 126, 127, 

128 

of Jumifeges, 77, 78 

of Normandy, 77 

the Steward, 245, 264 

Roberts, Richard, 851 

, General Lord, 1021 

Robertson, William, 761, 923 

Robespierre, 859, 869 

Robinson, Frederick John (afterwards Lord 

Goderich), 928 

, Sir Thomas, 788 

Roches, Peter des, 175, 176, 182, 184, 1S5, 

189, 190, 191 
Rochester, Lawrence Hyde, Earl of, 645, 

650, 652, 664, 698, 713 

, siege of, 104 

Rockingham, 811, 813, 815, 818, 823, 820, 

832, 833, 836 

Whigs, 809, 836 

Rodney, Lord, 801, 832, 833, 834 
Roebuck, J. A., 978, 989 
Roger-le-poer, 124 
Roger Pontl'eveque, 143 

of Salisbury, 115, 117, 124, 125, 136 

Rogers, John, 419, 443 

Rohesia of Caen, 136 

Rohillas, the, 841 

Rokeby, Sir Thomas, 307 

Rolleston, Mr., 916 

Rollo, 60 

Roman Catholics, 490, 623 

, disabilities of, 493, 749, 829, 877, 

880, 930, 934, 1011 (see Test Act) 
Roman towns, 15 
Rome, sack of, 401 

Romilly, Sir Samuel, 912, 913, 919, 924 
Romney, 87 

; Henry Sidney, Earl of, 669, 697 

Rooke, Sir George, 684, 685, 709 

' Root and Branch Bill,' 545, 546 

Roper, Sir Anthony, 522 

Rorke's Drift, 1020 

Roriga, battle of, 894 

Rose, Sir Hugh, afterwards Lord Strath- 

nairn, 996 



Rosebery, the Earl of, 1030, 1036, 1039 

Rosen, 677, 678 

Roslin, battle of, 225 

Rosny, Duke of Sully, 495 

RosB, General, 904 

Rossa, O'Donovan, 1007 

Rossbach, battle of, 794 

Rotherham, Thomas, Archbishop of York, 

362, 364 
Rothesay, Duke of, 308 
Rotten boroughs, 805, 939, 940 
Rouen, 101, 833 
— — , castle of, 99 
" — , siege of, 321 
Roundway Down, battle of, 562 
Roundhead, 550 
Rouse, 641 

Rousseau, J. J., 856, 857 
Roussel, 676 
Rouverai, battle of, 326 
Rowton Heath, battle of, 575 
Royal Marriage Act, 820 
Roxburgh Castle, 152, 158, 220, 232 
Rumbold, Colonel, 641, 647 
Rump, the, 584 
Rumsey, Colonel, 641 
Runcorn, 62 
Runjeet Singh, 966, 967 
Rupert, Prince, 558, 560, 561, 562, 663, 566, 

567, 568, 569, 570, 572, 582, 588, 590, 614, 

621, 622 
Russell, Admiral Edward, 659, 662, 6G9, 

671, 672, 683, 684, 687, 688, 696, 698, 792 

, Dr., afterwards Sir William, 989 

, Lord, 430, 431, 432 

, Lord John, 912, 924, 931, 933, 939, 940, 

941, 951, 970, 972, 977, 979, 981, 992 

, Earl (see Lord John), 1004 

, Thomas, 880 

, William, Lord, 630, 633, 634, 641 

Russia, 927 

Russian War, 983-992 

Russians, the, 933, 964, 981, 1015, 1017, 

1018, 1019, 1028 
Rutland, Duke of Albemarle, 290, 291 , 800 

, Duke of, 883 

, Earl of, 346 

(see York, Duke of), 313, 320 

Rye-House Plot, 641 
Ryswlck, Peace of, 686 



Sacheverell, Dr., 722, 723 

Sackville, Lord George, 802 (see Germaine) 

Sadowa, battle of, 1001 

Salutes, battle of, 192 

St. Albans, assembly at, 175 

, battle of, 342 

, second battle of, 346 

— Arnaud, Marshal, 983 

— - Bartholomew, massacre of, 462 

— Bernard, 120, 128 

— Brice's Day, massacre on, 70 

— Christopher, island of, 726 

— Dominic, 187 

— Pagan's, battle of, 581 

— Francis, 187 

— Giles' Fields, meeting in, 314 

— Helena, Isle of, 631 

-John, Sir Oliver, 522, 529, 539, 587, 
607 



1064 



An Advanced History of England 



St. John, Henry, 713, 714, 722, 724, 725, 

726 (see Bolingbroke) 
, Knights of, 129 

— Mahe, battle of, 219 

— Malachi, 147 

— Mary's Clyst, battle of, 430 

— Omer, college at, 4^3 

— Quentin, battle of, 446 

— Ruth, 679, 680 
Saladin, 154, 160 

tithe, 155 

Salamanca, battle of, 001 
Sale, Robert, 259 

..- — , Sir Robert, 066 

Salisbury, Montacute, Earl of, 268 

(another), 290, 292, 300 

(another), 325, 326 

, Robert Cecil, Earl of, 472, 478, 4SS, 

495, 496 

(another), 630, 632 

, Marquess of, 1005, 1018, 

1029, 1032, 1039 
- — , Margaret, Countess of, 381, 418, 419 
, Richard, Earl of, 339, 341, 342, 343 

345, 346 
; William Longsword, Earl of, 174, 175, 

179, 183 

Oath, 100, 101 

Sattara, 993 

Sampford, Courtenay, 431 

Sancroft, Archbishop, 657, 664, 669 

San Domingo, island of, 605 

Sandwich, Edward Montague, Earl of, 614, 

615, 617. 621, 628 

, Lord, 769, 809 " 

Sandwith, Dr. H., 991 
Sandys, Samuel, 768 
Sancia of Provence, 193 
San Sebastian, 902, 903 

Stefano, Treaty of, 1018 

Santa Cruz, 606 
Saragossa, 894 

, battle of, 721 

Saratoga, 827 

Sardinians, 990, 998, 999 

Sarsfield, 679, 680, 084 

Sarum, Old, 940 

Saunders, Judge, 037, 642, 796 

Savile, George, Marquess of Halifax, 638, 645 

, Sir Henry, 489 

Saville, Sir George, 809, 829 
Savoy, William of, 191 
Sawtre, William {see Chatys), 802 
Saxe, Marshal, 772, 784 
Saxe-Coburg, Prince Albert of, 955 

— , Prince Leopold of, 922 

Saxon pirates, 17 
Saxons, 23 

, home of, 20 

, invasion of, 20 

Say and Sele, Lord, 333, 386 

Saye and Sele, Fiennes, Lord, 529, 535, 555, 

557, 582 
Scales, Lord, 354 
Scarborougli, 83 
Schaub, Sir Luke, 750 
Schism Act, 728, 742 
Schmalkalden, League of, 421 
Schomberg, Marshal, 678, 679 
Schutz, 728 
Schwarz, Martin, 378 



Scinde, 964 

Scindia, 887, 995 

Scot, 607, 609, 610 

Scotland, succession question, 217 

, invasion of, 301 

under Cromwell, 603 

at the Restoration, 623 

, union of, with England, 714-717 

Scots, the, 19, 20, 22, 65, 72, 93, 106, 124, 
137, 151, 152, 173, 217, 224, 225, 226, 232, 
233, 234, 235, 243, 244, 245, 256, 264, 303, 
304, 322, 359, 379, 388, 395, 396, 397, 423, 
429, 454, 455, 456, 457, 532, 534, 564, 573, 
577, 591, 592, 593 

Scottish Free Church, 968 

Scroggs, Chief-Justice, 636, 642 

Scrope, Henry, Lord le, 316 

, Richard le. Archbishop of York, 306, 

307 

, Sir William, 291, 202 

Scutages, 177 

Sectaries, 452 

Sedgemoor, battle of, 648 ' 

Seditious Meetings Act, 862 

Seeley, Sir John, 1036 

Selby, 566 

Selden, 520, 539, 541, 544, 545 

' Self-Denying Oi-dinance,' the, 570 

Selwood, forest of, 41, 55 

Senlac, battle of, 84, 86 

Separatists, 452 

Sepoys, 799, 993-996 

Sept, 146 

Septennial Act, 741 

Serfs, 100 

Seville, Treaty of, 755 

Sevenoaks, battle of, 336 

Seymour, Edward, 647, 650, 713 

, Sir Edward, 662 

, Lord Henry, 470 

, Jane, 414 

, William, 485 

Shaftesbury, Ashley, Earl of, 625, 627, 629, 
630, 632, 633. 634, 639, 640 

Shah Alum, 838, 839 

Shah Sujah, 964 

Shales, Commissary, 678 

Shannon, The, 903 

Sharpe, Archbishop, 624, 637 

, Dr., 652 

Shaw, Dr., 364 

, Mr., 1022 

Shelburne, Lord, 808, 811, 814, 815, 817, 818, 
823, 827, 828, 829, 832, 833, 836, 837, 843 

Shelley, P. B., 924 

Sheridan, R. B., 845, 847 

Sheriff, 44 

Sheriffmuir, battle of, 738 

Sheppey, Isle of, 52 

Ship-money, 528 

Shire, 43 

Court, 116 

, Knights of, 198 

Shiremoot, 44, 95 

Shirestone, battle of, 71 

Shires, origin of, 44 

Shirley, Sir Thomas, 490 

Shore, Jane, 364 

Shovel, Sir Cloudesley, 709 

Shrewsbury, 558 

, battle of, 305, 306 



Index 



1065 



Shrewsbury, Charles Talbot, 656, 659, 664, 
669, 672, 688, 696, 698, 723, 729, 734 

, Earl of, 469 

, parliament at, 291 

, Treaty of, 214 

Sibyl, 155 

Sicily, 160, 161 

Sidmouth, Lord, 889, 902, 917, 920, 925 (see 

Addington) 
Sidney, Algernon, 641, 671 

, Henry, 659, 669 (see Romney, Earl of) 

- — , Sir Philip, 465, 468 

Sierra Leoue, 911 

Sieyes, 874 

Sigismund, Emperor, 320 

Sigiric, Archbishop, 70 

Sihtric, 63 

Silures, 11, 13, 14 

Simnel, Lambert, 378 

Simon, Richard, 378 

Simpson, General, 990 

Sinclair, Bishop, 235 

Sinope, 988 

Si ward, 76, 77, 79, 96 

Six Acts, the, 918 

Skippen, 765 

Skippon, Philip, 552, 587, 600, 607 

Slavery abolished, 945 

Slave Trade, the, 847 

prohibited, 890 

Sliding Scale, Peel's, 963 
Slingsbv, Sir Henry, 604, 605 
Sluys, battle of, 250 
Smectymnuus, 545 
Sinerwick, massacre of, 478 
Smith, Adam, 842, 846, 852 

■ , John, 497, 498 

, Sir Sidney, 873 

, Sydney, 923 

Smyrna Fleet lost, 685 

Society for the Diflusion of Useful Know- 
ledge, 924 

for the Propagation of Christian Know- 
ledge (Scottish), 760 ; (English), 762 

for the Propagation of the Gospel in 

Foreign Parts, 762 

Solemn League and Covenant, 564 

Solferino, battle of, 998 

Solmes, Count, 684 

Solway Moss, battle of, 423 

Somers Act, 716 

, John, 658, 687, 691, 698, 699, 702, 707, 

722, 724, 725, 734 
Somerset, 427, 434 (see Hertford) 

, Charles Seymour, DuTce of, 655 

, Edmund, Duke of, 356 

, Henry, Duke of, 350 

, Duke of, 725, 729, 734 

, John Beaufort, Earl of, 330, 331 

, Countess of, 501 

, Duchess of, 724 

Sophia of Hanover, 699 

Soult, Marshal, 897, 903 

Southampton, 69 

, Wriothesley, Earl of {sec Wriothesley), 

426, 427 

, Wriothesley, Lord, 479 

South Saxons, 23 

Sea Scheme, 743, 744 

South wold Bay, 628 
Spa Field, 916 



Spain, 265, 827, 834, 893 
Spanish Colonies, the, 927 

Succession, 700 

Speenhamland, 947 
Speke, Captain, 1036 
Spencer, Earl, 1025, 1030 
Spenser, Edmund, 465, 478 
' Spinning Jenny,' 851 
Spitalfields Weavers, 929 
Spring Rice, 951, 953 
Spurs, battle of, 395 
Stael, Madame de, 881 
Stafiford, 62 

, Sir Humphrey, 336 

, Henry, Duke of Buckingham, 362, 363, 

366, 367 

, Thomas, 445 

, Viscount, 635 

- — , Sir William, 336 
Stair, Earl of, 759, 770 
Stamford, 62, 92 

Bridge, battle of, S3 

Standard, battle of the, 125 

Stanhope, General, 720, 721 ; created Earl, 

728, 735, 741, 742, 746, 748 
Stanley, Sir Edward, 897 
, Edward Geoffrey, 939, 948, 963, 970 

(see Derby) 
, Lord E. H., afterwards Earl of Derby, 

980, 1018 

, Thomas, Lord, 362, 370 

, Sir William, 370, 379 

Stapleton, 560 

, Bishop, 239 

Star Chamber, 544 

Staremberg, 720 

State in its Relation with the Church, The, 

968 
Stayner, Captain, 606 
Statute de Facto, 384 

of Fines, 385 

Maintenance, 287 ■ 

of Prsenmnire, 268, 287 

of Provisors, 268, 287 

of Treason, 269, 270 

Statutes of Labourers, 261 

of Uses, 415, 417 

Steel, Richard, 728 
Steenkerke, battle of, 684 
Stephen of Blois, 109 

of Hungary, 72 

, reign of, 123-129 

Stephens, 958 

, James, 1007 

Stephenson, George, 937 
St. Eustacia, capture of, 832 
Stewart, Murdoch, Earl of Fife, 303 
Stewarts, the, 673 
Stigand, 78, 81, 92, 95 
Stirling Castle, 152, 220 

, surrender of, 234 

Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, 669 

Stockdale's Case, 962 

Stoke, battle of, 378 

Stokesley, Bishop of London, 414 

Stow-on-the-Wold, 575 

Strachan, Sir Richard, SOS 

Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of (see 

Wentworth), 534, 535, 636, 539, 540, 541, 

542 544 
Strange, Lord, 555 (see Derby, Earl of) 



1066 



An Advanced Histmy of England 



strange, George Stanley, Lord, 3V0 
Stratford, John, 242, 244, 250 

, Robert, 244, 250, 251 

Strathbogie, 968 

Strathclyde, 64, 106 

Strode, William, 520, 534, 539, 550 

Strongbow, 148 

Stuart, Arabella, 4S7 

, Charles Edward Louis Casirair, 749 

, Elizabeth, 495, 504 

, Henry, 781 

, James Edward, 703 (see Pretender) 

, Sir John, 802 

Stuteville, Nicholas de, 176 

, Robert de, 151 

Suakim, 1027 

Sub-deacons, 140 

Sudeley, Lord Seymour of, 427, 430 

Suetonius Paullinus, 14 

Suez Canal, shares in, 1026 

Suffolk, 285 

, Charles Brandon, Duke of, 398 

, Edmund de la Pole, Earl of, 380, 381 

, Henry Grey, Duke of, 440 

, John de la Pole, Duke of, 335, 362 

, William de la Pole, Earl of, 326, 327, 

332, 333, 335 
Suffren, Admiral, 841 
Suiones, 21 
Sunderland, Robert Spencer, Earl of, 634, 

649, 652, 657, 658, 660, 661, 672, 687 
, Charles Spencer, Earl of, 714, 736, 741, 

742, 743, 744, 745, 746, 748 
Supremacy, Act of, 411 
Surajah Dowlah, 800 
Surrey, Earl of, 395, 396 

, Henry, Earl of, 425 

, Thomas, Lord, 371 (see Norfolk) 

Sussex, Thomas Ratcliffe, Earl of, 460 

Suvarov, 848 

Swedes, 51 

Swegen Estrithson, 78, 92 

Sweyn, 70, 71 

, Godwin's son, 76, 77 

Ivin*^ 74 

Swift, Jonathan, 692, 728, 729, 757 
Swynford, Katharine, 273, 289 
Sydney, 849 



Tacitus, 11, 14, 20, 21 

' Tacking,' 698 

Tadcaster, S3 

Taillebourg, battle of, 192 

Tailles, 100 

Talavera, battle of, 807 

Talbot, Richard, 649, 652 (see Tvrconnel) 

, Sir John, 327, 330 

Tallages, 101 

Tallard, Marshal, 708, 709 

Talleyrand, 874, 904 

Talmasli, General, 679, 680, 681, 685 

Tamar, river, 63 

Tamworth, 62 

Tancred, 160 

Tangier, 620 

Tankerville, Grey, Lord, 098 

Tanneguy du Chastel, 321 

Tantia Topee, 900 

Taunton, 572 

Tchernaya, battle of, 991 



Technical Education, 1035 

Teignmouth, burning of, 682 

Tel-el-Kebir, battle of, 1026 

Telford, Thomas, 852 

Templars, Kuights, 129, 240, 241 

Temple, Richard, Earl of (1), 792, 810, 813, 
817 

, Earl of (2), 842, 843 

, Sir William, 625, 633, 634, 639, 692 

Temple's scheme, 633 

Tenants-in-chief, 100 

' Tenant-right,' Irish, 1009 

Teuchebrai, battle of, 114, 115 

Tencin, Cardinal, 771 

Tesse, Marshal, 712 

Test Act, 629, 671, 863, 933 

Tewfik, 1026 

Tewkesbury, battle of, 350 

Thanet, Isle of, 52, 69 

Thegu-right, 48 

Thegns, kings, 46, 47 

Thelwall, John, 863 

Theobald, Archbishop, 129, 137, 130 

Theodore, 33, 34, 35, 36 

, King, 1007 

Theows, 47 

Therouenne, siege of, 395 

Thibaut d'Estampes, 121 

Thirsk, 151 

Thirty Years' War, 503 

Thistle wood, 920 

Thomas, Archbishop, 120, 13(5, 137 

Thorpe, 56 

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Dis- 
contents, 820 

Throgmorton, Francis, 468 

Thurkill, 73 

Thurloe, 587 

Thurlow, Lord, 833, 836, 843 

Thurston of York, 125 

Thwaite, 56 

Tiberias, battle of, 155 

Tiberius, Claudius, 13 

Tickhill, Castle, 158 

Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury, 660, 
671, 683 

Times, The, 989, 1034 

Tippermuir, battle of, 573 

Tippoo Sahib, 886 

Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, 341, 354, 389 

Tithe Commutation Act, 952 

Titus, 13 

Titus Gates, 634 

Tobago, 905 ' 

Todleben, Colonel, 986, 900 

Togodumnus, 13 

Toleration Act, 671 

Tooke, Home, 852, 863 

Tone, Theodore Wolfe, 876, 877, 878 

Tonnage and Poundage, 271, 511, 516, 518, 
519 

Topcliffe, 385 

Torbay, 661 

Torcy, Marquis de, 726 

Torres Vedras, the lines of, 899 

Torrington, Lord (see Herbert), 681, 682 

Tory, 638 

Tostig, 77, 79, 80, 82, 83 

Toulouse, 138 

, battle of, 903 

, Raymond of, 138 



Index 



1067 



Toulouse, Raymond.of, (another), 161 
Touraine, 138, 167, 170 
Tournai, 395 
Tournaments, 164 
Tournay, siege of, 683, 719 
Tourville, Admiral, 681 
Towns, 119, 120 
Townshend, Charles, 815, 816 

, Lord, 734, 735, 742, 748, 757, 758 

Township, 42, 101 

Towton, battle of, 349 

Tracts for the Times, 969 

Tracy, William de, 143 

Trade Unions, 929, 1016 

Trafalgar, battle of, 884, 885 

Transvaal, the, 1020, 1021, 1022 

Trastaraare, Henry of, 265 

Travers, 577 

Treason felony, 974 

Treasonable Practices Act, 862 

Treason Trials, 434, 695 

Trelawney, 659 

Trelawny, Bishop of Bristol, 057 

Trenchard, 688 

Tressillian, 285, 286 

Trevelyan, Mr., afterwards Sir George, 1025, 

1030 
Trial by battle, 145 

by jury, 145 

Triennial Act, 541 

'Triers,' the, 602 

Trinidad, 869, 905 

Trinobantes, 10 

Trinoda Necessitas, 42, 45 

Triploe Heath, 579 

Trollope, Sir Andrew, 343 

Troyes, treaty, 322 

Trnc-horn Englishman, 697 

Tuam, 147 

Tudor, Jasper, Earl of Pembroke, 346, 354, 

357 

, Margaret, 335, 388, 397, 455 

— -, Owen, 346 

Tullibardine, Marquess of, 720, 774, 779, 781 

Tun, 42 

Tunstall, Bishop of London, 408 

Turgot, 857 

Turner, Bishop of Ely, 657 

Turnham Green, 560 

Tutbury, 457 

Twenge, Sir Robert, 1S7 

Tyler, Wat, 280, 281 

Tyndal, William, 419 

Tyrconnel, Lady, 679 

, Richard Talbot, Earl of, 652, 676, 077, 

680 
Tyrone, Hugh O'Neal, Earl of, 496, 497 

, Shan O'Neal, Earl of, 477, 478 

Tyrrel, Sir James, 366, 371, 881 
, Sir Walter, 110 

Ulf, Bishop, 78 

Ulfcytel, 70 

Ulm, 888 

Ulster, 147, 497 

Undertakers, the, 500 

Uniformity, first Act of, 429, 450, 464 

, second Act of, 618 

Union, the Scottish, 714 

, the Irish, 879 

, Repeal of, 984 



Union, the terms of Scottish, 716 

United Irishman, 973 

United Irishmen, 876 

United States acknowledged, 837 

, war with, 903 

University Tests, 1011 

Urban ii.. Pope, 103, 108, 109 

Uriconium, 24 

Usher, Archbishop of Armagh, 545 

Utopia, 405 

Utrecht, Treaty of, 725, 726 

Uttoxeter, 581 

Uxbridge, 571, 577 

Vacarius, 122 

Val es Dunes, battle of, 78 

Valence, William of, 192 

, William of, another, 194 

Valentine, 519, 520, 534 

Vane, Sir Harry the elder, 531, 540, 542 

, Sir Harry the younger, 531, 539, 540, 

542, 545, 564, 565, 570, 571, 582, 583, 584, 

586, 596, 598, 604, 606, 607, 609, 610, 611 

615 
Vansittart, 928 
Van Tromp, 596. 621 
Vasco da Gama, 390 
Vauban, 685 
Venables, 605 

Vendome, Duke of, 719, 721 
Vere, Robert de, 284, 285, 286 
Verneuil, battle of, 325 
Vernon, Admiral, 767 
Verona, congress at, 926 
Versailles, Treaty of, 837 
Vervins, Peace of, 475 
Vespasian, 13 
Vexin, 101 
Victor Emmanuel, 999 

Marshal, 897 

Victoria, Princess, 922, 936 ; reign of, part 

I., 954-1003 ; part ii., 1008-1046 
Vienna, Congress of, 905 
Villars, Marshal, 708, 710, 719, 720 
Villein tenure, 1S9, 141 
Villeneuve, Admiral, S84 
Villiers, Charles, 959, 969 

, George, 501 (see Buckingham) 

Vimiero, battle of, 894 
Vincent, Henry, 958 
Vindicice Gallicce, 861 
Vinegar Hill, battle of, 878 
Virginia, 498, 788, 824, 828, 999 
Virginia Company, 497 
Vittoria, battle of, 902 
Voltaire, 792, 856 
Volunteers, the, 1002 
Vortigern, 22 

Wade, Marshal, 760, 776, 777 
Wagram, battle of, 898 
Wagstaffe, 604, 605 
Wakefield, battle of, 346 
Wakeman, Sir George, 635 
Walcot, 641 

Waldeck, Prince of, 681 
Walden, Roger, 300 
Wiles 7^ 

, Council of, 422, 544 

incorporation of, 422 

, North, final settlement of, 216 



1068 



An Advanced History of England 



Wales, Dowager Princess of, 792, 805, 813 

, re-organisation of, 214 

Walclieren Expedition, 897 

Walcourt, 681 

Waleran, Count, 118 

Walker, Obadiali, 651, 663, 672, 677 

Wallace, William, 224, 225 

Waller, Edmund, 539 

, Sir William, 539, 555, 557, 561, 565, 

566, 569, 571, 579 
Wallingford, 87, 158 

, treaty of, 129 

Walpole, Horace, 772, 852 

, Horatio, 750 

, Robert, 714, 717, 722, 724, 725, 736, 

742, 743, 745, 749, 768 (see Orford) 
Walsh, 773 

Walsingham, Sir Francis, 465, 469, 472 
Walter of Coutances, 159 

Map, 171 

Lespec, 125 

Walters, Lucy, 620 

Waltheof, 79, 80, 84, 92, 93, 97, 98 

Walworth, William, 280 

Wapentake, 43 

Warbeck, Perkin, 378, 380 

Warburg, battle of, 802 

Ward, 43 

Wardour, Lord Arundel of, 626, 654 

Wardship, 107 

Wareham, 54 

Warenne, William of. 82 

, Earl, 197, 211, 220, 224 

Warham, Archbishop, 393, 410 
Warr, Lord de la, 498 
Warrington, 581 
Warwick, 62, 92, 558 

, Beauchamp, Earl of, 330, 341 

, Earl of, 231, 236, 263, 380 

, John Dudley, Earl of (see Lisle), 427, 

431, 432, 438, 439 

, Robert Rich, Earl of, 529, 539, 570 

, Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of, 285, 287. 

290, 301 
Washington, George, 790, 824, 825, 832 

, town of, 904 

Waterford, 147, 149 
Waterloo, battle of, 907, 90S 
Watling Street, 15, 16, 56 
Watson, Admiral, 800 

, William, 488 

Watt, James, 851 

Waynfleet, Bishop, 337 

Weald, the, 41 

Wealth of Nations, 842: 

Wearmouth, 52 

Webb, General, 719 

Wedderburn, 822 (see Loughboroiigh) 

Wedmore, 55 

Weekly Political Register, 914 

Wellesley, Marquess, 898, 925 

, Sir Arthur, 886, 887, 892, 894, 897 (see 

Wellington) 
Wellington, Duke of, 902, 906, 910, 926, 931, 

934, 937, 938, 941, 942, 943, 950, 951, 963, 

969, 970, 974, 976 » i . , 

Welsli Church Disestablishment Bill, 1037 

1039 
Wenlock, Sir John, 353 
Wentworth, Sir Peter, 598, 605 
, Thomas, Lord, 446 



Wefitwoith, Sir ThoTOa\^^^;^f S,^:??®""'"!' 
^(y, 510, 512, 513, 515, ^°Hi.'r,,521, 523, 524. 

529', 584 (see Strafford) 
Werfrith, 57 
Wergild, 56 
Wesley, Charles, 763 

, John,. 762, 763 

Westminster Assembly, the, 576 

, Council of, 1'41 

, Hall, 178 

, statutes of, 209; 219 

West Indian Islands, 882,. 911 

captured, -807' 

Westmorland, Cliarles Neville, Earl of, 460 
-— ^, Earl of, 776 

, Fitzalan, Earl of, 30i' 

West Saxons, 23 

Weston, Riclirard, Lord, 520' (s«e Portland, 

Earl), 321! 

Zoyla'-!M/ 648 

Wetherell, ^'C, 941, 942 

Wexford, 14f,'' 589' 

Weymoutli, LsiV^''809, 816 

Wharnclift'e, LorlT,''94l, 942 

Wharton, Pliilip, TiqVdy630, 631 

, Thomas, LoriH^<^2, 687, 688, 722, 724, . 

725, 746 
Whately, 822 
Wheeler, Sir Hugh, 994 
Whig, 637 
Whiggamores, 582 
Whigs, Puhlic Spirit of the , 728 
Whitbread, S., 945 
Whitby, synod of, 32, 33, 407 
White, Bishop of Peterborough, 657 
Whitefield, George, 763 
Whitelock, 587, 591, 598, 605, 007, 615 

, General, 893 

Whitgift, John, Bishop of Worcester, 464 

Wigan, 581 

Wilberforce, William, 844, 847, 888, 890,, 

945 
Wildman the Leveller, 604, 605 
Wilfrid, 32, 33, 34 
Wilkes, John, 810, 816, 817, 829 
William, Archbishop of Canterbury, 124 

of Aumale, 137 

•, Clito, 118 

I. of Germany, 1015 

the Lion, 185, 150, 151 

of Malmesbury, 36 

of Normandy, 77, 78 ; reign of, 91-102 

of Orange, 621, 626, 632,^636, 647, 656, 

659, 661 ; reign of, 667-704 

, Prince, 117, 118 

IV., reign of, 935-953 

Rufus, 98, 101 ; reign of, 103-110 

Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, 527, 531, 539, 

543, 545, 550 

, General W\ F., 991 

Willoughby, Sir Hugh, 466 

Wills, General, 738 

Wilmington, Sir Spencer Compton, Earl of, 

768, 769 
Wilson, Andrew, 761 
Wilton, battle of, 54 
Winceby, 563 

Winchelsea, Archbishop, 221, 222, 236, 
Winchester, 74, 87, 92, 111, 195 

, statute of, 209, 211, 212 

Windebank, 541 



Index 



1069 



Windham, Sir W., 765 

— -, W. W., 845 

Winter, Thomas, 492 

Winthrop, John, 530, 531 

Winwick, 581 

Winwidfield, battle of, 32 

Wishart, George, 454 

Witenageraot, 45, 91, 90, 98, 101, 103, 

114, 116 
Wite-theows, 47 
Witham, 62 

Wolfe, General, 794, 795, 796 
Wolff, Sir H. D., 1026 
Wolseley, Colonel, 678 

, General Lord, 1026 

Wolsey, Thomas, 393, 394, 398, 401, 

404, 409 
Wood, Sir Evelyn, 1022 

, Matthew, 916 

Wood's Halfpence, 751, 752 
Woodfall, 818 

Woodstock, Council of, 139 
Woodville, Lady Elizabeth, 3.>l!, S69 

, Edward, 362, 363, 367, 2,m 

, Richard, 351, 362 

Worcester, 558 

, battle of, 593 

; Marquess of, 556 

, Thomas Percy, Earl of, 305 

Wordsworth, William, 852, 924 
Workington, 457 



111, 



403, 



Workmen's combinations, 929 
Wren, Bishop of Norwich, 527, 539 

, Sir Christopher, 628. 

Wright, Judge, 658 
Wriothesley, Rachel, 630 
Wulfhere, 32, 37 
Wulfstan, Arclibishop, 65 

, Bishop, 98 

Wtirtemberg, Duke of, 679 

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 440, 441 

Wyclif, John, 273, 274, 277, 282, 283, 288, 

302 
Wykeham, William of, 275, 276, 285, 287 
Wyndham, Sir William, 737 
Wynendale, battle of, 719 
Wynn, Sir Watkin. 776 

Yakoob Khan, 1019 
York, 83, 92, 93, 566 

, Elizabeth of, 366, 369, 376, 388 

, Margaret of, 379 

, Richard, Duke of, 317, 333, 337, 339, 

342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 363 

, Frederick, Duke of, 873, 898, 930 

Yorktown, 831 

Ypres, William of, 126, 127 

ZoRNDOEF, battle of, 802 
Zulus, the, 1020 
Zurich, battle of, 873 
Zutphen, battle of, 468 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



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AN ELEMENTARY HISTORY OF ENGLAND 

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